Hussein Kanji

Hussein’s career is a tale of serendipity. He founded Hoxton after leaving Accel because no other European venture fund would hire him. Convinced of the potential in backing European entrepreneurs, he set up his own fund.

Initially, Hussein didn’t plan to work in venture capital in Europe. Early in his career, he was advised by a prominent venture investor to gain big company experience, which led him to Microsoft in Seattle. He spent four years there. His roles at Microsoft varied, and his last role was a directive from the top-down to help make its business units more acquisitive. His work led to a sum total of zero M&A. Big companies are still big companies.

Hussein moved to London to do his MBA at London Business School. He started consulting with Accel shortly after orientation, and joined the team in his first year. In a repeat of history, he ended up juggling Accel and school. He did a much better job the second time around.

Prior to venture investing, Hussein spent his productive years learning to build products. During college, he joined the founding team of Studio Verso, and juggled a full course load at Stanford with a commute to South Park. He also contributed to an influential web design book in 1995, which pioneered the use of table tags to create invisible grids years before CSS standards. He subsequently joined Sun Microsystems’ advanced technology group. After founding a networking startup and experiencing the dot-com bust, Hussein joined Radiance, which developed video file techniques ahead of its time. Hussein then worked with an angel investor in Radiance to help commercialize Safe-View, the airport body scanner, acquired by L-3. In all these roles, his takeaway was the remarkable strength of Bay Area talent, and the interconnected nature of Silicon Valley’s tech ecosystem.

Originally dreaming of becoming a journalist, Hussein found a career that blends technology and humanities in venture capital. Outside of work, he is an avid snowboarder and once owned a bakery chain in London. He’s lived in London for over 17 years with his wife and son. His wife, also American, is a dual national, but Hussein stubbornly refuses to swear allegiance to a king, so he remains (just) a proud American.