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Why strategy trumps metrics on the journey to Series B
Talks about Series B funding, startup strategy and metrics vs. strategy
IG
Imran Ghory
Partner at Blossom Capital
IG
Imran Ghory
Partner at Blossom Capital
London, England
Overview
Imran Ghory is a Partner at Blossom Capital in London, with a background in start-ups, trading systems, software development, and entrepreneurship. He has successfully invested in companies like TheyDo and Tines, demonstrating his expertise in Series A and Series B investments within sectors such as FinTech and Marketplaces.
Work Experience
Partner
2018 - Current
Co-founder of Blossom Capital, Europe's leading Series A focused VC firm. Portfolio includes Checkout, Moonpay, Tines, Pigment, Frontify, Spacelift and Cado.
Head of Data Insights
2015 - 2017
Led our team spanning data science, data infra engineering and BI. Member of the exec team as the company scaled from Seed to Series B.
Investment Team
2012 - 2014
Led data-driven deal sourcing across seed/venture/growth. Also worked on evaluation of tech infra investments and on internal projects supporting our portfolio companies.
Index Ventures is a venture capital firm that helps the entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.
Founder
2010 - 2012
Founded the UK's leading developer-first recruitment platform. CoderStack reached more than 7,000 software developers each month, working with some of the top technology and media companies at the time (include Cisco, MetaSwitch, deviantArt and Net-a-Porter).
VP Engineering / FX Developer
2010 - 2010
Led the development of Dresdner Kleinwort's (acquired by Commerzbank) eFX Spot pricing system (algos, architecture, global price distribution). The pricing system was responsible for the real-time pricing of billions of euros of currency transactions across all major currency pairs on a daily basis, both via direct client trades and via the major FX markets (ICAP, Reuters, etc).
FX Software Developer (Front-Office)
2007 - 2010
Worked on the design and development of low-latency/high-frequency pricing and trading systems. Combinined solid business knowledge and in-depth understanding of full technology stack (algorithms, java, linux, hardware, network) to achieve PnL maximizing optimizations of latency and throughput. Used strong knowledge of Java (J2SE) and TCP/IP optimization and worked with JRE and Kernel source code to ensure optimizations were as effective as possible. Sat with trading desk and worked with quants on a daily basis to develop FX Spot pricing algorithms.
Software Developer (Fixed Income Electronic Trading)
2006 - 2007
Project manager and developer for credit derivative (credit default swap) settlement system. Worked directly with both our internal business team and external partners. Managed project resources and was involved in a hands-on capacity in the development on both GUI and server side. Prior work included an Interest Rate Swap trade ticketing system and protocol/log analysis tools.
Equities Software Developer
2004 - 2006
Worked as a developer for Bloomberg's industry-standard Equity VWAP and CIX price engines. Led the development of TCA<go> an application for equity transaction cost analysis. I was also involved in running the department's graduate recruitment scheme for which my duties included CV screening, interviewing and running career stands at milkround events.