James Crowley is a former tech founder who now backs organisations tackling climate, health and humanitarian challenges through philanthropy, venture investment and hands-on technical support.

As a fractional CTO, he works with deep-tech founders on the technical, product and organisational challenges involved in scaling their companies. He is a venture partner at Satgana, investing in early-stage climate startups in Europe and Africa. James also serves on the board of Boxtribute, a humanitarian logistics platform that has delivered millions of aid items across eight countries, and has volunteered in Ukraine, Poland and Greece, coordinating aid with NGOs and UN agencies.

Previously, James co-founded FundApps, a regtech company now monitoring more than US$29 trillion in assets. FundApps became the first UK SaaS company to certify as a B Corp in 2018, and both founders signed the Founders Pledge, committing part of any future exit to charity.

“Figuring out how to have an ‘impact’ – and what that even means for me – has been a long-running experiment! I started by giving my time, and only later was fortunate enough to be able to put money to work as well.

I’ve found it’s easy to get sucked into searching for the ‘most impactful’ thing before getting started. I try to counteract that with a startup-y bias towards action and experimentation, whilst learning as best I can from those with different experiences and perspectives.”