Building relationships
Coming from a software background, I thrive on diving deep into the intricacies of customer problems and how novel products and business models can provide a step change on from what’s already out there. Truly nailing this makes everything else about building a successful business so much easier. Having been fortunate to work with many incredible Founders, I’ll be forever inspired by their passion, vision, drive and resilience – it’s what energises me every day.
Background
Growing up I always liked computers but based on my (flawed) logic at the time of thinking Computer Science was too specific, I studied Information Management with Business at Loughborough University. As part of this I spent a year with E.on Energy predominantly writing SQL whilst learning what having a real job was like.
After graduating I spent a couple of years in business change consulting at Capgemini, before spending the rest of the first phase of my career in and around data engineering. Initially this was building ETL data pipelines and data warehouses at software start-up Kalido, and latterly in a consulting capacity leading the technical delivery of various data pipeline/data warehouse builds at companies like Dixons Carphone and Sky.
Having tracked many of the venture backed companies that exploded through the late 2010s, in 2018 I switched track across to venture capital and joined the Northern VCT funds, initially investing with a focus on B2B software & AI. Since joining the fund, I have been fortunate to work with some exceptional teams across 14 companies including Semble, Naitive, Moonshot, Synthesized, Optellum, Voxpopme, Enate and Risk Ledger.
I now head up the later stage fund at Mercia Ventures, continuing to primarily focus on investments in software & AI across both B2B and healthcare settings at the series A stage.
I have been fortunate to work with some exceptional teams across 14 companies