Andy Fishburn

Andy Fishburn MBE is one of the founding members and the Managing Director of Virgin StartUp – the not-for-profit organisation, funded by the Branson Family, that exists to empower founders in the UK to start and scale early-stage businesses. Over the past 10+ years, Virgin StartUp has worked with tens of thousands of founders, providing over £100m to help more than 7,000 founders start and scale the businesses they’re passionate about. Businesses such as Castore, Change Please, Dash Water, Flash Pack, Hurr, Magic AI, Minor Figures, Mous, Nice, Ocean Bottle, Oddbox, OxWash, Stasher and many more. In doing so, Virgin StartUp have built one of the UK’s largest entrepreneurial mentoring networks, with over 650 mentors from some of the biggest businesses and brands. Prior to helping launch Virgin StartUp in 2013, Andy trained as a Chartered Accountant working at both PwC and Deloitte, specialising in Venture Capital and Private Equity. This experience brought a professional perspective to his passion for entrepreneurship, having had a number of ventures himself – from ‘Impact Artworks’ an online service turning photos into original hand-painted canvases, through to ‘My Club Mail’ – an email service for football fans.