Dr Simon Murdoch

Dr Simon Murdoch (born June 1, 1961) is a British venture capitalist, business angel investor and entrepreneur .

He was born in Dorchester, United Kingdom although spent most of his childhood in Leeds. Educated at Froebelian School, Horsforth and then Bradford Grammar School from 1972-1978, Murdoch won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied Natural Sciences (Physics) from 1979-1982.
Before and after Cambridge, he worked at GEC Marconi in Chelmsford, then from 1983-1986 studied a PhD in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) at Brunel University, Uxbridge.
In 1987 Murdoch joined Triptych Systems, then an independent software company. He began as a Project Manager, within three years became Managing Director and focused the company on developing systems for bookshops in EPoS, stock control and customer ordering. This background led him to founding and launching online bookseller Bookpages.co.uk in 1996.
In April 1998, Murdoch successfully sold Bookpages to Amazon.com and continued as Country Manager of Amazon.co.uk through launch in October 1998 until the end of 1999, when he left to found venture capital business Episode 1 Partners .
’s first fund Chase Episode 1 was an affiliate fund of Chase Capital Partners now CCMP Capital launched in January 2000. The fund turned £15m to £52.5m top decile performance for a year 2000 vintage European VC fund, and included investments in Betfair and ScanSafe.
Murdoch then became a full time business angel. His angel portfolio includes Shazam, Zoopla, LoveFilm, GetLenses.co.uk, Natural Motion, Covestor & Shutl . From 2010 to 2012 Murdoch also worked as an Portfolio Director with London based VC, Octopus Ventures .
Murdoch is now raising a new Episode 1 Enterprise Capital Fund to invest in UK based software driven businesses.

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