Dr. Steve Beck

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Novastar Ventures Ltd.

Dr. Steve Beck is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Novastar Ventures – a venture capital fund manager backing early and growth-stage businesses serving the aspiring mass markets of East Africa. 

Steve began his career in management consulting and spent 18 years advising business leaders of global Fortune 200 companies on strategy, organization and change management. As Managing Director of Gemini Consulting (a division of Cap Gemini), Steve then led the company’s most profitable division with some 500 consultants and $200 million in revenues from nine offices in Europe, Asia and South Africa. Later, Steve joined Monitor Group as a Senior Partner, co-leading the Group’s business in Europe and Africa. 

Steve took leave of consulting in 2002 to help lead a new philanthropic advisory and grant management firm focused on humanitarian relief and development in the Global South called Geneva Global. Under Steve’s leadership, Geneva became a recognized leader in results-focused international philanthropy, managing $80 million of grants to more than a thousand community-based projects. 

Steve began investing alongside likeminded friends in early stage companies serving the aspiring mass market in East Africa in 2009, shortly after leaving Geneva Global. Through SpringHill Equity Partners, the informal private investor circle he founded, Steve and his partners backed a handful of entrepreneurs whose success proved the viability of Novastar’s investment thesis.  

Steve graduated from Stanford University with Distinction in Economics and International Relations, and holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He is married with three daughters, and despite his Californian roots, lived in London from 1984 to 2002.