From lab to market: venture capital and the future financing of innovation

Luisa Alemany is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School and a Fellow by Resolution of St Hugh’s College. She previously worked at ESADE Business School and has been a Visiting Professor at the Saïd Business School in Oxford. Her main areas of interest are Entrepreneurial Finance, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurial Education, Business Angels, and Venture Philanthropy. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and a PhD in Economics and Business from Universidad Complutense (Madrid). Luisa began her career as a financial analyst at Procter & Gamble in Madrid. She subsequently worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co in Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon. Later, she worked at Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division, in the venture capital fund Europ@Web, and as a Senior Associate of the American private equity fund The Carlyle Group in its European buyout team. Luisa Alemany was the director of the ESADE Entrepreneurship Institute for nine years (2009–2017). She was the academic sponsor of ESADE BAN (Business Angels Network), which was named Best BAN in Europe in 2016. She sits on the investment committee of two early-stage investors and is involved in Rising Tide Europe I and II (the first European Women-only Business Angels Fund). In the past, she has served on the Board of EBAN, the European Business Angels Network. Luisa’s research is published in the most prominent academic journals and she has written several books, the most recent being “Entrepreneurial Finance: The Art and Science of Growing Ventures” (Cambridge University Press, 2018). This is the first European textbook on that topic. She has taught on Master of Science, MBA and executive education programmes in London, Oxford, Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam, Milan, Miami, Mexico and Shanghai. In 2017 she received the Best Teacher Award for ESADE’s Executive Masters in Finance, and in the same
year her case, “Scytl” (which concerns exits options for investors) was honoured with the Best Entrepreneurship Case Award by EFMD.