Martin Waddell

Martin Waddell – Started his business career in advertising, rising to director level by the age of 26. He then returned to study in Oxford to fulfil a childhood ambition of becoming a barrister and commenced practice as an intellectual property and commercial law specialist. After attending the UK’s oldest established MBA Course at the Bradford Management Centre, he worked in-house in the university sector and developed an extensive career in spinning out technology companies from the UK University sector. He raised the Cascade Venture Capital Seed Fund in 2002 involving a partnership between 5 leading English research Universities, the DTI and significant VC investment funds both in the UK and US.

He has had an interest in truffles and their cultivation since 1998. He spent 7 years living in Southern France, spending time being there with his young family of 4 and developing a deep understanding of truffles, truffe-culture and their science and a range of other specialist plant research and field trial projects. This was a kernel to developing his unique vision of an ethical, ecological, environmental and sustainable way of investing successfully for the everyman. He returned to Edinburgh and its powerful financial services sector in 2013 to drive this vision to fruition, taking offices in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Charlotte Square. A location regarded as one of the largest gatherings of private investment, hedge funds and innovative financial institutions in Europe.