James Meekings
Partner & Chief Platform Officer at Entrepreneur First
James Meekings
Partner & Chief Platform Officer at Entrepreneur First
London Area, United Kingdom
Overview
Work Experience
Partner & Chief Platform Officer
2024 - Current
We invest in the world's top technical talent and support them to build world-class startups in London, North America, Paris and Bangalore. The companies that we’ve helped to build from scratch are now worth over $10bn.
Non Executive Director
2022
Thirdfort turns compliance into a competitive advantage. Digital ID, automated AML, and Source of Funds checks in one platform. +1.5m people in the UK have used the Thirdfort app to protect themselves and +1,000 businesses across legal, property and financial services. All since 2019.
Investor & Advisor
2019
Investing in pre-seed to series A start-ups across most sectors, inc fintech (payments/credit/moneymanagement/insurance), healthtech and travel.
Venture Partner
2020 - 2021
Breega propels pioneering and purpose-driven founders from idea into impact. Crafted for founders by founders, investing across Europe with +€500M under management. Focused on Pre-Seed to Series A+.
Co-Founder and UK Managing Director
2015 - 2019
Funding Circle is a small business lending platform using tech and data to revolutionise the way small businesses borrow. More than £13bn has been lent to > 120,000 businesses across Europe and the US. Funding Circle listed on the LSE Sept 2018. Responsibility for managing the UK business (Strategy,commercial,operations,risk,product,people, regulation, P&L,etc), accounting for ~70% of global revenues. Series E >Post-IPO (+$500m)
Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer
2013 - 2015
Driving marketplace growth across investors and small business borrrowers. Series C > Series D ($102m)
Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer
2009 - 2013
Customer and brand growth, inc performance marketing (digital/direct), ATL, PR/comms, government relations, indirect channel partners and brand. Focus on retail (consumer) investors and small business borrowers. Seed > Series B ($21m)
Marketing Scholar
2012 - 2013
The Marketing Academy draws together a team of high profile business leaders and innovators to inspire, develop and coach the UK's best Marketing talent. The MA Scholarship provides 30 places on a year-long leadership development programme for the fastest rising marketing talent in the UK.
Bid Consultant, England 2018 Ltd
2009 - 2009
Secondment within England 2018, the team bidding for England to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018. Primary focus was with the technical bid team including the responsibility for the delivery of the Economic Impact Assessment and the staging budget process. The EIA positioned the bid to be the most commercially successful World Cup in history which was the primary selection criteria set out by FIFA. Unfortunately, they changed their mind.
Senior Consultant
2007 - 2009
Worked as a Senior Consultant providing insight and clear thinking to the most complex issues faced by management. Responsibilities included managing teams and delivering project modules. Projects included commercial and vendor due diligence cases for £billion transactions, corporate strategy within multiple sectors, retail expansion and transformation projects.
Associate Consultant
2005 - 2007
Focus on building sophisticated financial models and carrying out rigorous research to assess market opportunities for clients.