Katie Marrache began her career working for entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den investor, James Caan. After landing an internship with him straight out of university, she was soon charged with managing Cann’s portfolio of consumer investments at his investment firm Hamilton Bradshaw. A brief detour into television journalism at the BBC followed, after which she joined London-based Innocent drinks as a category manager, and began looking after the investment portfolio of the Innocent founders. She joined JamJar Investments, their official VC fund investing in online and offline consumer brands, when it was launched — making partner in 2017.
Speaking to Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal, Katie recalls her journey into venture and the biggest lessons learnt early on working with James. She dives further into JamJar’s thesis and the five most important things to bear in mind when consumer facing brands: (1) be authentic, (2) be creative (3) recruit effectively, as your early team are your biggest brand advocates, (4) track performance metrics, and (5) spend time on product. ‘The product is the brand,’ she says. ‘You can spend a long time crafting how it looks and sounds rather than what it is’.
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