My personal “series A”
After nearly 4 amazing years at LocalGlobe, the news is out that I’ve just left to join the newly formed OMERS Ventures Europe, alongside my new colleagues Harry Briggs, Henry Gladwyn and Damien Steel, focusing on Series A investments and above. OMERS (the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) is a sophisticated source of capital, managing nearly CAD$100B as a direct investing organisation to secure the pensions of the municipal employees and retirees of Ontario.
OMERS’s capital is split between capital markets; infrastructure investments, with assets such as London City Airport, Thames Water, Associated British Ports; private equity, with c. $15 billion assets under management and a particular strength in healthcare and business services; and Oxford Properties, which manages $50B of property assets across the world. OMERS is not new to venture capital — as part of private equity, OMERS Ventures’ North American team has invested in some hugely exciting companies, such as Hootsuite, Hopper, Shopify and DuckDuckGo among others. I’m excited to take what I’ve learned at LocalGlobe and combine it with OMERS’ broad network and experience.
For those of you who know me well, you know that I love the early stages of a business, from co-founding Turo.com, then being an early employee at Wonga.com during the scale up years to being part of LocalGlobe’s early journey from Robin and Saul’s angel investment vehicle to one of the top seed funds in the world. VC is an apprenticeship business, and I’m hugely grateful to my partners at LocalGlobe for their time and expertise turning me from an operator to an investor. They’ve caused me to raise my game every day and I’m proud to be a LocalGlobe alumna. I like to think of this next step as my own personal series A as an investor, and I couldn’t have asked for a better “seed”.
As you know, LocalGlobe plays total football : the investment & operations teams are fully integrated, and the full team contributes to investments and company support. That means that each founder will have multiple touch-points across the firm, and I’ve been working closely with the team making sure handover is as smooth as possible. As ever, if you have any questions or concerns, please know you can always reach out to anyone at LocalGlobe.
It’s been a rare pleasure to work with such intellectually-rigorous, high-integrity, down-to-earth and passionate people. Thank you to LocalGlobe’s amazing founders, all my partners, and the wider LocalGlobe & Latitude family. I look forward to working with them in my new capacity, and until then, it’s au revoir not goodbye.
