In the Spotlight: True’s Early Stage Investment Principal, Oksana Stowe
Through True’s unique business model, we see everything across the retail and consumer sector from startup through to Amazon. Oksana heads up the team that looks at and invests in the retail and consumer technologies and businesses at the start of their journey.
Oksana joined True in 2017 to run the early stage investment team. Back then, the team had £3m at their disposal and was operating as an add-on to the accelerator programme run by True. However, Oksana has expanded the remit of the early stage investment team and the fund now operates quite differently to how it did in 2017.
From the outset, Oksana made her mark by elevating the growth fund’s profile within and beyond True. For starters, she has lost no time in orchestrating the final investments from the first fund — and has recently just seen through the fund’s first exit with Just Eat acquiring City Pantry. Recognising the scope for further opportunity with seed investments, Oksana set her sights on raising a more institutionalised £10m seed fund within a year.
Not one to do things by half measures, alongside campaigning to raise True’s second early stage fund, Oksana also started a family, with the birth of a baby boy!
Aside from exceeding the target of the second growth fund (the new fund is over three times the size of the first fund and two times the target for the second fund) and starting a family, Oksana has led investments in Unmind, Localistico and Rotaready — from the first fund — and Klydo, Jump.Work, ThirdEye and FunnelAI from the second fund.
Demonstrating Oksana’s acute eye for investments, all three of those first investments have gone on to see success: Unmind raised a £3m Series A round led by Felix Capital; Localistico raised a pre-Series A with support from Frontline Ventures; and Rotaready won ‘Business Enabler of the Year’ at the National Business Awards in 2018.
For anyone that meets Oksana it is clear she is not only excited by technology in its various manifestations but also by making investments. She has the rare knack of seeing through the noise and the jargon, whilst focusing on the precise pain points that a startup is trying to alleviate. This is hardly surprising given the breadth of her expertise and the gloss of her CV, which includes time at institutions including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Moelis, Morgan Stanley and Oakley Capital. During her 10 year career in finance Oksana has been involved in enviable deals including the Just Eat IPO and KKR investment into The Hut Group.
Perhaps the reason Oksana continues to push herself into dynamic domains such as VC, is her genuine interest in people. Blending her wealth of experiences with outstanding character judgement, she quickly builds meaningful personal connections with founders and investors alike. It is cheesy, but for Oksana investing is personal.
It could be Oksana’s cosmopolitan background that drives such a blend of professional and personal qualities. Born in Ukraine, she later moved to the US and graduated from Boston’s Northeastern University. She’s been based in the UK on a permanent basis since 2007 and lives in London — a city she loves — with her young family. Entrepreneurial spirit is vibrant in Oksana’s household. Her husband is also a founder and therefore has a mirror perspective to what Oksana encounters day-to-day in her investment role. But what is clear is that Oksana’s insight and acute awareness of what it takes to succeed in building your own business is absolutely invaluable to how we at True approach investments.
