Sifted Summit

October 2nd 2023, I attended my first Sifted Summit; and what an experience!

Sifted Summit is the annual in person event held by Sifted (media brand for the European startup community) and is packed with founders, investors and disruptive businesses.
I want to share a few key takeaways as well as thank the new faces I met and connected with.

💷 On the topic of the current state of startups and VC funding drying up (some might say), Taavet Hinrikus (Wise) stated that “the tourists have gone. Not everyone can do it. It’s hard.”

🔢 Tessa Clarke (Olio • Share More, Waste Less) added “there is a fundamental switch from capital fuelled growth, to product led growth; some scale ups are having to go back to the start up phase and redefine what their product / market fit is…New KPI’s are replacing ‘vanity metrics’; no longer just about MoM growth. Burn Rate!”

💸 Optimist Mike Turner (Latham & Watkins) rounded out the discussion - “the previous 18 months were unprecedented and it was a reset. Investors and LP's are back in the game. Capital is out there and waiting to be deployed”.

🧠 Fellow solo founder Valentina Milanova 🇺🇦 (Daye) gave a wonderfully honest count of her journey; and much to my delight, advocated the benefits of a therapist to founders. I’ve had a therapist for over 4 years now and it’s felt like a cheat code at times, and right now, is a non negotiable.

🚀 Arguably my favourite session and the one I took most value from (no surprise) was the one regarding fractional CxO roles. Anisah Osman Britton MBE hosted an excellent panel with Dagmara Aldridge, Harpal Singh, Rohan Inneh and Anna Kuriakose.

All 4 shared their view of why Fractional roles make sense, what an ideal company looks like to a fractional resource, and what is needed to ensure a good fit; but the 2 nuggets I want to share are 1) that a fractional resource will have a broader experience across their other clients (current and past) to bring fresh thinking and 2) Rohan summarised it perfectly; Part time role, full time value.
Thank you also to Zoe Jervier Hewitt (Sequoia Capital) for our 121 chat on the rising need / availability of Fractional CRO's.

🙏 And thank you to Emanuela Kufel (Prosoma) for a very open and brutally honest roundtable where we discussed a very important and current problem many founders are experiencing; burnout.

Thank you to everyone else I met and connected with:

Edy W. Heng Freya Pearce Joanna Glenn Monika Liikamaa James Gairdner Nina Glass Lounès Maldji Muhammad Malik Tristan O'Neill

☕ Oh, and thank you to Twilio and HSBC Innovation Banking for the splendid coffee!

🎟 Sifted Summit 2024 - tickets are already purchased. 
🎤 See you all there! Maybe next time, from the stage ;)

#fractionalCRO #startup #siftedsummit #VC