Jack’s focus at Dawn is helping the companies we back tell their stories to the right audience: using the right medium, at the right time. He does the same for Dawn itself.
One of my favourite conversations at Dawn so far was with one of our investment team, who was listing to me the first jobs of the founders we back - often ones they had as children. It’s the kind of thing our team likes to know.
The list included an insurtech founder from Rotherham whose first job at 9 was washing cars, and a data analytics unicorn whose founder helped his parents, immigrants from India, in their cash and carry business in South London. Another played for Saracens, which is apparently a rugby team.
Aside from demonstrating the varied backgrounds of Dawn-backed founders, it also occurred to me that even my very first job, in a care home approx 200 miles north of London at 16, had been about communication. To be an effective and respected bingo caller you have to be very good at communication.
Communication has always been my focus: first as a student, reading Modern and Medieval Languages (more the former than the latter); before stints in politics, the NGO world, corporate communications in agency-land and now at Dawn. I also spent some time in Taiwan, studying Mandarin.
In that time I’ve gone from picking up a landline phone to call the Daily Mirror, to pitching live tech video podcasts for our founders.
I have the most fun job at Dawn: helping both the companies we back and our own team tell great stories about what they do, and the world we work in.
Outside of work, like many people of a certain age, I work on keeping my Strava current. Drop me a line if you’d like to join the Dawn Run Club, or if you’re interested in speaking to the companies we back about their story.
Before joining Dawn, Jack was an Associate Director at Milltown Partners where he advised innovative tech companies, corporate CEOs, and investors. He has over a decade of experience in high-pressure communications roles spanning the political, non-profit and corporate spheres.
Jack holds a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages from the University of Cambridge, with additional studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and National Taiwan Normal University.