Work like a woman: meet the leaders of London's investment scene

Bechhold Russ’s route into tech was rather unusual. After working her way up through Citi Group in New York, she started a group for angel investors — individuals who provide capital for start-ups at the very beginning — along with a friend in 2012.

The group has since grown to 80 members, and now includes a London division. This start-up fever led her to joining a tech company herself, Ringly, before making the leap to Samsung NEXT.

“I was really excited by the idea that a small group of people sat on the side of a massive tech company and were trying to drive change,” she says.

When it comes to gender diversity, what can be an issue is simply getting women in. “A lot of venture funds tend to be small and started by people who know each other. Part of it is just being aware [and acknowledging], ‘Oh, we don’t have any women on the team, I hadn’t thought about it before.’ It sounds simple, but it’s true.”

The Samsung NEXT team features people from different backgrounds in terms of experience: some come from start-ups, some from products, some from operations. The benefits can be seen in the financials. “I believe very strongly that cognitive and experiential diversity on teams yield better results and all of the research says the same. I’m really hopeful we can get more senior women into positions of authority and decision- making power in order to create the network necessary to keep women in tech for the long run,” says Bechhold Russ

Investment manager at Samos.

Start-ups invested in: Zyper and Koru Kids

As a founder herself, Angelides knows what it’s like trying to pitch for investment. During her second maternity leave from Silicon Valley Bank, she started Mums in Tech, which taught women how to code. This experience opened her up to the frustrations women face in the tech industry.

“One of our alumni started a company to help parents find activities for children under five, and a lot of men [VCs] didn’t understand the need for something like that. It wasn’t until she started speaking to female angel investors that people understood what she was trying to do. That really stuck with me,” she explains.

But when she decided to take the plunge into VC herself, it wasn’t the most welcoming industry to find a way into. “You almost need to know someone, it’s pretty much a closed network,” she says. Luckily, a friend introduced her to Check Warner, co-founder of Diversity VC and Ada Ventures, who helped her find her current role at Samos, where she has been since 2018.

Samos focuses on investing in companies at seed, when they’re just starting out. Angelides uses her role to ensure the fund is looking for and finding entrepreneurs to back from diverse backgrounds. “As one of the few female VCs in the UK, I see it as my personal responsibility. Initially, if you’re not able to relate [to someone] then you make an assumption and put up a blocker. It’s our job to break down those barriers.”

Investor at Eight Roads Ventures and co-founder of Diversity VC.

Start-ups invested in: Made.com and Moneybox

Tech was a significant part of Lillian Li’s life growing up. After moving to the UK from China at a young age, the internet was crucial to her for learning the language, as well as the culture, and for making friends. However, her move into VC came by accident: she thought she was interviewing at a private equity firm and it wasn’t until her first team meeting, when people were discussing terms like “preferred liquidation” — how much an investor will get paid — that she realised she was a VC now, and solely investing in tech. She has worked at Salesforce Ventures and now focuses on enterprise software and data at Eight Roads.

“Very early on in my journey I would clock that I was often the only woman in the room and almost definitely the only woman of colour. This led to the impetus to want to create spaces for others like myself,” she says. Li started hosting and attending women-in-VC events, where she met Warner, and the pair went on to set up Diversity VC together. The group uses data to showcase tech’s diversity issue as well as offering solutions to change it.

While it’s important that funds ensure they are hiring diverse candidates, Li thinks the next challenge will be about creating the right culture to suit people from diverse backgrounds. “The bigger issue of what’s coming is how do we support a diverse mix of people and make sure they’re supported and progressing to the next stages,” she says.

Diversity VC is committed to working in this space and to pushing that message forward.