HTC has appointed Dave Haynes as the new director of its Vive X business unit in Europe, the Taiwanese consumer electronics company announced. Mr. Haynes previously worked at TheWaveVR, where he was responsible for the business development and partnership aspects beginning in July last year prior to joining Vive X. Previously, he was a member of the investment team at Seedcamp, a London-based early-stage seed fund which invests a capital of between €75,000 to €200,000 in pre-seed and seed stage companies including Transferwise, TheWaveVR, Property Partner, SplashVR, and GrabCAD.
Mr. Haynes also held various roles earlier in his career, including as head of growth at London-based startup studio, Makeshift, where he was responsible for customer development, growth, sales and revenue, business development and external partnerships. Before that, he served as vice president of business development at SoundCloud from August 2008 until February 2014. Mr. Haynes also worked for Broad Street Digital as a senior licensing manager, German digital music and content distributor finetunes as head of the U.K. business, and ClickGroove as the founder. He also co-founded Inspirit Music and Music Hack Day. Haynes’ appointment at Vive X comes amid HTC’s effort to grow its global accelerator program for virtual reality and augmented reality across Europe. The program aims to provide startups with access to various resources, planning methods, professional expertise and networking opportunities across the industry. Most recently, HTC announced that it plans to open a Vive X branch in London, which will be the sixth location for Vive X in addition to the already open locations based in Tel Aviv, Beijing, San Francisco, Shenzhen, and Taipei. Across these six sites, various companies are participating as firms who are eligible to receive the investment. HTC also seeks to expand the accelerator program to Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Helsinki, where it hopes to find candidates for the program.
While HTC is yet to announce any partners for the London location yet, the company is gearing up for a new round of partner submission. HTC is also inviting any interested company to apply for a slot in the program for the next round. In November last year, 26 more startup companies from across the world joined HTC’s Vive X accelerator program.