Welcome to The Art of The Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces of content which I hope will both inspire and embolden you.
PODCAST
This week’s guest is June Angelides MBE – a former founder, turned VC. June grew up in Nigeria before coming to London to study Economics. She then joined Thomson Reuters working on the news desk, covering syndicated loans before she got a call to join Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) who were just starting up here in London. She joined a small team there, working on both the Venture Debt Team and Early Stage Banking where she started forging connections with early stage startups and founders. Listen here.
It wasn’t long before June wanted a taste of entrepreneurship herself so she started Mums in Tech - the first child-friendly coding school in the UK - which ultimately taught over 250 women to code in 3 years and earned June an MBE from the Queen.
After Mums in Tech closed down, June joined Samos Investments in 2018, where she remains today, investing in high growth European businesses. She has also founded an angel syndicate that invests into African Startups.
In this episode, June and I discuss her career journey from working in the early days at Silicon Valley Bank here in the UK, setting up and subsequently shutting down her business, becoming an investor and the traits she looks for in founders, the importance of storytelling when pitching, as well as how representation and role models matter. Listen here.
I learned a lot talking to June about her founder investor journey and I think you will too. So please enjoy my conversation with June Angelides.
QUOTE
INTERVIEW
I am such a big fan of all three who feature in this video - host Garry Tan (President and CEO of Y Combinator) and Founder of Initialized Capital, interviews tech power couple Aarthi Ramamurthy (Chief Product and Technology Officer at Rithum) and Sriram Krishnan (General Partner, a16z Crypto) and in this episode, they discuss their inspirational story from India to Silicon Valley (and now in London) and how they found their feet and success through TECHNOLOGY.
Watch here.
BOOK
The Money Ladder by Franklin Asante
This week, I had the honour of interviewing Franklin Asante, Head of Entrepreneurs at Coutts live on stage at a Forbes Family Group event, and we discussed his career journey as well as his brilliant book, The Money Ladder which is a great read on how to create wealth, how to nurture it and how to make it grow!
Franklin Asante is a Private Banker who has worked with high-net-worth individuals since 2008. He now heads up the Entrepreneurs division of a UK Private Bank, where he’s an advisor to business owners across several sectors including Tech, Property and Recruitment.
Franklin is the Vice-Chair of Governors at a London college and a Trustee for two charities that provide personal development and mental health support to local communities. Franklin also teaches financial literacy to his social media following under the name of @urbanfinancier, where he delivers useful and practical information about managing personal finance. Also, check out Franklin’s podcast - his interview with music artist and serial entrepreneur Krept is excellent. Watch here.
FILM
The Long Game
Looking forward to this coming out…
Experience the inspiring journey of young caddies who dared to dream beyond the fairways. Out April 12th, The Long Game tells the true story of grit and boundless ambition that turned the golf world upside down.
The Long Game, inspired by Humberto G. Garcia’s Mustang Miracle, follows the true story of five young Mexican American caddies in 1955 who created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas brush country. Despite outdated and inferior equipment and no professional instruction to begin with, they would go on to compete against wealthy, all-white teams and win the 1957 Texas State High School Golf Championship.
Watch the trailer here.
Thank you for reading the newsletter and for listening to the podcast, and if you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too. And if you have two minutes, please do leave a review for the podcast - it would mean the world to me and helps others to find it too.
Danielle