Julian Persaud

Julian Persaud is a British commercial and general-management executive who has spent his career building and scaling hyper-growth internet businesses across Asia-Pacific and Europe. He studied at Bournemouth University, earning a BA in Communication (1991–1994). His early digital-media career included roles at the UK online auction house QXL and at Yahoo Search Marketing / Overture, where he was an early driver of the search-advertising business into the Asia-Pacific region.

Persaud joined Google around 2005 and spent roughly a decade there. He ran the online sales/business function for Google Australia before relocating to Singapore, where he became Managing Director for Southeast Asia in 2009, expanding Google's advertising and operations across the ASEAN markets. He was widely profiled in the regional press (e.g., Campaign Asia's "Innovation Insiders") as the public face of Google in Southeast Asia.

In 2015 he left Google to join Airbnb as Regional Managing Director for Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore, leading strategy and supply operations across the region during Airbnb's rapid Asian expansion. He subsequently relocated to the UK and became Global Head of Operations for Airbnb Experiences, the company's then-new business unit. After Airbnb he served as Chief Commercial Officer at Omio (the European travel-booking platform), then joined Stockholm-based Epidemic Sound as Chief Commercial Officer in January 2023, and has since moved to UK property portal Zoopla as its Chief Commercial Officer.

Persaud's throughline is commercial leadership at consumer-internet marketplaces and platforms — search/ads (Google, Yahoo), travel/hospitality (Airbnb, Omio), creator-economy media (Epidemic Sound), and property (Zoopla) — with deep operating experience scaling teams in both Southeast Asia and Europe. He is a frequent conference speaker (Sifted Summit, Advertising Week Europe, Social Media Week Europe).

*(These points are inferred from his documented career; no direct quote of a stated investment thesis was located in public sources.)*

• Classified in the source record as an angel investor writing seed-stage checks; a specific, publicly documented personal thesis statement was not found.
• Based on his operating career, his natural areas of credibility for founders are consumer internet, online marketplaces, travel/mobility, digital advertising, and the media/creator economy — sectors where he has built and run the commercial engine at scale.
• His decade scaling Google and Airbnb across Southeast Asia makes him especially relevant for founders needing help with regional expansion, go-to-market, and monetization in APAC, as well as European consumer platforms.
• Likely value-add is commercial/GTM operating help (sales, partnerships, marketplace supply, ad monetization) rather than deep-tech or capital-intensive theses.