BADideas.fund

BADideas.fund provides early funding from helpful founders and operators. We are an angel investor syndicate investing €50-€150K tickets in post-MVP startups in CEE, backed by 150+ startup builders and founders that have collectively built companies that have raised over $13B in funding.

I joined the team in Feb '23 as Operations Advisor on a project basis, moving on to a full-time role in Jul '23 to run Operations.
- Developed community activation strategy, increasing the active investor count by 30% between Feb and Jun '23
- Built & automated the investor journey from first touch to deal close, using no-code tools like Airtable, Make and Notion
- Owned content strategy & execution, including monthly newsletter with a consistent >70% response rate across 600+ subscribers

Head of Operations

Operations Advisor

Latvian Startup Association Startin.LV

The association unites Latvian startups and startup community around common values in order to represent joint interests, speak in one voice and educate society about startups in Latvia.

Board Member

Edurio

Edtech SaaS startup that powers feedback insights for schools in the UK. I was the first dedicated CS hire, initially acting as the sole individual contributor and eventually moving to strategy, alongside team’s growth.

1. People leader
- Reported to CEO; grew the team to 10 (B2B Success and B2C Support), coaching & managing individual team members and fostering high performance, high energy culture
- Translated company strategy in team goals, achieving 85% NRR (108% adjusted) in 21/22 and a 7x increase of ARR since joining

2. Strategic cross-functional leader
- Drove strategic company’s priorities, such as the roll-out of a new product (freemium), resulting in the largest uptake yet (70k+) and national coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/19/one-in-10-pupils-in-england-have-missed-school-because-they-felt-unsafe-survey
- Partnered with Product, Marketing, Sales and Ops to translate customer intelligence into strategic action
- Created internal processes using Hubspot, Trello, Zapier, DocuSign and Gitlab, liberating the team’s focus on retention

3. Customer advocate
- Introduced customer journey as a strategic company priority, covering handover, onboarding, scaled engagement and retention, in order to deliver customer outcomes and outstanding experience
- Served as a senior stakeholder in all customer-facing activities, becoming a trusted advisor internally and externally
- Owned strategic relationships within accounts, eg, UK Top 1 whose Covid-19 response grew the account by 50% (£100k+) in 20/21

Head of Customer Success

Manta Equipment

SaaS startup that powers AV equipment management for US colleges. This was a personal side-project that I executed in my free time.

- Successfully opened up a new market in California in Jun ’19

Growth

BridgeU

Edtech SaaS startup that powers global university guidance. I joined the team as an SDR in Nov ’17, proving the value of a dedicated Sales Operations role in Aug ’18, eventually being promoted as Sales Development Lead.

1. People leader
- Reported to CRO; led a team of 3 and managed weekly GTM plans
- Created Salesforce CRM dashboards for daily progress tracking, visualising success and performance gaps
- Developed and ran a training program for London and Hong Kong teams (remote and in-person) to upskill the global Sales team

2. Cross-functional project-manager
- Owned the MQL process via Salesforce, ensuring a 24h lead turnover and helping the Marketing team hit OKRs for the first time in T1 2019

Sales Development Team Lead

- Delivered a data model to inform the global H1 2019 GTM strategy 
- Created an ROI calculator for conference and event attendance, giving Finance oversight over £120k+ spend
- Nominated to run team social events to embed the company’s culture

Sales Operations Manager

- Generated customer acquisition in EMEA and China using qualifying calls in English, Russian, Spanish and Chinese and email campaigns
- Initiated, planned and executed a £50k+ worth outreach project in Turkey in April 2018, with ownership over market research, lead generation, opportunity qualification, logistics and negotiation.

Sales Development Representative

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China

- Wrote two research papers on Chinese investment opportunities in the Middle East and Europe, presenting to the Managing Director of ICBC Private Overseas Banking department

Consulting Intern

I am a startup builder, and my professional mission is to figure out what makes a company grow from good to great by figuring out the secret sauce of business, product or culture strategy.

Currently, I lead operations, strategy and community at BADideas.fund, an angel investor syndicate uniting 200+ startup builders and founders that back promising CEE startups. In my past lives, I've built a Customer Success team from scratch, sold B2B software on both US coasts and built sales operations processes.

An economist by training with proficiency in five languages, my key strengths are delivering commercial outcomes; cross-team alignment; translation of customer feedback into intelligence and strategic stakeholder relationship management.

My peers characterize me as an authentic, gritty & high energy individual who leads by example. In my free time I co-manage Sporta pils darzi - an urban garden community revitalising a brownfield site in the heart of Riga.

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