Welcome AlbionVC Platform team
New, by AlbionVC
Posted
We are pleased to announce the launch of the Platform team. Led by Jane Reddin, Talent and Platform Director, joining her are Lauren Apostolidis as Platform Director, Gita Kler as Platform Analyst & Sarah Timms who is supporting the product build.
We are thrilled to welcome the team, who are dedicated to supporting AlbionVC backed companies in their growth and scaling. The vision is to accelerate growth for every year in the life of an AlbionVC founder. With our specialism in B2B software and healthtech, we are taking a programmatic and scalable approach to delivering value and support to companies from Seed to Series C. Within the first year of investing, each founder will experience growth programmes based on:
- Understanding of each individual founder’s potential and supporting leadership development via coaching and mentoring
- Delivering shared learning via a hybrid digital and physical platform: community, events, knowledge share, content and tools
- Connecting to a curated network of mentors, advisors, experts, third party suppliers and partners, NEDs and Chairs
- Providing hiring coaching to help companies form their leadership teams and Board
- Harnessing investor connections and investor expertise to optimise fundraise readiness
Platform team are set to support several different functions across the businesses, with initial focus on Talent, Team & Leadership.
Our research has found that, in the UK, less than 10% of founders who start companies lead them at IPO or exit. By supporting the founder development journey, we’ll increase their longevity to lead a hyper-scaling company through to a successful $bn exit.
Jane has spent the last 18 months building the foundations of the team and its focus. This has culminated in a programme that offers hands on support and proprietary diagnostic tools for strategy alignment, leadership formation, organisational scaling & founder leader development.
Jane Reddin, Platform and Talent Director:
“This is my life’s work. I’ve spent 25 years trying to understand and codify the founder psyche. Using this experience, we have built diagnostic tools to provide accurate developmental feedback and recommendations to give the founder a predictive picture of their development slope. We seek to bring practical candour to their growth trajectory as a founder leader, to help them achieve the extraordinary, to inspire, lead and grow. We know that a founder needs to be able to see themselves objectively; they want to feel understood, and they seek to grow in ways which are right for them, and their company”
The team also has a diversity mandate with the networks they are building, and the support provided to the portfolio across ESG metrics, such as hiring and talent.
Financial capital is not the only lever of growth. Human capital and customer capital are also critical. I’m deeply driven by creating systemic measurability for non-fiscal growth levers, which can be empirically linked to value creation. The IQ and EQ dimensions required to be founder leaders of the future, also need to be mirrored in investors. As People leaders enter the domain of the board room, I’m genuinely excited about creating the space for trusted People advisors and experts to be recognised at many of the top tables of funds.
Jane Reddin
The Team
Lauren takes responsibility for the build, growth and engagement of our platform hub, the curation of the programme, systematising networks and eco-system connections. Previously, Lauren was Platform Lead for a workspace accelerator, Huckletree, where she built and managed the support network of ambassadors and investors to help connect founders across the workspaces to key individuals in the ecosystem. She built programming and connection opportunities for startups across their workspaces and ran an in-house accelerator for underrepresented founders who were looking to raise a seed round. Previous to Huckletree, Lauren led partnerships with Fintech Partners at Thomson Reuters (formerly Refinitiv, now part of LSEG)
It’s amazing to see the positive outcomes by connecting founders with the right networks; it’s a privilege to be able to play a small part in what might help them get them from A to B – whether that’s an investment, a hire, or a piece of advice that might help structure thinking or operations. AlbionVC’s mission is to be a long-term partner to the teams they back from the beginning of their journey, which is so clear when you see the dedication and time supporting founders with follow on financing, challenges that arise or general sound-boarding. I’m so excited to be part of a team that’s dedicated to combining capital with practical, tactical and community-based support for founders; we’re creating an amazing experience for our teams, and building the right ecosystem and tools to support their growth at scale.
Lauren Apostolidis
Gita, who joined us as a Future VC intern in 2021, joins the team full time as a Platform Analyst. Prior to joining she helped launch a Dutch start-up, where she managed data analytics in close conjunction with finance, marketing, and technology. Gita is currently completing her MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation at LSE & brings over 5 years’ experience working in startups, national and multinational companies across healthtech, fintech and e-commerce.
For me, analytics and data are like the windows, mirrors, and dashboard of a car. When you are on a journey to a destination, you need to scan the horizon to see whether you are moving in the right direction, and at the right speed. Our platform work is also a journey; on this journey, analytics will be vital in enabling us to refine our course. So, I am excited and look forward to applying my skill set to help cultivate a state-of-the-art, value-adding platform proposition for our portfolio companies. After the wonderful experience last year, coming back to AlbionVC was an incredibly straightforward decision for me for two reasons. Firstly, there is so much to learn here; it is tough to envision another role with such an exciting and rewarding learning curve. Secondly, the team is full of inspiring role models to learn from!
Gita Kler
Sarah has 12 years of leadership and product management experience. She joins as a product expert to ensure we build products that our founders engage with and get value from. Sarah has previously founded a crowdfunding platform in the US and has been a Product Manager for a range of companies including Bookatable and Selfridges. She is an expert at building and coaching Product Management teams.