When you talk to entrepreneurs about their success, they will invariably talk about who helped them, rather than what they did. Who not what, someone not something.

• The person who helped them launch their product or enter a new market
• The advisor who helped them hire the top executive
• The mentor who helped them clarify their thinking and communication
• The coach who helped them reach their personal potential
• The consultant who helped them shape their culture and create a high performing team.

And when they’ve been successful once and are on their second or third startup, they know the people they need at every stage. They have a pretty well populated black book.

However, we invest pretty early in the entrepreneur’s life. Often it’s their first company and they may only have 12 people in the company. But ten years later they may well have 12 people on the board. That level of growth requires huge amounts of human capital and it also requires an enormous amount of expertise and advice:-

• The best recruiters, lawyers, accountants are the tip of the iceberg.
• Successful executives, industry veterans, and regulatory leaders.
• People who can act as proxies for the customer in helping validate a proposition, a partner as a route to market and as a competitor to help hone messaging.
• Someone who understands compensation, pricing, billing at a deep level are critical at certain stages.
• Someone who specialises in fund raising, grants or debt.
• Policy specialists or political advisers who can explain a regulatory process.
• Growth experts who can advise on international expansion and new markets.
• Executives with personal and recent experience of IPO or M&A.

It is beyond the scope of most early-stage companies to build these networks, it would consume vast amounts of time and energy, but with our growing portfolio (30+) of exclusively B2B SaaS and Cloud we are ideally positioned to do exactly that.

One thing we know for sure growing a portfolio of 30, 40, 50+ companies will consume a lot of intellectual horsepower and human capital.

We are actively building out that network - we have identified more than 200 experts, advisors, board members, and executives - a number of which we have now published on our site, with many more to come.

If you are interested in joining this growing community and working with some of the most innovative companies in Europe then please let us know by completing the simple form below.

Posted by Stephen Millard, Chief Platform Officer, Notion Capital.