Founder | CEO/COO/MD | GTM | Cybersecurity | EdTech | Angel

a) Experienced founder, and former top-tier strategy consultant (OC&C). I built a EUR 4.5m, profitable company from zero in RE services, through B2B partnerships and commercial excellence. 
b) Then I moved to Munich with my family, and stepped back from my business. 
c) Fractional commercial leadership: Partnerships + GTM for  Ascension / Blended Teaching, Europe's #1 real estate finance educator. Founded by RE PE pros; engaging, practical content; Ascension is redefining online education, starting with RE finance. 

Detailed highlights below.

🚀 Entrepreneurial Leader
Founder CEO of a London-based property services scaleup until Q3 2023. I grew it from concept to €4.5m ARR, profitability, 70+ team. Customers love us (4.6 Google/TP). I’ve hired 150+ people from front line to C-suite. I know how to build teams and get things done: efficient, lean, and profitable.

📈 Strategic Growth
I thrive on building and scaling. I lead on B2B sales, partnerships, GTM, account management, and strategy. After Covid, we built a €2m ARR revenue line from near-zero. I also ran customer service, people, and (jointly) special operations. 

🎤 Excellent Communicator
…in all situations: from 121s to public speaking; from hard conversations to motivational talks. Confident with all audiences, from enterprise clients to investors to frontline teams. Many years of Toastmasters plus stand-up comedy training. 

📈 Analytical & Curious
After studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, and International Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS, I worked at top-tier strategy consultancy OC&C.

🌱 Growth Mindset
I’m motivated by: problem solving, relationship building, closing deals, continuous learning, and seeing my team succeed. I love turning great ideas into reality and profit. I’m never afraid to roll up my sleeves.

🦾 Resilience & Grit
I thrive in difficult situations, and step up under pressure and crisis. I crash-stopped and restructured my company during Covid, then rebuilt it afterward. I also sailed across the Atlantic and learned to fly aerobatics with the RNR.

🌍 International Network
Strong UK & DE network of founders and investors. Angel in 15+ startups. I have lived, studied, and worked in Germany, US, Italy, and India. I have DE residency and right to work. 

Want to chat and learn more?
ian.walker@cantab.net

Ian Walker

Rachel Carrell

CEO of Koru Kids | Follow for daily posts on parenting and work life | 🎤 Keynote speaker | ex-McKinsey, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford DPhil | 👶 3x Mum

I am the CEO of Koru Kids, which helps parents have some 'easy days' in their week. 

Modern parenting is so exhausting, and so many parents are doing it without the 'village' we all need.

As a mum of 3 myself, I founded Koru Kids to help.  

Our vetted, trained nannies can pick your children up from school/nursery, look after them at home while you work, give them snacks and meals, and play games.  You arrive home to a calm home and a lovely family evening.
Koru Kids nannies are available throughout the UK, and can work part time, full time, or after school hours.  
It's super easy to get your nanny via Koru Kids, as we help you every step of the way.  
Parents describe the experience as 'easy', 'seamless', and 'life-changing'!

We're multi-award-winning, and have so far provided over 4 million hours of childcare to 15,000 families. 

Previously I was CEO of DrThom, a healthcare company which I grew to 1.3 million paying users in 3 countries.  Before that I spent six years at McKinsey.   I have a DPhil from Oxford, where I was a Rhodes Scholar, am a WEF Young Global Leader, and have been awarded 'Best Business Woman in Technology' and 'Inspirational Mother' awards.   

To find out whether Koru Kids is right for you, sign up and search for free at www.korukids.co.uk

Koru Kids is on a mission to profoundly improve the wellbeing of a million families in the next 5 years. We're doing this by building new childcare infrastructure for the world, underpinned by our software, data and content. We provide innovative services like 'nanny share', in which a single nanny looks after children from 2 families at once. Each family pays less, the nanny gets paid more, and the children get a friend to play with. Brilliant!

Innovation in childcare is desperately needed. Did you know that most families with children spend as much on childcare as they do on their mortgage? Or that the average cost of a full time nanny in Central London is £37,000? (Remember, that comes out of your post-tax income). Did you know that nurseries aren't much cheaper than that, if you have two children? Did you know that many nurseries shut for summer holidays, or only do half days, and that if your child is sick they can't go for the next 48 hours?  

If you're a parent, you probably knew all of that, plus much more about the pain of sorting out your childcare.

Koru Kids was founded to solve these problems. The mission brings together several things I care deeply about: the critical importance of positive early childhood experiences; the need for real choices for women in the workplace; and the potential of great tech to solve market failures. 

We help thousands of families every day in London and we're backed by some of the best investors in Europe. We've won a bunch of awards.  And we are JUST GETTING STARTED.

Why the strictest parents often raise the happiest kids 
(true story!)

I can't tell you what a relief it was for me when I first read this stuff.

Everyone talks about being a 'gentle parent.'
Almost no one talks about why kids actually crave firm, clear rules.

Research shows that children raised with firm, warm boundaries develop higher self-esteem, better self-control, and stronger relationships later in life.
(Source: lots, but e.g. Baumrind's Parenting Styles research at UC Berkeley)

It's important to be clear that I'm NOT talking about shouting, punishments on a whim, or control for control's sake. 

Instead, what I mean is 
✅ Clear expectations
✅ Predictable consequences
✅ Constant emotional warmth

Clear rules offer kids support while they’re still learning how to manage big emotions and decisions.

You need BOTH the strictness AND the warmth. 
👿 Strictness without warmth creates rebellion.
🌪️ Warmth without limits creates chaos.

Kids feel safest when they know
❓Who’s in charge
❓What’s expected
❓What happens if rules are broken

Without clear boundaries, kids might look 'freer' but under the surface be more anxious, unsure and overwhelmed. 

Does this ring true for you? It certainly did for me!

How to be a 'Strict and Happy' Parent:
1️⃣ Set a few important rules
2️⃣ Explain the 'why' in simple language
3️⃣ Follow through 
4️⃣ Layer emotional warmth on top every day

If this sort of thing is helpful, you might like my free weekly newsletter, which helps 65K+ parents achieve calm at home: https://lnkd.in/espktxSQ

🔄 Repost to share with your network, and follow Rachel Carrell for more like this

CEO of Koru Kids | Follow for daily posts on parenting and work life | Ex-McKinsey, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford DPhil | 👶 3x Mum

Strict parents

My home life really transformed when I started adopting some habits that forced me to be more 'present'.

Maybe you recognise this problem yourself?

Our brains are being rewired by a culture designed for instant gratification, and it's destroying our attention spans and damaging our relationships. 

You can feel it at home:
- You’re half with your child and half with your phone.
- Your child is half with you and half with whatever’s pinging.
- Everyone’s a bit more irritable, because nobody’s 100% anywhere.  

It's a systems problem! 
 
Here are 10 ideas for parents who struggle with being 'present':

1. Add friction
 → Don’t try to quit your phone. Make your worst habit annoying! 
Move the worst culprit app off your home screen.  Log out. Make it require search + password. 

2. Think about your micro-moments 
 → The biggest scroll traps are micro-moments: kettle boiling, loo, waiting for pasta.  Pick two a day that stay screen-free (e.g. first coffee + last 15 mins before bed). 

3. Have a 'phone home' 
 → Choose 1-2 places your phone lives at home (e.g. charging station in kitchen; basket by front door). If it’s not in your hand, it’s there.

4. Put deep work on your calendar
 → 25 minutes of single-tasking. More if you can! Remind your brain what depth feels like  

5. Use audio to satisfy the 'need for input'
 → A lot of scrolling is self-soothing through stimulation. If you swap it with podcasts/audiobooks, you get input without the infinite scroll.

6.  Batch your news
 → That continuous flow of news creates a low-grade threat state in your body. Instead, put in your calendar specific news 'windows'. No news outside them.  Even better, buy an actual physical newspaper! (Crazy talk, I know)

7. Teach kids about dopamine
 → e.g: “Our brains love quick hits. Companies make money when they keep giving them to us.” Kids can handle this framing  

8.  Have slow family rituals 
 → Friday pizza + music, Sunday walk, bedtime chapter, nightly card game. Rituals are a great secret weapon for families!
Rituals are how families outcompete feeds.

9. Make relationships deliberately unskimmable
 → Walks with a friend. Long voice notes. Dinner with phones away.
The deepest satisfaction still comes from things that can’t be sped up.

If I had to choose just ONE of these, I'd choose #3 -- having a place where your phone lives, and keeping it there when you don't need it. It's a little systems change that has a big impact. 

I'd love to know your ideas (we need a #10!)

And if you want more ideas about family systems to achieve calm at home, join 65K+ parents receiving my free weekly newsletter! https://lnkd.in/espktxSQ

🔄Repost to share with others, and follow Rachel Carrell for more like this.

Every time I talk to my Mum about parenting, it's obvious that things have changed SO MUCH. 

In her day, child development mostly meant hitting milestones - like walking, talking, sleeping through, saying 'please' and 'thank you'.

But over the past few decades, the science has exploded. 
Now we know that the first years of life shape brain wiring, we understand sensory overload, we know stress can turn into long-term shutdown, and we know that appearing 'fine' can mask underlying problems.

I made a one-pager about how our views of child development have changed, and what you can therefore do differently. 

Things like: 

1️⃣ Behaviour is communication
→ Instead of punishing immediately, ask “What’s this behaviour telling me?” For example aggression might signal hunger, tiredness, or emotional overload.

2️⃣ Kids co-regulate before they self-regulate
→ When a child is distressed, stay physically close, breathe slowly, speak softly. They pick up on your calmness

3️⃣ Language builds brains
→ Narrate what’s happening: “You’re stacking the blocks so carefully!” 
Use rich, descriptive language,especially in play.

4️⃣ Secure attachment leads to resilience
→ Spend at least 10 minutes daily on child-led play. Don't instruct or correct, just follow their lead.

5️⃣ Routine helps emotional safety
→ Use visual schedules, predictable transitions, and simple cues: “After a snack, we brush our teeth.” This reduces meltdowns.

6️⃣ Sensory needs affect behaviour
→ Watch for signs like covering ears, hiding under tables, or sudden shutdowns. Offer quiet, dim spaces to regroup.

7️⃣ Children thrive on connection over correction
→ Replace “Stop that!” with “Let’s try this together.” This builds trust

We've come so far, but I'm sure there's still a lot to learn. 

And I'm curious - have you noticed this shift in your own lifetime?

(If you like this, you might also like my free weekly newsletter for parents who want to achieve a calmer home life. You can sign up here: 
https://lnkd.in/espktxSQ )

🔄 Repost to share with others, and follow Rachel Carrell for more like this

The 9-5pm is dead. Long live the individual schedule. 
But how do you make it ACTUALLY work? 

Here are 4 guiding principles for leaders and team members:
1. Define core hours - a subset of total hours when individuals really do need to be working
2. Define expectations for output - and manage to those, not inputs
3. Clarify which of your comms channels will be ‘asynchronous’ (not time dependent)
4. Clarify how you’ll do urgent/emergency messages

These 4 principles get you most of the way there. Empathy, honesty and iteration get you the rest of the way.

Not every workplace can handle this degree of flexibility. But those that do, reap the rewards in terms of employee loyalty and retention.

If you find this interesting and want to know more, join 65K+ parents learning how to make their home life calmer in my free weekly newsletter https://lnkd.in/espktxSQ

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