Wendy Tan White

Wendy Tan White MBE is a British technology entrepreneur and technology investor. She is the CEO of Intrinsic, a robotics software company under Alphabet Inc.

Early life and education Wendy Tan White was born in Salford, Lancashire, England. Her father is a Burmese émigré and her mother a native of Sarawak, Malaysia. The family moved several times to accommodate her father's work in IT, residing in Cumbernauld, Scotland, and in Reading,

Tan White studied at Kendrick Grammar School before earning a bachelor of engineering degree in computer science at Imperial College London in 1992. She was a software project manager at AIT Plc from 1994 to 1997 then worked as head of CRM software development for Egg Banking, the first U.K. Internet bank. The company experienced rapid growth, with 400,000 users signing on in the first six months. The business' lack of scalability, combined with the dot-com crash in 2000, caused it to fail in this incarnation. Tan White and Pettersen trimmed the staff from 60 employees to just the two of them. Moonfruit's co-founder and Tan White’s future husband Joe White resigned to work at McKinsey & Co. Tan White took a break from the company to start a family, and Joe White returned to the business to take her place as CEO and continue to scale the business.

In 2012, Moonfruit was acquired by Yell Group for £37 million. Tan White stayed on as CEO while White was the chief operating officer and chief financial officer,

In 2015, Tan White became a general partner of Entrepreneur First along with her husband Joe White helping to raise EF's Next Stage Fund and mentoring 21 deep tech companies which have been funded including PassFort, OpenCosmos, CloudNC, Automata, CleoAI, Accurx, Xihelm and Brolly.

In October 2017, Tan White joined Simon Calver, Rory Stirling and Harry Briggs as a partner for early stage BGF Ventures part of BGF, £2.5bn patient capital fund.

Tan White, Stirling and Briggs left BGF Ventures to pursue pure tech investment particularly 'Deep Tech'. BGF Ventures is expanding to different sectors and regions with more capital. Tan White remained an adviser to BGF.

In January 2019, Tan White joined Alphabet's moonshot company X as Vice-President.

Affiliations Tan White is on the board of Planet Labs, a board trustee of the Alan Turing Institute, board member of TechNation (TechCityUK), member of the Digital Economic Council, advisory board Imperial College, Dept of Computing and advisory board Dyson, Design School of Engineering (Imperial College and Royal School of Art).

Honours and awards Tan White was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to technology businesses. and Women in IT - Business Role Model of the Year 2017. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Salford University in July 2018.

In 2015 and 2017, Tan White was named one of the Fifty Most Inspiring Women in European Tech by the Inspiring Fifty organisation. In July 2015, Tan White and Joe White were ranked 5th on Business Insider Indias list of the "13 Coolest Power Couples in London". In 2017, they were voted into the Europas, Hall of Fame.

In 2013, Computer Weekly named Tan White a "Rising Star" as part of their "Most Influential Women in UK IT" campaign.

In 2011, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the CWT Everywoman in Technology Awards.

Other activities Tan White is an advocate for women entering the technology and investment sectors. In 2000, Moonfruit accommodated employees who are parents with scheduling such as "a later start to accommodate the school run, or flexi-home working."

Personal life She married Moonfruit co-founder, Joe White, in 2002. He was the first HM Tech Envoy to the US while also being Consul General of San Francisco. They have two kids — one son and one daughter. Tan White and her family live in Silicon Valley.

Selected articles