Simba Deu

Chief of Staff
2024
Building the future of AI in Healthcare, starting with the $950bn burden of US Healthcare Administration — backed by Sequoia, NEA, Mustafa Suleyman (founder of Google DeepMind and and CEO of Microsoft AI), and other pioneers in AI and Healthcare.

2023 - 2024

Chief of Staff
2023 - 2024
Vital has built an all-in-one API that enables health companies to connect to any wearable or medical device on the market and carry out 50 State lab testing across kits/phlebotomy or walk-ins. I was right hand to the Founder & CEO working across all areas of the business (growth, strategy and operations). I joined at the Seed and help grow the company to the Series A. It was my job to solve the most critical problems and unlock the founder's time this included: 1) Sales: Building the sales playbook from scratch, mapping ICP, helping to set up the tech stack. Representing the company at conferences 2) Marketing: Creating and executing marketing strategy 3) Compliance: Driving SOC II and ISO 27001 Compliance 4) Operations: Hiring, designing interview plans, performance feedback, keeping a pulse on company culture, organizing offsites, orchestrating and supporting fundraising.

2021 - 2023

Co-Founder
2021 - 2023
Cohort-based community and startup education hub on a mission to increase the share of women in startups. We are starting our next batches in Summer 2023! 🦋

2020 - 2022

Investor
2020 - 2022
La Famiglia is an early-stage VC fund, investing across Europe and the US, primarily in b2b software (now a part of General Catalyst) I was the second junior investor for La Famiglia based in Berlin. I supported ten investments during my time including; Deel, Sweep, Applied Intuition, Fides, and sourced Fever Energy. Aside from conducting countless due diligences from sourcing to Investment Committee, I spent time 'selling the fund' to founders, orchestrate our quarterly newsletter, dealflow sharing with our LPs and developed a strong interest for HR Tech, Developer tooling and Crypto. I also supported senior members in their board/strategy sessions with portfolio companies.

2020 - 2020

Summer Intern
2020 - 2020
I rotated across three of Atomico's teams (Insights, Investment and Investor Relations) providing me with a holistic view of how a fund is structured and operates. I learnt how to develop an actionable investment thesis by speaking to experts, speaking to operators in leading companies, researching/thinking about previous market patterns and building a hypothesis in a given segment. Guided by Tom Wehmeier, I developed and presented my thesis on Moats and Defensibility, inspired Helmer's '7 Powers'. Here I analyzed successful companies, the Atomico portfolio and 'anti-portfolio' to understand which moats these companies had or lacked. Guided by Partner Sasha Astafyeva, I also presented a thesis on Future Consumer trends.

2019 - 2020

Operations and Product
2019 - 2020
Platoon is Apple's music incubator, that discovers, invests and grows exceptional music artists. Team based across London, Cape Town and San Francisco. I worked closely with the COO and the Head of Product. With strong PMF, my role was centered around helping to scale the business. It consisted of three main parts across Biz Dev/Ops and Product: 1) Creating weekly and monthly business reports of our European, African and US artists, tracking against core business KPIs which were sent to VP of Apple Music 2) Managing our weekly artist pipeline. I worked closely with the COO and Legal to orchestrate the terms and execute the contracts. 3) I co-Product Managed the development Platoon's iOS App with team-mates in San Francisco. The app unified artists' royalties, gave visibility of their listener analytics across distribution providers and enabled them to directly post their music to providers. I worked on this from ideation to beta phase. Going deep into artist royalties for the iOS app I developed a keen interest in how to leverage smart contracts, token-gated communities and NFTs to help our artists get paid quicker and develop alternative revenue streams.

2018 - 2018

SMB Sales
2018 - 2018
My internship had two parts: 1) Sales - Sales of Google Adwords to SMB's in UK and Ireland. I generated £250K revenue across a portfolio of 60 SMB's. I learnt what effective b2b sales looks like, how to upsell/cross-sell and help companies optimise their Adword spend. 2) Operations - I worked with management on a operations streamlining project to improve sales efficiency and employee satisfaction. Declined offer to come back and join full-time.

2017 - 2018

Strategy and Operations
2017 - 2018
JKS is a Michelin Star Restaurant group, owners of Brigadiers, Hoppers, Bao, Gymkhana, XU, Lyle’s among others. My role had three main parts: 1) Strategy - Worked with CEO to identify optimal market entry (location, competition, dish price, theme) for new take-away venture. JKS was early in its adoption of 'ghost kitchens' with 'Motu' and I saw its growth from one to three kitchens during my time. Observed negotiations with leading food delivery marketplaces and partnership creation with leading beverage alcohol providers. 2)Operations - Supported on concept development of the restaurant 'Brigadiers' from ideation to construction. Developed an understanding of restaurant value chain, from securing real estate, managing restaurant construction/design, food/drink menu creation and procurement of food and alcohol. Developed an understanding of the restaurant 'tech stack' e.g. procurement tools, Point-of-sale tools, restaurant management software and delivery/logistics software. 3)Grafting - Developed a deep understanding of restaurant business, working across back-office and front-office which included; waiting on tables, operating the reservations hotline, wine-tasting sessions for new menus, attending food photoshoots for publications, meeting PR teams, attending restaurant openings, meeting renowned food critics such as Nick Lander.

Chief of Staff at Anterior