Geoffrey Prentice

Geoffrey Prentice is an American investor and entrepreneur. He co-founded Oriente, a technology and data-science company that provides consumer finance solutions in Southeast Asia and is responsible for the firm's business strategy. Prior to co-founding Oriente, he was a founding partner at venture capital firm Atomico and was a co-found of Skype Technologies.

Career

Prentice has nearly two decades of experience founding, building-up and investing in technology companies around the world.

Robertson Stephens

He began his career in San Francisco at Robertson Stephens, a boutique investment bank that focuses primarily on technology companies. He worked with public and private companies across a range of different roles.

Skype

Prentice was part of the original founding team at Skype, alongside Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. In 2002 he became Chief Strategy Officer of Skype and was noted as one of the seven people that controlled the shares of the company when it listed in the commercial register of Luxembourg in 2003. He oversaw the expansion of Skype from Scandinavia into Asia and Latin America as well as driving its overall business strategy and fundraising. He played a key role in the company’s US$3.1 billion sale to eBay in 2005.[1]

Atomico

The year he left Skype, Prentice then co-founded Atomico, a technology-focused venture capitalist firm based in Europe, with fellow Skype co-founder Zennstrom. At its peak the firm had more than US$2 billion in assets under management. He worked at Atomico for seven years.

Oriente

In 2017 Prentice established Oriente with co-founders Hubert Tai and Lawrence Chu. Chu was a founder of Greater China focused investment firm BlackPine. Prentice joined the Series A funding round for Lufax in 2015. Lufax is now one of China's largest wealth management platforms, valued at US$40 billion. Tai had previously been a head engineer at eBay and Chief Technology Officer at Chinese e-commerce company Dangdang.

Oriente uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and big-data analytics to provide credit services for unbanked and underbanked consumers in Southeast Asia. The company promotes financial education in Southeast Asian countries and runs financial literacy programs through close partnerships with NGOs and central banks.

Oriente currently has two financial technology companies, Cashalo and Finmas, in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively, that provide real-time credit scoring, digital and online-to-offline (O2O) lending and other tailored financial services.

It was reported in late 2018 that Oriente has 1,200 employees spread across seven offices in Asia. As of April 2019, Oriente’s active user base has reached over 1.5 million and it has an active merchant partner network of over 350 stores.

Other roles

Prentice services as a director and advisor to a number of companies including WooMe, Connect Parts, Fab, Inc. and Betable Limited. In December 2018 he joined OST.com’s advisory board.

Background and education

Prentice is originally from Detroit, Michigan, and holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

Personal life

He lives with his wife and two children in Hong Kong.

References

This article "Geoffrey Prentice" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Geoffrey Prentice. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---