This week, we were delighted to welcome so many of our network to our most recent Private Equity event - "Accelerating Your Career in the 2014 Investment Market". For those who couldn’t attend, I thought I would you let you in on the key things we learnt and what a Freshminds event entails...
At Freshminds we really value the power of networking, and as such we hold events to enable our network to do just that! For us, it’s all about the serendipity of chance meetings with new, engaging people. Beyond enabling fascinating conversation, a meeting of minds can really help enhance and drive forward your career, often in unforeseen ways.
Our most recent event was a prime example of this. It was a pleasure to walk from conversation to conversation where like-minded peers were discussing everything from rock climbing, to the technicalities of mezzanine debt, to the ins and outs of cutting edge anaerobic digestion technology!
More specifically, I wanted to discuss the insight shared by the 3 top quality speakers that we were lucky enough to entertain for the evening. The speakers in question were Adrian Lloyd, partner at Episode 1 ventures, Michael Langdon, Chairman at Rutland Partners and Tom Lindsay, partner at Spayne Lindsay & Co. All 3 gave us a really interesting insight into the whole spectrum of the investment world; from VC investing in tech start-ups, M&A advisory and mid cap PE. As well as shedding light on how they themselves had built their careers, they also gave us their thoughts on what it takes to succeed in the investment world.
For starters, our speakers highlighted these key qualities:
Entrepreneurialism
Curiosity
Over delivery - you can always try harder
Determination, tenacity and polite persistence
Self belief and optimism
Being likeable - a lot of the time it boils down to "I like those people better than those ones"
Logical thinking
Data driven and quantitative skill sets
The ability to deal with failure - it happens!
Thinking and acting as if you are already in the position above your current one
All sound advice, although this by no means covers all of the insight imparted, as well as the personal stories that were shared. Many a smile was raised as we heard about the potential benefits of premature grey hair and looking older than you are, the effects of nationalisation when trying to sell calculators for profit at school and how travelling the silk road from China to Turkey can eventually lead to venture capital!
It was a great night and we’re delighted that it enabled a lot of connections to be made throughout our network. It really helped reinforce our belief here at Freshminds that the power of meeting new people is not to be underestimated!
Want to hear about future Investment & Advisory events? Please register your interest here.
