Our goal at Beacon is simple: we want to become the global leader in logistics and supply chain finance by making trade simpler, more transparent and more reliable for businesses.

What inspired you to become a VC and was there a particular ‘lightbulb’ moment?
Interestingly I didn’t even know what a VC was when I finished college. I always just wanted to start my own company. I originally joined investment banking at Lehman Brothers, I figured working there I could learn a lot, meet some great contacts and hopefully build enough saving to start my own company. That lasted only a few months before they went bankrupt. My boss at the time started his own company and asked me to join him as one of the first employees. We went from 4 people in a Starbucks to over 70 people in London, New York and Paris in 18 months. It was an amazing learning experience being in a company that grew so fast. It was here that I first learnt about VCs as the company met with several of them. I left after 2 years to start my own e-commerce company called Osmoda and also help run an entrepreneur network called Sandbox. My experience with VCs in Europe and what I kept hearing from the Sandbox members led me to be very critical of Venture Capital scene in Europe. I felt they didn’t actually take proper risks, they didn’t support their entrepreneurs properly, they didn’t have good enough networks into the US and most of the time focused on minimising downside vs optimising for the upside. Shay and Will (the other two Founders of Frontline) came to the same conclusions as I but from inside separate funds. Those reasons led us to start Frontline, a fund that would be much more focused on investing early, supporting entrepreneurs, and guiding the companies on international expansion. So while no one single lightbulb moment, it was a series of failings we saw in the European Ecosystem that led us to start Frontline back in 2012.

Back in 2009 I became so frustrated by the distractions commonly found at live events like people on their phones, talking over performances, jam-packed venues and subpar stereo systems that I set out to create an alternative. Out of that sprung Sofar Sounds, intimate gigs in unusual spaces to engaged audiences. Not much has changed about our mission since then, but I can’t say the same for the world around us.

What inspired you to become a VC and was there a particular ‘lightbulb’ moment?

Four years after graduating university, I had the good fortune to be part of an entrepreneurial venture called Cambridge Technology Partners.

1. What inspired you to become a VC and was there a particular ‘lightbulb’ moment?
I didn’t go to Harvard, I’m not technical and I have a short attention span. Oh, and I’m from Texas. When I finished school, I wanted to figure out who I was and have life experiences. So I moved to London and had the opportunity to work at a big co for a year.. Thereafter, I was a nanny (I suppose one would say manny), worked in an antique shop, worked in A&R and haphazardly became a researcher and learned how to use MATLAB (I thought I had always hated math until I had a good teacher). This led me to a commercial role at a startup and the rest is history.

Since the on-set of the coronavirus pandemic, many people have lost their jobs following the closure of unessential businesses.  As a result, more and more people are looking to find another stream of income.  Starting an online business has become increasingly attractive during these unprecedented times.  Some online e-commerce opportunities require you to pay a monthly fee, registration, or supply costs.  However, putting in hours of labor and hundreds of dollars into a new business without the certainty of success is a risk that not everyone is willing to take.

Insurtech has successfully broken away from its older sibling, fintech, into its own growing, disruptive category. And quite rightly so, as there are some really great innovations happening in the space. Insurtech unicorns like Lemonade and Hippo have garnered well-deserved column inches for their innovations in consumer insurance, but we’re yet to see the same from insurtechs for business insurance. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit every corner of the globe in a truly seismic way. As an investor, entrepreneur and parent, I’m with all of you in continuing to struggle to adapt to the day-to-day uncertainty.

“We should boycott the restaurant” said my eight year-old Goddaughter. We were sitting in a burger joint, musing over the container of plastic straws on our table. Instead of thinking about the food, she was thinking about the environment.

What should be my priorities as a CEO Founder? – Being a CEO at a tech startup is a very tough job. You work on average about 300 days a year with 14 hours a day. That is 4’200 hours a year and the worst is for most CEOs that is not enough. You are constantly under time pressure and need to make sure you allocate enough time and resources to the things that matter most:

• Shape winning strategy and vision to excite talent and investors
• Hire top talent and build a great culture to outperform execution
• Fundraise to have more cash than competition to leapfrog