Mark Woodhams

Mark Woodhams (born March 1966, British) spent the bulk of his career in infrastructure investment and fund management. He was a founding managing partner of InfraRed Capital Partners, which he joined in the mid-1990s and where he led a number of the firm's largest and most complex global infrastructure investments. He co-headed InfraRed's development-infrastructure business (roughly 2010–2013) and spent about three years based in Hong Kong overseeing the group's Asia-Pacific infrastructure investing. His InfraRed-era email (@ircp.com) remains associated with him. Before infrastructure investing, he worked in oil and gas at Total S.A. on North Sea developments and in strategy consulting. He holds an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Over his career Mark has served on numerous project-company boards and chaired investment committees, and has held non-executive roles connected to major UK infrastructure — including Tidal Lagoon Power and High Speed 1 (the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Companies House records list 55 directorship appointments, the large majority now resigned, including a cluster of InfraRed-related, Betjeman Holdings, Helix, and High Speed Rail Finance entities (mostly resigned in 2021).

Following his retirement from full-time engagement with InfraRed in 2017, Mark joined Origin Capital as a Partner. Origin invests in early-stage unquoted businesses and smaller quoted companies with a technology focus, and also provides consultancy to portfolio and non-portfolio companies. Alongside this, Mark runs a private portfolio of unquoted technology investments — the angel/seed activity reflected in this profile. His current active directorships include Origin Capital Nominees Ltd (from January 2018) and Cyclops Global Ltd (from May 2019).

• Invests at seed / early stage in unquoted, technology-focused companies, typically writing into rounds of roughly £50k–£2m (Origin Capital) and running a personal portfolio of unquoted tech investments.
• Origin Capital's stated preference: "Most of our portfolio companies have a technology focus, for example high-value manufacturing, life sciences, software and IT infrastructure, but we also have interests and experience in financial services, consumer products and media."
• Values companies pre-money in the £200k–£10m range, and typically co-invests within a network of co-investors rather than leading solo.
• Brings an operator/board perspective: decades of chairing investment committees and sitting on company boards, plus deep infrastructure and fund-management experience — likely to weigh governance, capital structure, and execution risk heavily.
• Not a pure software/consumer angel — a strong tilt toward "hard" technology (advanced manufacturing, materials, life sciences, IT infrastructure) where technical differentiation is defensible.