Yahoo Finance Top VC Eileen Burbidge talks her career, Brexit, and advice for startups
Eileen Burbidge MBE is one of the most prominent women on the UK tech scene.
Burbidge swapped a career in Silicon Valley for one in London and has worked at companies including Apple, Skype, and Yahoo. She now juggles several roles: partner at early-stage venture firm Passion Capital; chair of Tech Nation, the UK’s network for entrepreneurs; and non-executive director at UK retailer Dixons Carphone.
Speaking on Yahoo Finance UK’s new premium video show, Global Change Agents with Lianna Brinded, Burbidge discussed her storied career and how she’s working to improve diversity in the world of tech startups. She also shared her optimism for London’s position as a fintech capital post-Brexit.
Burbidge, who has also served as a tech advisor to the UK government, said she owed a lot of her career success to “serendipity” and “luck.”
“I think that it’s always useful to have a plan and to have a … roadmap for where you’d like to see things go,” Burbidge said. “But I think it’s maybe equally important — if not even more important — to actually be able to be flexible.”
Burbidge on diversity in tech
Burbidge said there had been a “step change” in awareness around diversity issues over the course of her career. There is now much more understanding about the “material difference it makes to commercial viability and success if there is diversity on the team and diversity of thought in decision making,” she said.
In terms of Passion Capital’s own portfolio companies, Burbidge said the firm aims to “bake in diversity from the very beginning” of a startup. Issues can occur when companies grow from a team of 10 or fewer people to dozens of homogenous people, she added.
“It’s going to be really difficult to bring in any diversity at that point because if you interview someone and you invite them to the office and they walk in and it’s a room full of people that there’s no ability to relate or similarity, you’re not going to be able to hire different people,” Burbidge said. “So that’s a problem.”
Burbidge also offered advice to startups that are pitching for funding: Be on your best behaviour at all times, even when you’re not in front of the investors themselves.
“We’ll ask the rest of the office or the team that might have interacted with them: ‘How was the interaction?’ We’ll ask the receptionist how were they when they checked in: ‘Were they rude? Were they polite? How was it?,'” she said.
“We might not get a chance to ask that for every single team, but we certainly pay attention if the receptionist comes up to us and says, ‘Who was that you met with earlier because they were a little bit off’ … Or they were just really a bit short.”
“That’s a non-starter … Done. We won’t even entertain that.”
Burbidge on London’s fintech scene post-Brexit
Some of Passion Capital’s biggest success stories have been in the fintech space, including mobile-only bank Monzo and payments service GoCardless.
Burbidge explained that London’s position as a global leader in fintech “wasn’t an overnight success,” but was decades in the making, thanks to the UK’s strong research and development centres and universities.
For that reason, Burbidge doesn’t think the UK is likely to lose its fintech leadership attributes overnight once the country leaves the European Union.
“I don’t think you’ll see London lose its fintech edge or fintech crown in the next year or even two years,” Burbidge said. “It might be a … four- or five-year problem.”
Still, she added, “It has been, I think, a real shame. Brexit is clearly not a boost for the economy. It is not a draw for talent. It does not help the conversation around why people should be coming to the UK.”
Global Change Agents with Lianna Brinded is a new premium video series from Yahoo Finance UK. The show explores the stories of some of the most inspirational women across business, tech, and academia. Catch up on all the latest episodes here.
