Vantus

Our mission is to help founders build and scale highly successful shows.

We believe the power of face-to-face connection has never been clearer.

Our human centred, AI forward approach focuses on using technologies to bring humans together. We believe meetings drive relationship depth, rapid advance through collaboration, trust and verification, accelerate distinguishing signal from noise and execution on what matters.

Our aim is to support founders so that they can apply a laser focus to the drivers of success. Our mentorship framework draws on proven experience and emerging trends brought to mentorship, venue relationship management, CRM simplification, and rapid advances in AI tools and processes.

Founded on experience

Founded by James Reader and Neil Brown, 45+ years of combined experience across exhibitions, corporate development and investment. We bring together an entrepreneurial mindset honed through execution and an investor’s discipline shaped by decades of identifying structural change in sectors we are passionate about.

James Reader

Co-Founder & Partner

Over two decades, James has built, scaled, and exited high-growth B2B event platforms at the frontier of industrial and technology change. As Founder and Chairman of Smarter Shows, he created a portfolio of market-leading exhibitions across advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and emerging energy, including The Battery Show, founded ahead ahead of the curve on electrification and scaled into the world’s foremost event for the energy storage industry, and Space Tech Expo, built from the ground up to become the largest dedicated space technology exhibition on both sides of the Atlantic. He led the strategic sale of The Battery Show in 2016, followed by the subsequent sale of the wider Smarter Shows business.

Before founding Smarter Shows, James held global P&L responsibility at Reed Exhibitions, then the world’s largest events organiser, where he oversaw major international aerospace portfolios and delivered sustained commercial growth across multiple markets.

More recently, he has worked at board level with emerging exhibition businesses, supporting strategic expansion into new verticals, accelerating growth, and contributing to successful exits.

Vantus is the natural next step. James brings pattern recognition earned across the full lifecycle of event businesses, from zero to market leadership, through growth capital and exit, to a firm that backs ambitious founders and builds platforms of long-term strategic significance within the exhibitions economy.

Neil Brown

Co-Founder & Partner

Neil Brown is an investor with more than twenty years of experience identifying the structural themes shaping future profits and investing in the companies that can capitalise on them.

An early pioneer in sustainable investment, and active within the capital markets, Neil has a long history of engaging with institutional investors, business leaders, industry bodies, financial media and academia. He has chaired and advised key industry initiatives, guest hosted CNBC Squawk Box and guest lectured at leading business schools.

He recently completed AI programmes at Oxford Saïd Business School, London Business School and the Leadership in the Age of Generative AI programme at Stanford and is a Senior Adviser to Impactive.

For Neil, Vantus is where two decades of identifying structural themes meets a sector he believes is at an inflection point.

Our Approach

Is focused on businesses with strong client bases and fundamental growth potential where we can work with founders and management to accelerate value creation.

Research & Advisory

Research and advice on opportunity, strategy, operational improvement and growth.

Incubation & Scale

Supporting founders in taking concepts, early stage and established shows to critical mass.

Investment

Bringing an institutional investor mindset to exhibitions and events businesses with strong potential.

Focus areas and opportunities

We want to back entrepreneurs launching B2B meetings in complex, fast-forming markets where timing, credibility, and execution matter. Our ambition is to de-risk the build, bringing proven event infrastructure, commercial discipline, and network access so founders can focus on defining the market.

Accelerated Compute, Infrastructure & Inference

We see disruption and opportunity across the AI stack. From whiteboarding the future to solving procurement challenges we see opportunities for industry events. New architectures, a doubling of electricity demand and the race to efficient inference will generate professional communities that need to convene, trade, and learn from each other.

Chips Energy Edge

Physical AI & Autonomy

AI is leaving the cloud and entering the physical world. We believe robotics, autonomous systems, and human-machine collaboration will reshape manufacturing, logistics. These are fast-moving sectors with complex supply chains and the networks that will define them are still forming.

From Chatbot to Robot AI Moves

Longevity

With advances in drug discovery, precision oncology, genomics, and digital health platforms, healthcare is undergoing its largest structural transformation in decades. We believe the drivers toward a longer and healthier life are powerful and that these converging trends will generate demand for specialist knowledge exchange.

QALY Economy Precision Digital

Digital Infrastructure & Productivity

As enterprise AI moves rapidly from pilots to production, workflows will be disrupted from manufacturing plants to investment banks. Networked automation, accelerated compute and agentic systems can compress cycle times across legal, finance, HR, and professional services creating urgent demand for practical, implementation-focused knowledge exchange.

AI-Augmented Productivity Agent-Based Systems

Energy & Sustainability

Unlocking the power of AI requires abundant, clean and efficient energy. Achieving this in the middle of a surge in demand may be one of the defining engineering challenges of the decade. We see an opportunity in helping to grow the network and communities with an urgency that matches the task ahead.

Grid Circular Economy Nature & Biodiversity

Inclusive Design

We take a human centric approach to growth and success. Anyone excluded is a potential innovation, advance or deal missed. Opportunities in getting everyone in the room include adaptive workplace technology, sensory-aware built environments, and the growing demand for experiences and workplaces designed for the full spectrum of human cognition.

Adaptive Tech Sensory Design Workplace

Future Motion

High-performance engineering on and beyond the track. The drive to win in motorsport drives innovations, technologies and process redesigns way beyond it. We see opportunities in bringing together the engineering communities driving this transition, where deals get done.

Faster, Lighter, Stronger, Safer Power Electronics Lightweight Composites