A final thank you & what's next

TL:DR - I wanted to write a few words to explain why I decided to move on from the company that I co-founded. Founding Poq has been an amazing journey and I am truly thankful for everyone who believed in us. Leaving was always going to be hard. Coronavirus has given me time to reflect and I have decided now to follow my passion of social & sustainable entrepreneurship. That’s why I am super excited to announce that I am joining the founding team of Carbon13 - a venture builder to tackle the climate emergency. 

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The longer version

I met my co-founder ?yvind Henriksen at UCL’s MSc Technology Entrepreneurship. Together we found our other co-founders Jun Seki and Mike Hann and many more amazing individuals on the way. I will always be grateful to them because I’ve learnt all I know from them about startups, the SaaS industry, enterprise sales and cycling ;)

I believe that entrepreneurs can be a powerful force of positive change. In my early twenties a good friend gave me a book on social entrepreneurship, which told the stories of amazing people like the founder of the Grameen bank who changed the face of finance. Back then I decided I wanted to be a social entrepreneur. After ten years in startups, I can now see any venture will be more successful by taking into account its social and environmental impact. There has been a shift in consumer demand that means you will be more successful when you combine those goals into one bottom line. 

A second belief I hold strongly, is that life is a journey where we should strive to build connections to people and learn from them. At Poq we built a culture of people who are keen to learn from each other, improve together and thereby succeed. “Never be the know-everything person but be the always-learn person.” Given Poq's success and the strength of the culture we built over many years, I know we were right.

Poq grew to 100 people in two countries, clients on three continents, $0.5 billion in annual platform revenue from our apps. Plus, we got recognised by Forrester as the only SaaS provider in our industry and have won pretty much all industry awards in retail, as well as my favorite startup one: being part of the Deloitte Fast50 - the UK's 50 fastest growing companies for two years in a row.  

It’s been almost a decade building this company and it’s always hard to leave your own startup. I had the pleasure to oversee many functions for many years from marketing, finance, people, operations, customer success, professional services, and most recently a shorter stint in sales. Basically, whatever function was on fire at the time.

For me to be able to move on, the company had to be stable and we had to build a leadership team entrusted to continue our vision. Through hiring a great CTO, CFO and a CRO, together with my co-founders, we now have such a team that can take Poq to the next level. 

There are big opportunities yet to be discovered, our clients are selling more on their apps than ever before. This isn't the end for me entirely, I will continue to work with Poq as a board member (and always as a fan on the sidelines).

What’s next: 

We need to find ways to kickstart the UK economy after Coronavirus and also Brexit (yes that will also happen this year). Importantly we shouldn’t just aim to do the same thing as before, but build back better ;)

So I am eager and excited to announce that I am joining the founding team of an amazing new project playing an important part in that recovery: Carbon13 - the venture builder for the climate emergency.

Carbon13 is focused on building dozens of startups that will move the needle on carbon reduction by reducing global CO2e emissions by 1%. We are sector-agnostic; the idea is to launch value propositions and business models that will be rapid-to-market, rapid-to-carbon-impact. 

In order to fix the global climate emergency there is no golden bullet. We need a plethora of different approaches, lead bullets, that all tackle the same problem from different angles and new perspectives. Some of them will work, others won’t. That’s why we think we need to start at the earliest stage by fostering entrepreneurial talent and give them the tools they need to build new ventures. My role will be to work closely with the startup founders, mentors and sponsors that will join us on our mission and create the lead bullets that the planet needs.

If you are keen to contribute or know anyone who would be, be it as a future founder, mentor, partner or sponsor please get in touch here or on [email protected].

For more information on the programs that we are running, have a look here.

What’s left:

I would like to thank the people that have made Poq possible: our employees who have often worked day and night for our mission, our advisors, our partners, our customers, our investors and families. I am and always will be grateful to you!

THANK YOU - Suds, Zahir, Asha, Anna, Dyonise, Mahmut, Jess, Sophie, Tonia, Gilda, Martin, Diana, Andy, Olivier, Kathryn, Nikolay, Erinc, Terje, Alex, Hayley, Aanya, Balint, S-J, Gabriel, Tobi, Sam, Dave, Ramesh, Mansour, Craig, Laurence, Vix, Greg, Anshu, Marinos, J-D, Nijat, Max, Ainslie, David, James, Amaresh, Alexa, Sheila, Hamza Natsha, Rob, Pim, Andy, Simon, Claudia, Bryony, Lennox, Costanza, Jay, Richie, Lucy, Lily, Latoya, Poppo, Margaux, Christine, Andrei, Marta, Ben, Kat, Kate, Tom, Rachel, Amaresh, Lidia, Paolo, Christian, Laura, Katie, George, Lyubomir, Harold, Harry, Jamee, Sonia, Dhara, Alessia, Denisa, Sophie, Sara, Aashni, Ivan, Mansour, Eshani, Jose, Denis, Roger, Ben, Agatha, Michel, Jack, Mohamed, Huishan, Ravi, Daniel, Boyan, Sean & Ruslan.  

Thank you to the whole team who is now at Poq & pushing forward! (I won’t name all of you, there are too many, plus there are already 10+ new people since I last checked…). You know who you are. 

It’s been an amazing ride. I am off to the next one!!!