What’s happening in VC?
Fram has deep roots in Venture Capital recruitment. We initially focused on sales and marketing roles, but today we help firms hire investment professionals, and in finance, operations, and compliance. We’ve been particularly busy of late helping firms hire investment professionals. Whilst many hirers like a traditional route into VC, with experience of training with the big four or working for an investment bank still being popular skillsets, firms are broadening their horizons to those have taken a less traditional route, but who have been working with real businesses for some time.
The ability to evaluate a high-quality opportunity, to spot a talented entrepreneur, and scalable business, is something often learnt through experience and at a busy time it’s often easier to get someone up and running who already has these experiences. I’d estimate that there is now a near 50/50 split between investment banking hires and those from other backgrounds.
According to research from Vienna University and the 2022 European Capital Report, the UK venture scene is still in rude health and the top country when it comes to the number of local investors (351) who have £468 bn of assets under management. 67% of these investors have an early-stage focus and British Investors are invested in 88 out of 130 of Europe’s top unicorns. It’s fair to say that the British venture capital scene is raising money and investing wisely. Tech investments are still attracting large amounts of capital, but we speak to firms investing in a broad range of sectors and VC firms provide much needed capital to growth businesses. Despite negative headlines, the capital raising environment is still very strong and private markets can only benefit by continued volatility in public markets.
Whilst the trend seems to be for M&A professionals to leave investment banking, it can often be hard for VC firms to compete for talent. Firstly, investment banks haven’t taken their poaching of their talent lying down and many are fighting back by offering large basic salaries. The other challenge venture investors find themselves facing is competition from PE firms. Often requiring the same skillset as VC, PE is often seen as the glamorous big brother.
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The ability of VC firms to attract talent will be key to their ongoing success and it’s key that top talent continues to come into the industry if investment performance is to be maintained. The pandemic has ushered in many changes and we at Fram feel that some of these will favour the VC investment industry when it comes to hiring. Most candidates now seek more flexible working and, in our experience, investment banks and PE firms are less likely to offer this. In addition, relatively junior investment professionals are more likely to gain useful experience such as Board seats far earlier at VC houses and due to the size of the firms they invest in, they are also likely to spend more time with founders. This high flexibility, high responsibility combination, is a very attractive cocktail to many individuals who are keen to move to the buy-side.
Fram’s proven process, which we call “The Fram Difference” and our market position places us well to build a long term relationship with growing VC firms.
About Fram Search
Established in 2010 by Simon Roderick, a recruiter with 20 years City recruitment experience, Fram Search is a specialist financial services recruitment consultancy. We focus on permanent and interim recruitment in the UK & internationally.
Our Private Equity & VC practice works with firms operating in private equity, venture capital, private equity real estate, secondaries, and fund of funds markets. Covering investment professionals, IR & marketing, finance, operations, and legal & compliance.
We provide high quality contingent and retained recruitment services to boutiques and global brands. We have long established relationships and access to deep talent pools. Fram takes a highly consultative approach, and we have a quality over quantity ethos. We are proud that our contingent fill rate is nearly three the industry average and we augment our retained search methodology with rigorous psychometric testing. Champions of diversity & inclusion, all staff have undertaken unconscious bias training.
Please contact us on 01525 864 372 / [email protected] to learn more.
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