Why I joined Playfair Capital & what my internship has been like so far
In January this year, I joined Playfair Capital as an Off-cycle Analyst on the investment team.
Why start with VC?
In the long term, I would like to be involved in enabling the most exciting inventions or research to reach millions of people and ultimately change how we see the world. It could be in science — I am particularly interested in treatments targeting the processes of ageing — or more broadly. It could be as an investor, a founder or as part of a large (public or private) organisation.
At a very high level, the fundamental aim in venture capital (VC) is to work alongside brilliant founders to help them execute their vision and build their businesses. As the company grows and its needs change, so too does an investor’s role, so funds often tend to specialise in a particular stage of the journey.
I thought early-stage investing was particularly interesting for three main reasons:
- It would give me the opportunity to encounter and work with some of the brightest and most driven founders very closely;
- It would provide the wide exposure to sectors, business models and approaches that I wanted but in an environment where I could also learn to evaluate them;
- At the pre-seed and seed stage there are often no revenues, no real metrics and sometimes even no product, so the human element and team are hugely important. Understanding the process behind that decision-making process was particularly interesting to me.
In addition, last year I applied to do the deferred MBA ‘2+2 Program’ at Harvard Business School, for which I need to work for 2–4 years before matriculating. My aims going into this ‘pre-MBA’ working period mostly revolve around building an understanding of what drives a successful venture. Considering how broad that is, gaining as varied an experience as possible, and being part of a team from which I would learn as much as possible were key.
Knowing I will have the opportunity to do an MBA in a few years, however, also pushed me to prioritise opportunities that I am genuinely interested in rather than those I felt I should be seeking. It is allowing me to test whether I really want to pursue this career in the long term by actually trying it out.
As obvious as that sounds, the vast majority of career-related activities I experienced focussed on more traditional city-related jobs; after 4 years of uni, it became quite easy to automatically dismiss any alternative as ‘too risky’.
What does a typical week look like?
“There is no typical week at Playfair”, but the work I do to support the team broadly falls into three streams: dealflow, internal Playfair work and portfolio work. Taking ‘typical’ to mean pre-Covid, the split between the three was around 60%–30%–10%, respectively.
Dealflow
- Demo Days & Pitch Events: a substantial part of sourcing deals and opportunity to get to know founders (& other VCs) better; ~3x weekly
- Screening: filtering through (100+ weekly) submissions to our open ‘pitch-us’ form with other team members; taking 1st pitch calls
- Due Diligence: conducting competitive landscape and market sizing analyses; synthesis of my research into the relevant sections of investment memos
Internal Playfair Work
- Social Media: essentially ensuring Playfair’s mission is clear to someone looking from the outside —mostly through LinkedIn, Twitter & Medium
- Events: organising & running initiatives such as Female Founder Office Hours; planning events such as Founders’ Dinners & our Summer Party (sadly but obviously postponed)
- Market Research: deep-dives into potentially interesting sectors, for team discussions — so far Femtech, Quantum Tech & the Silver Economy
Portfolio Work
- This varies greatly, but includes introductions to clients or partners, supporting with strategy work and creating outward-facing content
What does a typical week look like now?
The effect of lockdown has been different to what I envisaged. We went fully remote in mid-March, at which point I flew back to Athens, where I’ve been working from since.
Playfair’s single LP structure is unlike most funds — there are no multiple stakeholders to account for, we do not have to spend time fundraising and have substantial flexibility on how fast we can progress a deal.
In this context, due to our structure, we were lucky enough to be able to keep our strategy regarding new deals unchanged. However, I assumed dealflow would slow down anyway, since being able to gauge people and their dynamics in person is so fundamental to our decision-making process.
A few months in, the effect has mostly been to balance out time spent between dealflow, internal and portfolio work. Deals have changed in their nature rather than their number — we have closed four deals since lockdown, split equally between pre-seed and seed rounds. Of these, we led two and co-invested in two, the latter both being (our first!) fully remote deals.
Some highlights (so far)
Female Founder Office Hours
One of my favourite workstreams has been supporting our associate Henrik in organising Female Founder Office Hours, aiming to decrease the need for warm intros and work on improving funding through collaboration. Not being able to host the 3rd edition as planned at our office, we decided to collaborate with Tech Nation to provide access to founders beyond just London.
On June 4th, we brought together 100 founders from across the UK and 30 of London’s leading VCs for one-on-one meetings. Due to the overwhelming response in applications, we then decided to host a 2nd event on June 24th.
Overall, the initiative saw ~200 founders and 60+ VCs come together for ~800 one-on-ones.
As well as organising logistics and running the Zoom sessions with Henrik on the day, I have worked on curating various resources for founders to help them prepare for the event and their wider fundraising journey — e.g., our ‘Meet the Investors’ series and Notion page.
Beyond some of the incredible feedback we have received from founders so far, I am most excited by the expansion of the initiative to the US (led by Anthemis) and South East Asia (led by Cocoon Capital).
Heka
One of our more recent Fund II investments was GoSweat, focussing on employee benefits centred around both mental and physical wellbeing. Pre-Covid, my main interaction with the team had actually been as a user of the platform, via the Playfair Wellness Programme.
With lockdown coming into effect, a large proportion of GoSweat’s offering was eliminated overnight. As part of our role in helping the team react to this shock, I was able to participate in strategy sessions, spent time discussing with co-founders Steph and Alex and mapped out new verticals for provider partnerships.
Last week, the fully re-branded Heka launched with the world’s biggest collection of wellbeing experiences for office-based, hybrid and fully-remote teams.
They achieved this having both suffered from Covid, experienced one minor surgery, and also found some time to get engaged. Having seen them lead through this time, I am so excited to see them continue shaping the transformation in workplace norms as we recover from this crisis.
Deep Dives
Coming into my internship, I was particularly interested in the ‘Silver Economy’ and Femtech markets. In parallel to our other workstreams, I have had the chance to lead deep dives around these and other segments, share my findings with the team, and discuss how these might fit into the Playfair thesis.
Winning the Europas (!)
Playfair — from its inception — has been defined by its ‘angel DNA’, and seeking and orchestrating collaboration. I only recently realised that in reality, levels of ‘founder-friendliness’ vary massively even at the very early stage, often with profound consequences for founders along the way and on exit.
Covid is of course an extreme example and many funds will have had pressure from their own LPs, but it has made me even more grateful to be part of a team that stands by its long-term vision and ethos of being founder-focussed.
Last week, our team won the award for ‘Hottest Seed Stage Fund’ at the Europas Awards. To me, this was testament to that ethos, which I am very grateful to have experienced first-hand and had the opportunity to contribute to.
N.B. Further resources for those interested in VC
- Playfair Capital’s Podcasts Page and Medium Blog
- TeenVC
- Diversity VC’s Future VC Programme
- Included VC Fellowship
- Merit Platform
