Thunder.vc

Founder's Associate for J. Kirby at a boutique Investment Bank

- Worked alongside marketing & operations to create a sales pipeline resulting in $100k+ in confirmed commitments 
- Started outreach sequences for 2000+ prospective clients
- Closed 10 contracts with high-performing startups across Future of Work, Legal, Robotics, and other spaces

Founder's Associate

Diagram Capital

Was the first hire for Diagram's Treasury Management office and first BizDev representative. In my term, created a market map of over 300 EMIs with personalized analyzes.
Proposed and executed numerous partnerships in banking, white label cards, events, etc.
Successfully improved and represented the brand of Diagram at numerous occasions at the UK events in the space of Fintech

Business Development Manager, Treasury Management

Malevich AI

Worked as a COO for an upstart ML company called Malevich

- Managed a team of 5
- Landed B2B clients to get from 0 to £100k ARR
- Prepared the team for the Seed raise
- Oversaw client feedback loops & user interview processes

Ultimately, had to leave due to stacking of academia & startup schedules

COO, Co-Founder

As an analyst at DVC, I supported and analysed some of the coolest startups there are in the world of AI.
- Worked with the community of 100+ investors
- Analysed and helped to maintain a steady flow of startups with over 500 in a deal flow pipeline over my tenure
- Created presentations and reports on past and new investments

Analyst Intern

Flex Data, Inc

Advised a fantastic HR-tech startup called "Flex" on the implementation of game achievement design features into the HR processed, especially hiring. Based the experience on my papers on the internal structure of game economies and achievements.

Advisory Board

Lunar Ventures

Worked for a year at a German VC Early-stage fund. Was in charge of the UK deal flow and covered the initial inbound. Over my time, reviewed over 1000 decks and had over 300 calls with prospective startups, as well as represented Lunar on a number of company and industry events. 

Ultimately, was a critical experience in my adapting to British markets and DeepTech, and made me fall in love with intricate projects for life

Fixed-term Analyst & Scout

Wealthyhood

Working as a growth intern aimed at acquiring D2C and B2B leads across the UK and, potentially, in continental Europe.

Over the course of an internship, I:
- Acquired several clients for the company in the London area, as well as prepared a group of interested clients in the Europe area for the product launch later this year
- Provided advice on the social media management and creation of the community on Discord
- Collaborated with UK-based peers to raise awareness of the app in British universities

Growth Intern

My newsletter on all things tech and deeptech - https://wdic.substack.com/

I had been in Venture Capital for 3 years (EU & US) and successfully found and analyzed several unicorns-to-be - now that's Perplexity, Collectly, and Deepset. 
Also had stands on the Founder side (Malevich) and in corporate finance (Diagram Capital)

I am a firm believer in having people smarter than me around, and pushing all the buttons I can to help them be their best, coolest selves.

Considerably good at pub quizzes.

700+ applications. Zero offers. And now H1B visa changes might flood the UK job market with even more competition.

Here's how the situation is from "boots on the ground" UK job market climber. 

My biotech friend just told me Merck closed their two biggest UK offices. Other major companies are either shutting down or relocating to the US. Meanwhile, displaced H1B visa holders are eyeing Europe as their next destination.

For context, my summer job search numbers are brutal:
- 700+ applications (yes, including Easy Apply)
- 200+ interviews (80% with actual humans, thankfully)
- 7 times I made it through 5+ interview rounds only to get rejected at the final stage
- Zero offers

The irony is that I'm actually quite optimistic about this chaos.

As someone who's Euro-positive, I believe smart people migrating to Europe is always net positive. More talent means more innovation, better companies, stronger ecosystem. The challenge is that as a job seeker, I'm about to face significantly higher competition.

But here's my contrarian take: this migration wave will create opportunities that don't exist yet. New companies will emerge to capture this talent influx. Existing startups will scale faster with access to previously US-locked expertise. The market will expand.

Short term pain, long term gain.

The founders building right now have a unique window. You're about to have access to talent that was previously competing for Silicon Valley salaries. The question isn't whether this migration will happen - it's whether you're positioned to capitalize on it.

Sometimes the best opportunities come disguised as complications.

Sean Sukonnik

Venture Capital | Getting Spinouts access to VC | Deeptech Blog

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