Meet The Fund Incubator Team
The Fund Incubator team have over (70) years of professional experience in the structuring and marketing of funds, in fund management and fund administration, in fund regulation and ESG management and the work that goes into the front, back and middle offices of a successful firm.
Stephen Geddes - Managing Partner
Stephen Ge
ddes founded Mainspring Financial Services Limited in 2010, which provides private equity fund administration for private equity and venture capital funds in the UK. In 2013 Mainspring Nominees Limited was founded. Mainspring Nominees is regulated by the FCA and authorised to provide custody and nominee services for private equity fund managers operating EIS funds and managed accounts. Prior to Mainspring Stephen Geddes spent eight years at Pi Capital, the last five years as Chief Operating Officer in charge of fund administration and operations. His time at Pi Capital gave him direct experience of the challenges of operating a small private equity fund, from leading the finance, HR and IT functions, structuring several funds and managing investor relations for several hundred investors. At Pi he was directly responsible for the administration of over 30 investment entities ranging in structure from investments held directly by investors, limited partnerships, co-investing vehicles and fund of fund vehicles.
Prior to Pi Capital Mr Geddes worked at Eden Capital where he was focused on developing the private equity division. Before this he worked as a strategy analyst at BBC Online and Kagan World Media. He started his career at Hambros Bank.
Stephen has worked closely with Caledonia on all their fund manadates.
Barry Lawson - Managing Partner
Barry Lawson is an English solicitor with over 25 years private equity experience. During this time he has helped raise 18 private equity funds with a total value of over €10bn. He has held senior positions within major UK private equity and venture capital
firms including 3i Group, Bridgepoint Capital and the UK Government owned CDC Group Plc. In 2008 he established The Private Equity Consultancy LLP to provide compliance, operational, fund raising and ESG consultancy services to small-mid market private equity investment managers in the UK.
Barry served for over 10 years as member of the BVCA’s Regulatory Committee before stepping down in Summer 2015. He continues to lecture on behalf of Invest Europe (formerly the EVCA) and devised and delivered their foundation course for support staff and is the course leader and creator of the Regulatory and Legal Master Class - a 4-day course attracting Group Counsel/COO level attendees from across Europe and the Middle East.
Barry has work closely with Caledonia on all their fund mandates and been their Compliance advisor.
Flora Gray - Chief Operating Officer
Flora Gray was on the founding team and Chief Operating Officer at Regionally, an investment service founded in March 2020 to facilitate private scaleup investments into regional SMEs based outside of London. During her time here, she managed operations, IP creation, technology development, and oversaw the expansion of the internal team and the external professional, investee and investor networks. Flora was also a member of the Investment Committee and was central in investor relations.
At the point of leaving, the organisation had won several awards including ‘Most Innovative Investment Service’ (Southern Enterprise Awards, 2021) and ‘Top Economic Innovator Awards’ (The Economist, 2021), catalysing the decision to make the investment platform developed a white label service available to the industry. Furthermore, the business achieved a global network of several hundred private investors, a nationwide professional services community and several investee clients.
Prior to Regionally Flora worked as an investment executive at Rivers Capital Partners, a North East based venture capital firm running several regional funds. She started her career here, where she began formal investment management training and developed her foundational knowledge of fund management and SME finance.
Alice Warner - Client Monitoring Associate
Alice joins The Fund Incubator as Client Monitoring Associate, supporting TFI and its clients meet their regulatory obligations. Alice gained a Masters degree in 2022 from the University of Portsmouth and brings her problem solving and analytical skills to help TFI build and enhance its monitoring programme.
Alice’s broad skill set has in the past enabled her to undertake tasks as different and challenging as working within the NHS 111 service during the Covid-19 pandemic and ghost-writing and editing projects for authors and businesses. In 2022, Alice participated in a sustainability project in Tuscany, Italy, where she helped create a “provocation piece” designed to help improve the lives of those living and working in the town of Piccioli.
This project helped confirm Alice’s interest in sustainability and responsible finance, strongly aligned with TFI’s own commitment to supporting fund managers with innovation, sustainability and fairness at the heart of their investment philosophy.