I’ve joined the boldstart team!

I have some news — last month, I joined boldstart as an Operating Partner.

Working for an investment company wasn’t where I imagined myself ending up after leaving Snyk. Terms like “term sheet” and “ESOP” were foreign to me, but my day-to-day work is my ideal role, and I’ve discovered that I have a lot of trust and autonomy in what I do.

The best bit is I get the opportunity to work with 30+ different companies rather than just one. While I really value spending a significant time at one place (6+ years at Snyk!), I’d now like to build upon that knowledge with as much experience from other places as possible.

What’s boldstart?

Boldstart was Snyk’s first investor, partnering on day one, and while the company was in its early stages, they provided input and support while not being overbearing or trying to take the company in a direction that was different to what the founders wanted.

While I was at Snyk, I transitioned from Engineering to Product. Ellen, an Operating Partner at boldstart, invited me to the Product Guild where I joined PMs at their other startups. It was a great opportunity to learn from others working at companies at similar stages of growth. In 2018, while Eliot was visiting London, I met him for breakfast. He was interested in how Snyk was handling prioritisation — we now had a much larger cohort of users, customers and prospects requesting features, which meant we had to be smarter about what we said yes to, so I showed him how the sausage was made.

After leaving Snyk, I switched back into consulting and sought out companies who had a similar DNA — particularly dev tool startups at the early stage where they might not already have a product team. This is my sweet spot as I feel like I can make an impact that could vastly change the trajectory of the company, compared to later stage companies.

Guy, Snyk’s co-founder, suggested I talk to Ed and Eliot. They were planning a developer PLG bootcamp in Miami in December, and offered I come and give a talk. Keen to e̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶B̶r̶i̶t̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶c̶l̶i̶m̶a̶t̶e̶ share my thoughts, I agreed, and pretty soon I was delivering a talk on “founder-led product strategy” to a group of their founders.

Within weeks I was juggling gigs with a few of those founders, so I asked Ed and Eliot about working with them directly so I could support any boldstart founder who needed it. They were kind enough to say yes, and suggested I come on board as an Operating Partner (which I had to Google).

Why boldstart?

In 2021, Snyk acquired Manifold, a boldstart company. The team of around 30 was merged into my group, and it went surprisingly well — they were all so easy to work with and brought some great processes and ideas with them, which we chose to adopt rather than bluewash (or purplewash).

A year later, we acquired Topcoat, also a boldstart company. This was an acquisition I worked closely on, and the thing that really appealed to me about the company was how easy they were to work with.

Snyk, Manifold, Topcoat — all boldstart companies, all smart, fun people to work with. That led me to look closer into boldstart. In Miami, after meeting more of them, I asked Ed if he was deliberately choosing companies that have low-ego founders. “Yes”, he confirmed.

Along with founder-compatibility, they also focus on early stage security, SaaS, and developer tooling products, which is my sweet-spot. They fund some fantastic teams building products such as CodeSee, Jeli, Roadie, Replayable, AtomicJar, Liveblocks, Env0, Cycle, Steadybit, Replicated, and Robin. They’re they’re from day one, so are present for all the firsts — the first hires, first customers, first Sales rep.

So, what’s an Operating Partner?

Bluntly put, my role is to help increase the value of boldstart’s portfolio by providing support to the companies. Unlike a venture partner, I don’t pick deals to fund (although I do sometimes act as an advisor).

When I was making my switch back into consulting, the role of “advisor” didn’t sit right for me. Companies at this stage are inundated with advice, and what they struggle with is the time to implement that feedback. So a big part of what I do is rolling my sleeves up and tweaking whatever I can to make the engine run more smoothly.

Most fledgling companies don’t have a dedicated product lead, so I’ll join team meetings, level up processes, implement tools to help capture and process customer feedback, and set good goals that’ll help prioritise what’s on their roadmap. While doing this, I’ll also leave behind documentation and give the team training so the impact isn’t short-lived.

I’m also assisting boldstart more broadly. Founders can learn a lot from each other, so I’ve put together a collaborative workspace for boldstart’s founders with lists of relevant upcoming events, a directory of recommended partners, links to interesting podcasts and articles, and also a team directory so they can to know each other a little better.

I’m also creating a product starter pack, which includes tools and templates that I find myself commonly reaching for when I’m working with different companies. One of these components is the Product Prompt Pack which I wrote about last year. I’ll be making all of these resources available once they’ve been tried, tested and approved by a few of boldstart’s companies.