Camilla’s love of Technology was forged in her early career at the mighty Bain Consulting, where upon being posted to San Francisco for 6 months she had the opportunity to work with baby stage, inspirational start-ups like: UBER and Worldpay !!!
Having cut her teeth working on these rather unsuccessful west coast based founders, Camilla became hooked and upon returning to London, she said “adieu” to Bain and “hello” to MMC and the world of VC.
Camilla highlights several topics of interest in the Podcast / Vodcast:
On Trends:
# Ageism – and how early experience with major start-up names helped her investment understanding and ability in later life. (Rant alert – Chris has a bit of a soapbox moment here about his favourite topic)
# How the VC investment landscape has significantly changed in the last 10 years
# The old chestnut of Women in Tech and how much better the world of VC is now for women, compared to 10 years ago, in the UK
# The growing interest amongst women to pursue careers in VC
# How there is an increasing amount of Female only founded businesses receiving term sheets in the UK in 2021 (yippee!)
# Camilla also touches upon hurdles and sacrifices you have to make when setting up your own fund, similar in a way to being a founder !
On EKA:
Camilla focuses in on:
# Her current role investing in profit with purpose, consumer technology and backing people building sustainable business
# How Consumer Fintech is really on fire in the UK and is perhaps as strong as an an investment thesis as in the US now
# How Consumer Health-Tech accelerated 5-10 years during the pandemic and how the last 18 months have really propelled sustainability to become a top investment area
# Founders they meet – should always be careful around dilution, focused on profit margins and building strong user metrics with consumers
# EKA receive around 1,200 decks a year and Camilla explains how they try and be as open and inclusive as possible to Founders that approach them
# Founders should be as personable as possible, even when sending a blind deck
# EKA invest Seed to Series A in UK (regionally, not just London) and have made 2 investments so far in 2021 (at the time of the interview)