Jamie Mitchell received first class honors in obtaining his Masters in Philosophy, politics, and economics from Brasenose College, Oxford University in July 1994. After a brief summer, Jamie went to work for McKinsey & Co in London as a business analyst, until July of 1996, when he decided to attend Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar to obtain his Masters in Business Administration (MBA). He graduated in June 1999.
Immediately after receiving his MBA, Jamie founded Vesta Capital Advisors, the group is a venture capital firm that manages about $20 million in assets. He grew his venture capital company and at the same time started another company, E-start. E-start was similar to an American company (garage.com); their primary purpose was to connect entrepreneurs with venture capitalists. An entrepreneur could apply on the e-start website with their business idea to find a venture capital firm to invest.
During his venture capital days, he also served as a consultant at HM Treasury and was a member of the Governing Body at Brunel University.
In 2002, Jamie abandoned the E-start Company, and concentrated his efforts as managing director of Vesta, until 2005, at which time Jamie sold his stake in Vesta Capital to Frontiers Capital. However, he remains on the investment committee. That same year he became the interim CEO of Envisional LTD, a consumer goods industry.
He also served as the President of English Tech Tour, a non-profit entity in the venture capital and private equity industry for about 5 months. The English Tech Tour promoted and sponsored a 2 ½ day event wherein 75 delegates from international venture capital firms and tech companies toured England, meeting with local companies and putting together 24 deals.
At the conclusion of the English Tech Tour, Jamie became managing director of Innocent Drinks, touted as one of the fastest growing companies n the UK. The company manufacturers and sells all natural fruit smoothie drinks throughout the UK from its headquarters at Fruit Towers in Shepherds Bush.
According to the Innocent Drinks website, the company started in the summer of 1998. The website tells the founders story, “when we had developed our first smoothie recipes but were still nervous about giving up our proper jobs, we bought £500 worth of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a little music festival in London. We put up a big sign saying ‘Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?’ and put out a bin saying ‘YES’ and a bin saying ‘NO’ and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the ‘YES’ bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned.”
Currently, in addition to his duties at Innocent Drinks he is a teaching fellow at the London Business School, where he is a part-time lecturer in the New Venture Development and Entrepreneurial Management courses at the school. He also is on the investment committee for the Vesta Capital portfolio, and the on board of EGS LTD.