Katy Turner was a VC at Eden Ventures, one of Europe’s early stage venture funds, before leaving earlier this year to join London startup Videoplaza http://www.videoplaza.com/. Videoplaza empowers broadcasters, publishers and networks to maximise their advertising revenues from the New IP-delivered TV. Their global client base uses the Videoplaza ad management platform to monetise video experiences across PC’s, mobile devices, tablets, IPTV and Connected TVs.
(ss) Katy, you just left Eden Ventures where you had a very successful career as a VC to join the start-up, Videoplaza, as Head of Marketing. What influenced you to do this?
(kt) I had such a great time working with the team at Eden Ventures. It’s absolutely inspiring to be part of the early stage startup scene. To be in an environment where I was always learning, working with excellent colleagues and outstanding entrepreneurs. However having spent a significant amount of time watching people build exciting businesses, I had the urge to be inside a business myself, helping it grow and deliver success.
(ss) What do you miss most about being a VC?
(kt) Being a VC is huge fun and hugely diverse. It’s an opportunity to get experience across a range of exciting sectors. From one day to the next there I would be looking at anything from virtual worlds to virtualisation to education. The diversity of the role is definitely one of the benefits.
I also miss the day-to-day interaction with the portfolio companies – Eden has some strong investments with some great businesses, and it was incredibly rewarding to work with the teams. I am watching their progress closely now from the outside. Also honestly I do miss the travel budget! J
(ss) What has been the most challenging aspect about your recent transition?
(kt) There is a velocity to working in a growing business that is different, and faster, to the speed of working in venture, I guess in part due to the timescales over which VC funds operate (on the whole on a 10 year lifecycle) vs businesses, which need to be delivering day to day. So changing speeds was one transitional aspect. I also thought I would find it challenging to be in a more static environment i.e. less travel, working with one team only, but actually this has proved to be a real joy. It’s wonderful to be part of a business team again and to be focused on one clear set of shared goals – building our business to succeed.
(ss) What advice do you have for other Marketing Peeps at start-ups who are trying to establish a brand, a marketing campaign and setting up metrics?
(kt) My advice is that it is never too early to think about building a brand, but that you can do this in a lean or agile way. You don’t need to hire an expensive agency. Spend time with the team to figure out the values of the business – what drives us? What do we want to stand for? If the company was a person what would they be like? When you have agreed these values, use these across the business to inform how you deliver communications, how and what you build out in the product etc. This will provide consistency in the business and help you build a strong cohesive operation and market position.
In terms of campaigns, try and do what you can to achieve the lowest cost of acquisition early on – you can probably do a lot yourself in terms of PR, social media, partnerships. But also make sure that your go to market approach is suitable for your audience. Your client or end user should always be central to any marketing strategy. Figure out where they congregate and how you can get to them in a low cost, realistic way. For example, if you are a B2C or SME B2B online business, don’t build a plan that relies on buying traffic through PPC – this is expensive and not sustainable.
Metrics should be baked into your business from Day 1. Figure out as early as possible which metrics underpin your business – for example revenue per user, customer lifetime value, cost of customer acquisition, churn. Understanding these and building them in to your product will mean that when you can monitor performance as soon as you start to operate. Also from an investor’s viewpoint, it is critical that the entrepreneur tracks and delivers against these metrics – it gives a feeling of confidence and a sense that the entrepreneur understands how to build their business.
(ss) Do you see any barriers for growth being a UK/Swedish startup compared to your American cousins?
(kt) No. In the space that Videoplaza occupies i.e. the video advertising space, there is huge opportunity in Europe as well as the US and other parts of the world. Many of our target clients all over the globe are still working with technology that doesn’t enable them to deliver and monetise video across multiple platforms. Our vision is to deliver the New TV – by which we mean IP delivered TV across proliferated devices including mobile, IPTV, connected TVs, gaming consoles and online. We have already grown into a number of markets in Europe and outside it, and the business is scaling effectively. Actually the fact that we were not built in the US means that we have been set up to internationalise from Day 1.
(ss) What advice do you have for people wanting to find a job at a startup?
(kt)If you are looking for a job in a startup there are a number of ways to approach it. You can go to meet ups like Open Coffee, get involved events like Seedcamp or Springboard, or look at online resources such as www.workinstartups.com, which is a job board for startups in the UK. Spending time around the scene, which also pretty sociable, is a good way to find out what’s going on and who’s recruiting.
If you are trying to decide whether you want to work in a startup my advice would be: you need to be prepared to work very hard, and not to have too fixed an idea of what your role or hours will be. Startups really need people who are well-rounded, have a range of different skills and aren’t too concerned about fitting a narrow job description. There is so much to do that you will find yourself getting involved in a bit of everything.
(ss) What advice do you have for current VC’s J?
Having now been on the other side (or the light side as I like to call it J) for a few months, my biggest advice would be to try and think a bit more about the demands upon the entrepreneur during the investment process.
Fundraising is hugely time consuming and talking to several different funds will means you have potentially several different due diligence processes to go through. This is hugely onerous and really means the entrepreneur and the team cannot really focus on the important stuff – i.e. moving the business forwards. I would urge VCs to consider this a bit more and to try and expedite fund raising processes where possible and certainly in Europe, to take decisions to invest or not quickly, so that the entrepreneur can focus on delivering success in the business.
