James Uffindell: Securing venture funding and the importance of your team

We’ve just been lucky enough to secure some venture capital to grow our organisation. A consortium of five angel investors have backed us and Zach Miles, the former CEO of Vedior (previously the world’s biggest recruitment business before it was acquired), and Michael Jackson, the former Chairman of Sage (the FTSE 100 technology company), have joined our board. This whole process got me thinking about building the very best team and how central having that team in place is to helping you succeed. Key to the investors’ decision to back the business was the team we have built over the past 18 months – from data experts to online specialists, accountants to web developers, recruitment experts to marketers, the coalition of skills we’ve assembled is fantastic and will continue to strengthen. Looking back it was arguably foolish to be deploying limited financial resources, before the investment round, on the very best people we could afford to hire and arguably batting above our league in terms of the talent we had verses where the business was. However it’s paid off and it goes to show, if you’re willing to commit to acquiring the best possible people to work with, then it should reap rewards. These people win clients, build great products and inspire on a daily basis – investing in finding them for any organisation is central.

James Uffindell

James.Uffindell@hrreview.co.uk | Website

James Uffindell, MD and Founder of The Bright Network

James started his first business aged nine, another one at 14. In his last year at university James setup an organisation, Oxbridge Applications, to help people apply to university and at 25, went on to co-found a social enterprise. While James has lived and breathed the commercial world for 10 years, when he left university he really had no idea as to what to do, or even how to go about it.

While some friends found their way into investment banking and law, many were left baffled and floundering. As James met more and more bright graduates who felt similarly, lacking in guidance he decided to set up The Bright Network.

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