Matthew C. Le Merle is co-founder and Managing Partner at Fifth Era and Keiretsu Capital - the most active early stage venture investors backing almost 200 companies a year. Matthew is a manager of Blockchain Coinvestors, the world’s leading blockchain venture fund of funds. He is also Chairman of CAH and Securitize (Europe), Vice Chairman SFOX and an advisor at Warburg Pincus. Matthew is an expert on corporate growth, innovation and business transformations having advised leading companies including Amazon, Cisco, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, PayPal and many others on growth and innovation-related issues. Matthew is also an expert in economic value creation including revenue, cost and capital productivity programs – for example he drove annual savings of over $2 billion at a leading retailer and $1 billion at a leading bank. Matthew’s career has spanned being a global strategy advisor, professional services firm leader, corporate operating executive, private equity and venture capital investor, and board director. His board work has included Chairman or Non-Executive Director roles in 15 companies and active Advisory Board roles in a further 10. Matthew’s board experience includes a broad range of industries including Business Services, Consumer and Retail, Digital Content, eCommerce, and Fintech. Matthew has advised sovereign and regional economic entities on issues of innovation, entrepreneurialism and cluster growth. Clients have covered the globe from China, the EU, and the UK to the US including in his home state of California and the Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Earlier in his career, Matthew spent 21 years as a strategy, operations and corporate finance advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, boards and executive teams with McKinsey & Company, and as a practice leader with A.T. Kearney and Monitor Group where he led both firms’ West Coast practices and at Booz & Company. He was also a corporate executive at Gap Inc. where he was SVP strategy and corporate development and SVP global marketing. Matthew is an adjunct professor at Singularity University, bestselling author (Blockchain Competitive Advantage, Corporate Innovation in the Fifth Era, Build your Fortune in the Fifth Era and Second Chance) and keynote speaker. He received a B.A. (Double First) and Master’s from Christ Church, Oxford, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was born in London, UK, and is now a dual US/UK citizen and lives in San Francisco and London, UK.