A UK founder moved to San Francisco for what was supposed to be one year to run Huddle's US operations, then stayed 16 years. After selling Huddle in 2016, he joined Softech VC with $150 million under management. The firm, now called Uncork, has grown to $1.3 billion AUM with 15-17 employees.
Chapters
Although I live in San Francisco now, born and raised in the UK, started a startup with one of my best friends, a guy called Ali Mitchell, called Huddle back in 2007 in London. And we raised our Series A out there. We did our Series B from a US Silicon Valley VC in 2010. And so they said they wanted one of the founders to move out here and kind of get the US business set up. Now, you know, I think at that point we were probably beginning to scratch on about 100 people in the UK. And so I went out with like 2 suitcases thinking I was going to be in Silicon Valley for a year, you know, hire the sales leadership, hire the marketing leadership, hire all the kind of customer success and GTM, and then go back to London and continue to run products. And of course, I'm sure, you know, you talk to other Europeans and everybody has like a similar story where you come and you blink and before you know it, it's been, you know, 5, 10, 15+ years. And so I've been here for 16 years now. We sold the company in 2016 and I had stepped back. The year prior to join the team at Uncorked, back when it was called Softech VC, to basically be their enterprise software investor. Back then, you know, we were investing out of our fourth fund. We probably had maybe $150 million under management. Today, fast forward, investing out of our eighth seed fund and our fourth opportunity fund, basically $1.3 billion AUM, 15, 16, maybe even, you know, I think scratching on 17 people. In the team as well. So it's been kind of awesome to, to be involved in the, uh, story there of the growth from, you know, like a little seed fund to now something that feels a little bit more like a franchise.
