Our People
Maria Rotilu
Maria joined Octopus Ventures in 2021 to build our First Cheque Fund, which is now our pre-seed fund backing the most dynamic ideas at the pre-seed stage. Maria brings an operator’s background to investing and is a specialist in early stage companies.
She previously worked as a managing director at the Oxford Seed Fund, which invests in the University of Oxford’s affiliated startups in the pre-seed and seed stage. Maria was also on the investment team at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund in the US, investing up to $100,000 in startups across North America, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Her operations experience at multinational tech companies, including Uber and personal finance app Branch.co, have given Maria a keen insight into the challenges of scaling technology startups up to millions of users.
Maria is also a chartered accountant and graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Covenant University. She holds an MBA from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
Maria believes that great founders can look like anyone and come from anywhere. She also believes that founders solving painful problems in large markets should not struggle to raise funding, because building a fast-growing business is hard enough already.
She previously worked as a managing director at the Oxford Seed Fund, which invests in the University of Oxford’s affiliated startups in the pre-seed and seed stage. Maria was also on the investment team at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund in the US, investing up to $100,000 in startups across North America, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Her operations experience at multinational tech companies, including Uber and personal finance app Branch.co, have given Maria a keen insight into the challenges of scaling technology startups up to millions of users.
Maria is also a chartered accountant and graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Covenant University. She holds an MBA from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
Maria believes that great founders can look like anyone and come from anywhere. She also believes that founders solving painful problems in large markets should not struggle to raise funding, because building a fast-growing business is hard enough already.
See Maria's profile on LinkedIn
