Successful Application: Non-Executive Chair of a VC-backed healthtech business

This candidate ticked all the boxes by proving they had extensive experience both founding and working with scaling B2C tech-enabled businesses. The cover letter was engaging and detailed, with a personal touch in which the candidate shares what motivated them to apply for the role.

Live Better With, Non-Executive Chair

Live Better With is a young and fast growing UK healthtech and ecommerce business, with a social mission to make day-to-day life better for the 2 billion people around the world living with long-term conditions. They sought a Non-Executive Chair, with previous B2C tech-enabled board experience and a strong brand leadership background, who could work closely with the Founder & CEO to help Live Better With fulfil its ambitions and potential.

B2C tech-enabled board experience:

Candidates will have previous Board level experience, either as a Non-Executive Director or Chair in a scaling B2C tech-enabled company with a retail, ecommerce or marketplace focus. Please list your most relevant experience including dates, organisations, role and key achievement(s)

• 2010-15 CEO, COO sofa.com - achieved sector-leading net promotor score; grew sales from £7-24m & EBITDA from £1-5m; led sale to private equity, realising 10s of £millions for shareholders.
• 2010-present CEO, Executive Chair & Director Newspaper Club - took the innovative business from start-up to payment of dividends. Brokered sale of founders' shares to a trade buyer.
• 2015-present Director/adviser/shareholder of social enterprises incl. Konnektis.com, a digital platform for home care of older people.

Growth:

Candidates will have founded or worked in a business through the start-up and scaling stages (e.g. scaling from £2-3m to £10m+ revenues), having had C-level or Board responsibility for driving leaps towards profitability, e.g., in lowering customer acquisition costs and/or raising repeat rates. Please highlight your most relevant experience here.

In growing sofa.com's sales >3x and EBITDA 5x, the key challenges were maintaining supply chain efficiency & ensuring the marketing model continued to lead the sector. Through quality management and content marketing initiatives, respectively, we enjoyed outstanding success. I have recently led the reinvention of Newspaper Club's marketing model to restore good growth rates. I currently support a number of digitally-led social enterprises in meeting growth challenges, particularly Konnektis.com.

Covering letter:

I find this role appealing as it fully capitalises on my business experience and interests: - I have very extensive and successful board-level experience of tech-enabled B2C For instance: New Heights, which was founded to leverage the internet in furniture retail; sofa.com, which led its sector in the web 2.0 retail world; Newspaper Club, which uses the web to reinvent legacy assets in newspaper printing; Konnektis, which has built a digital platform for home care of older people; Labour Xchange, which is creating a fairer marketplace for better quality casual work in the gig economy; Head Talks, which hosts talks on mental wellbeing with a view to inform people and dispel stigma; and onHand, which uses the web to supply volunteers to people who need help in the home whilst raising money for charity.

I've managed marketing budgets and led a number of highly effective marketing initiatives for a range of brands as well as founded an agency, Thinkpiece, that produces content for trail-blazing online businesses, including Bulb.co.uk and Pooky.com. My focus over nearly 20 years has been early-stage growth enterprises; it's what I consider myself expert in. I also experienced chronic ill-health for a period in the past, and this provides me with the personal motivation to support Live Better's mission.

More broadly, I have a commitment to support businesses with a social goal, and this is manifested by my leadership and mentoring roles at Bethnal Green Ventures (a tech-for-good VC fund), the Young Foundation (a charity that supports social innovation) and Good Lab (an incubator for tech-based innovative enterprises that generate funding for the charitable sector). I have an excellent network and a good handle on what is happening in the social/health tech innovation space.

My ability to help a range of early-stage enterprises is not solely down to my start-up/growth business experience, however. My time spent in the blue-chip industry (at Cadbury Schweppes), where I completed a graduate management programme still provides me with insights. More importantly, the nearly five years I spent working for some of the top investment banks in the world has equipped me with corporate finance and strategy expertise that I find critically useful in providing support to businesses as they grow. Examples include creating financial models and business plans, assessing the implications of legal agreements, navigating negotiations with professional investors, organising due diligence.

Finally, I enjoy hugely working with small teams to change the world. I tend to get on very well with founders and establish strong and ongoing relationships with management teams. I offer long-term support and a deep level of commitment to the people and businesses I work with. I look forward to learning more about Live Better and believe I could contribute an enormous amount to what feels like a good opportunity to generate significant value, both ethically and commercially.

If you missed the previous 'Successful Applications' instalment click here.

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