This year has been an advanced course in humanity for our human-centric team — On 4 March 2020, my team at Backed VC hosted an event. Twenty-ish people streamed into our offices, passed each other beverages and pastries, put down glasses of water and picked them back up again, huddled around our tea point to whisper comments directly into each other’s ears. Recounting that…

Angel Investor, BACKED Community — In his own words, Stuart is a former ‘startup’er’ (founding team at Comufy, sold to King.com, the team behind CandyCrush). He’s now an angel investor. He’s sector and geo agnostic, and has invested in ~80 companies to date. 🧰 | My first ever job… I used to be a paperboy…

Co-founder of THIS™ — Andy is the co-founder of THIS™, the brand of plant-based meat alternative food products with industry-leading realism to meat in taste, appearance and texture. It’s unbelievably good. 🧰 | My first ever job… I used to be one of those tedious clubbing photographers who would take a photo and then…

VP Global Community & Belonging Brandwatch, Founder & CEO Hustle Crew, BACKED Community — 🧰 | My first ever job… Technically my first invoice was for acting in a Radio 4 play whilst at school. It was so fun taking a day trip to BBC Maida Vale! 🧠 | The last thing I geeked out about… bell hooks! I just went down the Youtube…

Creative Director, Designer, BACKED Community — 🧰 | My first ever job… The first ever job I had was as an engineer in a hospital. I used to go around and fix whatever people needed. In my first week I was replacing a computer in an operating theatre when somebody got rushed in for surgery. I…

LabGenius is the first biopharmaceutical company developing next generation protein therapeutics using a machine learning-driven evolution engine (EVA™️). This story originally appeared on their Medium publication. Head there to find out more about their exciting work. Machine learning has the potential to provide huge value to drug discovery, in particular…

How to build a fair & inclusive recruitment strategy from scratch — Allow me to introduce myself: I’m a white woman with a Cambridge degree. (Q: How do you know if someone went to Oxbridge? A: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you). I tell you this not to brag, but to confess. You see, eighteen years ago, when I received my acceptance letter…

How to stress-test your values to create a meaningful, authentic culture — When I joined Backed in 2018, I was a refugee from the corporate world. I’d spent a decade or so working in traditional, grey-suit professional services outfits where hierarchy was king and the word ‘culture’ was for hippies. At interview, nothing showed me I wasn’t in Kansas any more quite…