We’re super excited to announce three new members of the Notion investment team.

Stephanie Opdam joined us in September from the London-based venture debt team at Columbia Lake Partners where she was a Senior Associate. A Dutch national, she has a BBA from Erasmus University Rotterdam, a Masters in Finance & Private Equity from LSE and has passed all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst program, so she brings amazing analytical horsepower to the team and is already challenging the way we look at things.

Kam Mieczakowski joined us in October from Mosaic Ventures where he was a Business Operations Associate and, prior to that, Head of Demand Gen and Sales Opps at London-based Fintech company Market Invoice. Whilst he will focus on deal sourcing and evaluation in market, he also brings extensive data and systems skills which will help us drive process efficiency improvements across the firm. A Polish national and self-taught programmer, Kam holds a Bachelor of Laws degree and postgrad LPC from Northumbria University business school as well as studying Data Analysis and Computer Programming at Stanford University.

And finally our most recent and most senior addition, Itxaso del Palacio Aguirre will join us shortly from M12 (Microsoft Ventures) where she was an Investment Partner and led their investments into several great European B2B tech companies such as OnFido, Beamery and Notion portfolio companies Unbabel and Hazy. A Spanish-Basque national, she is both a Kauffman Fellow and a Teaching Fellow in Entrepreneurship at UCL, with a PhD in Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital and a Masters in Engineering, both from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. She also studied Business Administration & Venture Capital at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkley. Itxaso is truly committed to building the best B2B tech portfolio in Europe. She brings huge passion and energy to everything she does and can run the socks off the rest of the Notion team (even Jos), so I am sure she will have a profound impact on the firm.

All three have founded their own start-ups previously so have ‘walked a mile in the shoes’ of the entrepreneurs we seek to back – something we value highly at Notion, where every senior team member has done so. And diversity is also very important to us (across all dimensions) as we believe that only through diverse opinions and perspectives will we make the best decisions for the firm. On gender, these appointments bring the Notion team to 50:50 male:female which, although bound to vary over time as the business evolves, is something I am hugely proud of given our all male founding heritage and feel lives up to our brand promise as charter members of Diversity VC and the #FiftyFiftyPledge. On nationality it’s a big step in the right direction too but with more work to do of course. I nonetheless feel we are making great strides and are tremendously well positioned across the whole of Europe with seven nationalities and nine different languages covered.

I feel very proud that we can attract talent like this to our firm. It’s a big statement of intent about our plans and ambitions and I feel hugely excited about what the future holds at Notion.

Stephen