Arya Tandon

Co-Founder

2024

Visiting Fellow

2024

Zinc backs exceptional talent to build new commercial solutions that solve the most pressing societal issues. As a Zinc Visiting Fellow, I support the cohort of 50 talented founders to build commercial, scalable businesses that tackle some of the toughest problems facing people and the planet.

Founder

2023

Embarc is an events-based community for the entrepreneurs & innovators of tomorrow. We’re taking future founders from 0 to 1 - helping people to quit their jobs to build things they care about, and making the difference between founding & not-founding. We're a VC-backed start-up holding events across London, with partners including Google, Snowflake, Entrepreneur First, Antler and more. 1k+ members and counting. Sign up here: https://www.embarc.club/

Investor

2022 - 2024

Pre-seed & seed, operations & data. Led Notion Capital's high-velocity strategy - "start-up within a VC" - investing in ~1 start-up per week with angel-style cheques. I focused on healthtech and vertical AI/ML applications, as well as investing across vertical SaaS, climatetech & traditional industries. Half investor, half strategy & ops. Product Manager for Notion's in-house deal-sourcing software. Developed data-driven strategy, improving investment process & tech stack. Managed angel network across Europe. Investments: Fertifa (Board Observer), Vivan Therapeutics, Trunk.works, Humble AI, Fixed Construction, Kestrix, SeeChange, Fantix AI. Notion Capital is a leading venture capital firm investing in B2B software in Europe. Notion is also the founder of Included VC, a programme diversifying the VC industry. I was also a partner VC and judge for Focal, Europe's leading open access demo day. Before Notion, I picked up basics of angel investing, investing in a couple of start-ups. Briefly worked with an angel investor syndicate, helping with operations & dealflow for investments at pre-seed & seed.

Special Projects

2022 - 2022

Worked closely with the founders to drive cross-functional projects spanning Operations, Partnerships, Marketing and Recruitment, as Encord's 2nd business-function employee. Focused on commercial efforts on the healthcare AI side in radiology. Encord's (YC W21) mission is to enable every company to unlock the power of practical AI. Managed existing partnerships & inbound
leads, led marketing (website/media), led SOC 2 process incl. vendor procurement, sourced first SDRs & ran interviews.

Technical Product Manager

2021 - 2022

Founding Team member at Academy, a LocalGlobe-backed edtech start-up retraining grads from diverse backgrounds into software engineering. I worked as Product Manager for a team of software engineers, as "Chief of Staff" for the Head of Tech, and on strategic initiatives with the Co-Founders. • Single-handedly owned Academy's B Corp registration from start to finish over 5 months. Placed in the top 5% with a score of 116, Academy was recognized as a B Lab 2022 Best For The World™ company. • Built Academy Data Central from scratch – a comprehensive data product capturing real-time, granular insights on trainees & customers. Proved our impact to partners, investors & the public. • Product Manager for a team of 3 software engineers, building a learning assistant bot to support our trainees & teaching faculty, and automate data collection. • Worked on Academy's investor pitch for Series A & analysis of European tech markets for expansion. Wrote our "Work from Anywhere" playbook & our first industry white paper on diversity in tech.

Special Projects Lead

2021 - 2022

Driving cross-functional efforts across brand (mission & comms), people (culture), product, programme & operations to launch impactful initiatives that help Academy deliver on its mission.

Trainee Software Engineer

2021 - 2021

Founding Scholar at Academy, part of their first cohort of software engineers. Completed 4 months of fullstack software engineering training via Academy's programme.

Offer Holder - BCG Tech Advantage

2020 - 2021

Former offer holder for an Associate position with BCG Tech Advantage - generalist consulting on tech cases, BCG's fastest-growing practice. Turned it down to go straight into start-ups instead.

Research Assistant

2020 - 2021

Research Assistant for Dr. Blake Ewing at Pembroke College, Oxford. Worked with Dr. Ewing and Dr. Félix Krawtzek of ZOiS Berlin and Nuffield College, Oxford on political science (statistical) analysis of the use of "crisis" language and oppositional behaviour in the UK Parliament over time. Also worked as a research assistant as part of a joint project involving Oxford's DPIR (Department of Politics and International Relations) and WildCRU (Wildlife Conservation Research Unit), Department of Zoology. Analysed conservation policies in manifestos for political parties around the world.

Event Organiser

2020 - 2020

SINCE 9/11 is a charity countering extremism through education. I worked on the SINCE 9/11 Virtual Student Summit, an online classroom event co-hosted with the world no. 1 ranked UCL Institute of Education shown in ~300 schools with an audience of up to 10,000 students & teachers.

Oxford Foundry Student Fellow 2019/20

2019 - 2020

Responsible for co-creating entrepreneurial programmes and initiatives with the Oxford Foundry, the University of Oxford’s entrepreneurship campus. One of a number of student and society leaders on the Oxford Foundry's student advisory board.