If you’ve been around the Seedcamp office lately you’ll have noticed more than a few new faces joining us. Over the past few months we’ve tripled our team in a commitment to provide the best expertise and support to our growing portfolio. This is part of our lifelong Seedcamp Platform as the go to First Round Fund for ambitious Founders.
As one of Europe’s most active investors of the year* investing in pre-seed and seed startups we constantly see Founders face challenges primarily in seeking investment, reaching product-market fit, scaling their businesses and recruiting the right talent. Though we have an extensive network of experts we wanted to deliver senior level guidance in all these areas, on-tap, via the Seedcamp Expert-in-Residence (EIR) programme.
Seedcamp has welcomed Keith Wallington (Growth), Scott Sage (B2B), and Taylor Wescoatt (Product) to the family. Keith brings exceptional growth expertise from his operations experience at Mimecast which he helped take from 0 to Unicorn. Scott, previously at VC firm Draper Esprit, is one of the most recognised investors in Europe. He greatly adds to the Seedcamp guidance on fundraising and growing B2B SaaS/Enterprise companies. Taylor is well known as a Product Guru and focuses on optimising product experience with his 20 years of experience at places like Time Out, Ebay, and Seatwave. The EIR’s are here to support everyone within the Seedcamp family.
Alongside our new EIR’s we have also brought on two new full-time members to the team. We now have an in-house Head of Talent, Jamahl McMurran, who is here to help our companies find the very best talent as they continue to scale. Cathy White has also joined the team as Communications and Marketing Manager, coming from a PR agency background and specialising in working with startups, she will act as an advisor to our portfolio.
Reshma Sohoni, Partner and Co-Founder, commented: “One of the biggest barriers startups can come up against is having immediate access to an expert mentor. We’re incredibly fortunate to have a network of thousands of industry specialists, but realised we needed to provide our companies with an on-tap resource, in-house, that is specifically there to help support them. Keith, Taylor and Scott, as our Experts-in-Residence, have already made a great impact on our portfolio, and with Jamahl and Cathy now actively helping to support them, we’re providing our companies with the senior advice they need to scale.”
Keith Wallington has led strategy and execution in tech businesses since the 1990’s. Most recently at Mimecast as COO amongst other roles spanning most of the business from Marketing to Customer Experience to Technical Operations as he championed scalable, efficient growth. Keith is focussed on supporting Seedcamp teams with scaling through focussing on the customer journey.
Scott Sage brings with him over ten years of experience in research, marketing and angel and VC investing. He was most recently a partner at Draper Esprit where he invested and worked with enterprise software and consumer companies including Bitbar, Conversocial, Datahug, Lyst, SportPursuit and Trustpilot.
Taylor Wescoatt has focused on Product for 20 years across a range of startups (CitySearch and Seatwave) and bigger organisations (eBay, AOL, and TimeOut). He brings his passion for users to the Seedcamp portfolio, helping Founders critically understand how to build their business around the customer experience from day one.
Jamahl McMurran works with our Founders to refine their hiring piece and attract the best talent. Jamahl brings five years of experience from working with London’s leading digital recruitment agency, ECOM, where clients included VICE, Crowd2Fund, Ticketmaster, Blackwells and Thomson Reuters, to help startups on hiring, business and product development.
Cathy White has specialised in PR for early-stage startups and organisations that support them since starting with Sparkpr over four years ago. While at Albion Drive, Cathy was recognised as a Rising Star of the industry by PR Week and worked with clients that included Transferwise, Klarna, Nominet Trust, Draper Esprit and Index Ventures. A firm believer in not using agencies till you need them, Cathy will advise our portfolio on how to build their own marketing strategies and connect them to the right people when ready.
*Tech.Eu Report, Most Active Investors H1 2015