Joining The Family. Leading Lion London.

A new role with flexibility, autonomy and growth

I’m super excited to have accepted the job as Dean / Head of Faculty of Lion London!

As a fellow of The Family, I’ve seen first-hand the passion and commitment of their team and the huge potential of the companies that make up The Family. When Oussama extended the chance for me to contribute to that success, I couldn’t turn it down.

What is Lion?

Lion is an alternative school created by The Family that equips individuals for life as startup employees. The growth of startups in recent years has triggered a flood of motivated and ambitious people either wanting to leave behind corporate life or making the leap straight out of university — but in both cases they are little prepared for life in a fast-growing startup.

On the other side, Europe is flourishing as a place to build, and there are tons of incredible companies who need great people to jump aboard their rocket ships to be part of the journey.

That’s where Lion comes in.

Lion not only creates programmes designed to better equip people with the know-how and mindset to be part of a high growth company, it also addresses a real network issue. As it stands, founders are a bottleneck for the distribution of knowledge and resources in the startup world, since they own the most fundamental relationships. Lion wants to create a diverse, intimately connected network of high potential talent at the employee level.

Lion has been running in Paris for 2 years under the stewardship of Annabelle Bignon, and it has illustrated the immense potential for the model here in London. I’m honoured to be tasked with bringing it to life.

Annabelle leading a session at the Lion school in Paris

Why is Lion for me?

I’ve been blown away by the opportunities that have come my way since announcing the decision to pause building my company, and there have been plenty of opportunities to satisfy my thirst for growth. But this one caught my attention for a multitude of reasons:

• Aligned with my purpose. My desire to ‘rebuild the global operating system of social capital’ can be translated to the mission of Lion, albeit while not focusing on software. Creating more meaningful connections, more diverse networks, more unexpected but equally delightful collisions, are all achievable with this company as a platform.
• Tangibly impact inclusion at startups in London. Those of you who know me know I care deeply about making the London startup community more inclusive. Lion provides me with an opportunity to not only create a more diverse people pipeline for startups but to also ensure inclusion is more consciously embraced by everyone — from founders to employees, heads of people to investors.
• Aligned with areas for personal growth. I’ve been drawn to the education sector for a long time. It was actually the original motivation behind Ping, to build ‘Linkedin for personal development’. The opportunity to help build a school from scratch, to design the programme, assemble a faculty, and even to teach some classes myself, will help me in better understanding the nuances of both teaching and learning in a way aligned with my current experience.
• Flexibility to work on Ping. I am still a founder and I still have a product to invest time and energy into. This role allows me to do that as and when I need to. Depending on the team and cash flow, time for that might be quite limited. But The Family understand the importance of this product to me and are supportive of my desire to continue building.
• Allows me to take a breather from software. I’ve worked in tech for 10 years now, and have never not had my face buried in software. Helping others grow feels like the perfect use of my time and energy for the immediate future.

So it’s time to get to work! If you’re a founder, investor, head of people who’d like to be involved and get direct access to a new pipeline of talent, you can email me on carl@joinlion.co.uk.

Excited to get this new chapter underway!