Edinburgh April Supper Club

**MEMBERS ONLY EVENT **

Our Supper Club events are the ideal opportunity to enjoy an evening of good conversation, delicious food and the opportunity to hear the story from our guest entrepreneur.  The Edinburgh Supper Clubs take place at the characterful and iconic Hotel Du Vin.  Pre-dinner drinks take place in the cosy and comfortable Whisky Snug before moving through to the highly atmospheric Burke & Hare private dining room.

We’re delighted that the winner of our 2017 Inspiring Leader of the Year Award, Paul Atkinson, is joining us at our April Supper Club.

Paul is a professional investor, venture capitalist and board advisor with a track record of creating value for companies and investors in the technology and business services sector.

He is founding partner of boutique investment business, Par Equity LLP, which provides EIS Funds in the technology venture space as well as investment funds in other asset classes, including residential property and forestry.

Since its launch in 2008, Par Equity has invested more than £80m in over 40 companies and completed five exits, two of which were in Medtech. Of that £80m, an estimated more than 70% has gone into Scottish companies.

Par Equity’s recent investments include Snap40, a wearable health monitoring device business; Unik Lasers, a laser technology spinout from Heriot-Watt University and Particle Analytics, a spinout from Edinburgh University; In addition, Par was one of the founding investors in ‘light to Wi-Fi’ business PureLiFi; Money Dashboard, the personal finance app and QikServe, the dine-in food ordering and payment app.

Whilst some might have settled for life as a professional investor, Paul is also working at a strategic level building his recruitment business.

“I enjoy business, I enjoy the people I work with in business and I get a real kick out of it. I like seeing the people I back being successful. One of the reasons I back other people’s businesses is that I like to help other people get to a good place as well; it’s not all about financial returns.”

He is Executive Chairman of a group with huge ambitions in the talent space.  Having founded Head Resourcing in 2001, Paul has brought it together with Head Medical, Atkinson McLeod and Change Recruitment, acquired in 2017, to form Taranata Group with a turnover of around £65m and a true global reach.  Alongside his management team, Paul is now guiding the Group towards a turnover of £100m by 2020.

In November 2017, Paul was crowned the very worthy winner of the inaugural WeDO Scotland Inspiring Leader Award.