Claire Davenport on career bets, leading through change & getting more women into the C-suite

0:00Anyone can lead when things are going well, right? Where you learn to lead is when things are not going well or in a crisis. That's when you get your leadership chops, really.

0:15Claire Davenport:Welcome back to 40 Minute Mentor, the podcast on a mission to raise aspirations and inspire the next generation of category-defining founders, all in just 40 minutes. Today, we're joined by Claire Davenport, a seasoned leader in the European tech scene. Claire started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan before holding leadership roles at some of the best known tech brands in the world, including as chief of staff at Skype and holding CEO roles at Voucher Codes, HelloFresh and Not on the High Street. Fast forward to today and Claire is a prominent figure in the tech world as a non-exec director, an angel investor and COO at Multiverse.

0:52Claire Davenport:She's also a staunch advocate for women leaders, having founded Witsend, a network supporting women in senior executive roles. I'm really honoured to have Claire Jornis on the podcast and share her brilliant mentorship with you all today. So Claire, a big warm welcome to 40 Minute Mentor. How are you? Very well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to warm you up with a few quickfire questions as we always do on the podcast. So if you don't mind, please can you finish the following sentences after me? Question one. The moment that defined my career was...

1:26My boyfriend at university said he didn't think I could get into investment banking, implying that this was because I didn't have the right background.

1:34Claire Davenport:That is not the right thing to say. And you certainly proved him wrong. Okay. Okay. Interesting. What was the background that he felt wasn't right for investment banking? I've got to say he was a great guy, but he just, he said, I said, look, he'd got a job offer. He was a couple of years ahead of me and he got a job offer after his summer internship for a full-time job. And he was running around college being very excited about this job offer. and I said anybody could be an investment banker I could do it and he said I don't think so and that was like it was like a red rag to a bull I thought I've not not worked this hard to get into university to then be told that another door is shut to me because of my background or whatever so that was kind of the beginning of that and I ended up only applying to the banks that had rejected him and that's how I ended up at Goldman.

2:19Claire Davenport:Oh fantastic that's the way to do it love it. Great way to choose a career despite your ex-boyfriend. I love that though. It's so funny. When I was starting my recruitment career, Michael Page, I got told very early on that I was terrible at business development. And then fast forward three years, I started JBM. And I guess 13 years on, I can't be that bad at business development. So I've always used things like that to really stoke the fires within and prove people wrong. So I'm absolutely here for it. Second question, the biggest lesson I've learned about leadership is? You have to live up to a leadership role.

2:54I think you have to go in every day ready to lead.

2:58Claire Davenport:Yeah, I love that. I love it. It's so true. And it's something that I think a lot of founders, maybe they have a great idea and they start a business, but then not always experienced leaders. And it's something that often comes with experience and actually sometimes learning from people around you. So have you found in the earlier parts of your career, did you find there are certain leaders that really kind of led by example that you really learned from or really inspired by? Or was that something, do you think, innate within you, that leadership quality? I definitely don't think that leadership is innate.

3:27I definitely think it can be a learned skill. I think there were a lot of leaders that I have learned from over time. And some of them I've learned, you know, yes, I want to be more like that. Some of them I've really looked up to and some I've thought, okay, I like that bit of what you do, but I wouldn't do like that doesn't sit very well with me. So I think you kind of see things that you could try on for size and woodwork and things that wouldn't and things that you like about what people do or what you find inspiring and things that you don't. For me, the thing that I really remember was when I was running voucher codes, I used to, the office was on the sixth floor of the ITV building and every day I had little kids at home and often it was raining and I had to make my way across town from Paddington from my commute and so on.

4:13And I remember I get to the sixth floor in the lift and I go then to walk into the front doors of voucher codes and every day just putting my shoulders back putting my chin up and going in ready right gonna leave this company today I sort of walking through the doors no ready to kind of bring some energy say hello to some people that kind of thing and I think it was that feeling really like you notice yourself when you're working for different leaders that you're looking to them for whatever it is, that energy or kind of how they're feeling about things and so on. And so you kind of owe it to people, I think, in those leadership roles to bring that and so that when they are looking at you, then they're taking something away from it.

5:00Sometimes I say, your day might look like a day of meetings as a CEO, but for everybody else, that's their meeting with the CEO that day, you know, and that's what I think you have to

5:11Claire Davenport:remember it's that piece yeah I love that such a good answer thank you a skill I wish I had mastered earlier in my career is so asking for advice from people who are more experienced than me I just I came to that too late now that I'm old I see things that I could add to people if they were in their 20s or their 30s if I could change one thing about how companies build teams it would be spending time talking about what's working and what's not working within the team and its dynamic, not just on the sort of the order of the day and the business decisions. Thank you very much. Well, we've warmed you up nicely there, Claire.

5:51Claire Davenport:I'm going to dive into your fantastic career and hear all your mentorship. But before we get to that, I always like to start at the beginning. So we'd love to learn a bit more about your earlier life and upbringing and sort of how that set you up I guess for the person and leader you are today can you tell us a bit more about that and your maybe your early career aspirations sure so I grew up in a small town in the Midlands went to a comprehensive school my parents were teachers my dad taught me history actually at my school all I remember about my early career thoughts were a my parents always saying don't be a teacher you haven't got the patience for it and be just thinking I remember sitting by a rainy window one day just thinking whatever I do for a living and I must have been about 10 at the time I don't want to have to work outside that was as far as I got I do think that growing up in a small town is a very in some ways it's a very limiting factor in people's aspirations I've thought this more and more as I've grown older because the sorts of careers you can aspire to if you grow up and the only careers you've heard of are kind of what your parents do and then the local vet, doctor, dentist, what professions might you come in in contact with, your solicitor, plumber, head teacher, police, etc.

7:14Then that is your world, right? And so you haven't met people who work for big pharmaceutical companies or who run large companies, especially where I grew up, there wasn't a train station, people weren't commuting into London or Birmingham or whatever. So it was very much kind of local type careers. I think that does limit people.

7:32Claire Davenport:Yeah, it's so true. It really resonates with me. Both my parents are teachers and my mum taught me. She taught me and I was about, I think about 12 religious studies and I hated every second of it and I didn't put my hand up in class all year. It was mortifying. My class called my dad, dad. Everybody just called him dad and sort of worked out for me. It was just too much to call him sir in front of my friends, you know? Yeah, amazing. Well, you have gone on to you didn't go down the teaching path. Probably like me, I am not a particularly patient person, so I think that wasn't going to be the path for me to.

8:02Claire Davenport:But you've gone on to have this stellar career. So I know a lot of our listeners will be aware of you from all the great companies you've worked at, but do you mind giving them just a quick whistle-stop tour of your CV? Yeah, sure. I'm not going to list every role because they're happening quite a lot. But I started in investment banking, as per the story you heard earlier, wanting to prove that I could in spite of my ex-boyfriend's views on that. And then I went to work for a big corporate. So after 10 years in banking, I went to work for my biggest client, which is RTL Group, which is the biggest European television broadcaster at the time when YouTube was coming in and there might be disruption.

8:38So I went to run strategy and online there based in Nutzenberg. And then by that time, I knew I wanted to be a CEO eventually and hopefully sit on boards after that. And so I pivoted a few times. I had no operating experience, so pivoted to be chief of staff at Skype first. And then I took a chief commercial and marketing officer role for a games company, got my first role running a company voucher codes back in the UK, which I did for a few years and then went to run HelloFresh UK and then Not On High Street, which we sold to private equity at the top of the pandemic. And then I joined the board of Trustpilot around the same time.

9:21After I left not on the high street, I had a bit of a break to have a think about what I wanted to do next. Took a role with a purpose close to my heart and joined Multiverse as the COO last summer.

9:34Claire Davenport:Love it. What a rich tapestry of opportunities and experiences you've had. We're going to come on to, we're going to dig into some of those experiences in a bit more detail, but you've clearly seen some very significant milestones and been on teams that you're at Skype through the Salta to Microsoft. And you went through taking Nottingham High Street through Salta Private Equity and Trustpilot through the IPO. These are incredible experiences. So did you purposefully seek out companies at a particular stage to go through those experiences? What was the thinking behind all those different sort of industries and stages that you joined the businesses at funnily enough i put my cv a number of us were putting our cvs into notebook recently notebook lm and then you can press a button and it generates a podcast to talk about your cv and it's two sort of i guess fake american hosts i generated american hosts and they're like wow what's the red thread here and they're like i think this person likes a challenge and i was thinking yeah that's probably one i guess i'm drawn to sectors and companies facing kind of pivotal moments or something is going on and you need a plan and there's a change or a crisis or a disruption.

10:48I loved working on IPOs or M &A transactions as a banker. Then I saw Napster disrupting the music industry and I was just like, wow, what could this mean for other industries? And YouTube was just starting up. What did it mean for television? So I went to a television company one of my customers there skype was disrupting international telephony with video calling and if it hasn't been a sector undergoing disruption i've usually gone to companies where they need an act two or they need a new strategy so yeah i guess it's fair to say i like i like something going on i'm comfortable with a lot of change i just i love finding a path forward and getting a team kind of to kind of come up with the next step and kind of go and execute on it

11:30Claire Davenport:Yeah, it definitely seems to be a thread of a lot of our guests is sort of that up for a challenge, sort of seeing the future, really leaning into those challenges and then getting excited about going on those really gnarly journeys. And clearly you've done that multiple times. And if you've got a lot of founders among your listener group, obviously, that is exactly what they do, seeing that opportunity or that pain point that they can go and solve. I've never been an entrepreneurial type, so I tend to go in alongside a founder or after a founder or for the next stage as it kind of scales. Yeah, it's interesting because given all your experience, was there ever a time where you thought, I'm going to found something myself?

12:08Claire Davenport:Or do you just prefer sort of taking over from those founders and taking businesses to the next scale or solving a really difficult problem for them? I've never had a good idea. I've never had an idea that was good enough to invest my career in, I guess I would say. I think I recognize a good idea when I hear it or see it. And I, although my engine investments haven't always proved that to be true, but I think that's where I've invested my career in. And once it's got to a certain level, 100, 200 people, 500 people, what's the next stage of scale? How do we make it? How can we get it to take the next step and really scale it up?

12:46So I'm much more interested in that piece after the initial build is done, I think.

12:50Claire Davenport:And you mentioned that you're certainly not afraid of a difficult challenge. And I imagine you've seen some really, really difficult ones over the years. So has there any, what's been the most challenging aspect of your career or the biggest problem you've had to solve and why? Yeah, I was thinking about this yesterday and I have definitely been sleepless nights along the way. I would say, I think a lot of people will probably answer similarly, but eight months after I took over at Not On The High Street when the pandemic hit and the COVID lockdown started, I think that was challenging in how much we had to do.

13:22So suddenly sent everybody home overnight. We had 5 ,000 plus small businesses, which can range from a couple of people up to dozens, who needed HR advice, who needed legal advice, who needed moral support, who needed to know what was going to happen with their business. So they were needing a lot of support. And our numbers then took off. Everybody at home was suddenly not commuting, had a bit more cash on their hands, wanted to, took the opportunity to do up their house, send each other gifts, buy a fire pit for the garden. So the numbers, so not on the high streets, revenue really started growing and then helping all of these businesses coping while everybody was at home.

14:05And at the same time, we hit the button on a sale process to find new investors. and in February 21 so about eight ten months later we sold the business to private equity at that point so all that was going on from home I had two teenagers they were being homeschooled so lots of decisions lots of things going on decisions needing making quickly but you know the team really pulled together and we did have the best year ever for not on the high street at at the time for all of the small businesses you know it was great to see people getting their gifts and you know bringing joy to lots of customers and so on and and obviously getting new investors for the company so it was uh turned out okay but it was just a lot yeah so many

14:49Claire Davenport:unknowns and uh it was actually an amazing time terrifying of course and there's so many awful things about that period but there was also incredible entrepreneurialism and creativity and exceptional leadership shown in that time and i think it's something that a lot of a lot of the founders that have come on this podcast to talk to you how they navigated it I think it brought the best out of a lot of people as well if you can overcome that you can probably overcome anything and it's certainly something that I look back on I wouldn't say fondly but I certainly learned a lot from the experience yeah there's a lot of community spirit a lot of people trying to help each other out and then I think just I say to people anyone can lead when things are going well right it's where you learn to lead is when things are not going well or in a crisis that's when you get get your leadership chops really so there's definitely those things come to the fore i'd love to come on and talk about being a ceo because you're a seasoned ceo you've seen different experiences and i know will be a very aspirational career to a lot of people listening to this so when you think back to that first ceo gig how did you find that transition and what were some of the skills that you really needed to upskill on because you mentioned earlier that you knew you wanted to become a CEO and therefore we're probably optimizing to get to that point.

16:00Claire Davenport:So I'd love to hear a bit about that transition and what you had to upskill on to get to that point where you're comfortable stepping into that role. So I get asked this question quite a lot because I've been doing these walk and talks, I call them, for a few times a week for the last six or seven years where I have a slot book to do a kind of career chat or mentoring chat after work on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This is one of the topics that comes up a lot alongside how do I get my first board role. And what I tend to say to people is broaden out your skill set. So it's quite hard to give you a CEO role if you've just done marketing or you've just done tech.

16:36You need to try and take on kind of cross-functional projects or initiatives to show you can kind of have that overall view and stitch it all together. Secondly, you probably need to have delivered numbers at some point. A lot of headhunters told me this, you know, when I was trying to pick up operational experience. You need to run ideally a commercial team. doesn't always happen to be that, but that is, it's hard to give a job to somebody who hasn't at some point run a team and driven that team to deliver some numbers or outperform some numbers. So showing that you can do that is really important.

17:09Build your connection to a headhunter network. So try to be, even if you're not interested in the role, if it's a good role, try to be helpful when they call, try to make sure that you recommend people that the headhunters know what you're looking for. Try and get some exposure to a board at some point. So you could be an observer, you could get invited to a few board meetings, something that allows you to see kind of how boards function, because that's who you'll be reporting to as a CEO and who you'll be interviewed by. And then look for a mentor or a sponsor who can give you honest feedback, and perhaps the confidence that you're ready to take on that bigger role.

17:45Someone who mentions your name in rooms, you know, that they always say that that's what needs to happen is your name needs to be said in the room that you're not in and then build this community of peers so that they can give you moral support or they can share opportunities or whatever it is so they're the things that I tend to recommend to people thinking about how to work towards a CEO role.

18:07Claire Davenport:Love that answer and there's so many things there I agree with all of it but I think it's really nice to hear the headhunter point because I think there are always going to be not the best examples in our industry and it's not always had the greatest rep, but my personal opinion, there are amazing headhunters out there who really want to build a long-term relationship, really want to invest time in getting to know you and your career and your motivations and really be there for the long run. And that's exactly the mantra of JBM. And so I always find it a real shame when you see candidates being very transactional and sort of not willing to invest time in actually building that connection.

18:43Claire Davenport:because I think the ones that do, I am forever keeping them in mind, not just the time they're active in the market, but I will always be thinking of them when I'm pitching for new searches, when I'm just out and about. And you can just be there all the time. And it's very similar to playing it forward. I'll always go above and beyond to chat to anybody at any time if they need my advice. And it's sort of a really nice two-way relationship. Yeah, certainly some of my headhunter relationships have been very pivotal in my career. I love to recommend people for roles. I love to hear from people, oh, I got a call from a headhunter, thanks for putting my name forward, because it just goes to show that you feel good about people and you can recommend them and so on.

19:22And often they do end up getting experience from that or actually getting the role. And sometimes you're being put forward for a role yourself as a kind of left field candidate. And some people don't want to do that. But really, it's good experience and it's helpful for the headhunter. It's helpful for you. Those relationships, they sort of become friends over time, I think.

19:43Claire Davenport:And I would definitely say if there are people listening to this that haven't had the best experience of working with headhunters, that there are great ones out there. And once you have that connection, really lean into that and really build that relationship. It's well worth it. You joined Multiverse as COO in the summer of 24. We've had the co-founder and CEO Ewan on the podcast twice, actually, and his co-founder, Sophie. So I'm sure lots of our listeners will know the story of Multiverse and have seen the incredible scale it's been on. What made the job stand out to you? And I'd be particularly interested in why you chose to go for a CLO role after years in the top job.

20:17Well, hopefully it's become apparent by now, but like I really like being around disruption and I really care about sort of leveling the playing field and making sure that, you know, opportunities are equally spread. Multiverse really does both of those things. So I met Ewan years ago and he also believes in equality of opportunity. And so we had a lot of values in common. I always thought he had like big, big plans and systemic level plans. And I always thought we might end up working together. And then the stars aligned really for me to join Multiverse last summer and come in and work with Ewan to kind of effectively sort of scale the company.

21:01and make full use of the opportunity. So it was really that. It's like AI is changing the world. This disruption is so big and multiverse is really at the heart of that. And in terms of like up-leveling people with the right skill sets to be successful with the bar basically reset because of AI, that is just too good an opportunity to not be a part of. And we're doing that probably more scale than other people through, than anyone else through these apprenticeships and so on so it just i don't know it just really brings everything that i care about together

21:35Claire Davenport:yeah i love it i'm a huge believer in what you're building and you and his fantastic founder it's just an it's such an exciting challenge i'm not surprised you decided to go for it we know that every coo role is very different so we'd love to know what sort of shape yours takes and in your experience sort of what it is that really makes a strong coo because we have um a lot of i mean jbn i guess one of the areas especially is in his placing coos we have a lot of aspiring coos that listen to this podcast so i'd love your take on that and a bit more insight into the role as it is today yeah i mean coos as you know can take a huge amount of different forms and i would split them into kind of two buckets if you like and there's the coos of companies which are very operationally heavy so hello fresh is a good example of that where there are hundreds of thousands of food boxes going out and ingredients coming in that need to be put together and that's quite different from a COO role in a kind of digital only company.

22:33So they can be quite different, the titles. If you're in a more digital company, I think it's really dependent on the CEO and their skill set, what they're good at and then what you need to complement that and where the company is at the time and the role needs playing. So perhaps I would say, and I'm still trying to figure this out myself, what's a great COO look like, but I think you need to be able to adapt you need to be able to adapt what role you play to what the company needs at the time and that might change over time you need to be able to connect the strategy to the actual operations the actual things that people do so being able to interpret the vision or the strategy into the OKRs or the objectives or the key initiatives that need to happen and then setting it up so that people know what their roles are and how that's going to actually happen is very important and just the I guess the combination of being able to go from that the high level structured thought to the detail and the actual sort of happenings on the ground when it's needed is important so it's kind of a nice all-round role really yeah I love it thank you thanks for sharing

23:47Claire Davenport:we need to come on to talk a bit about your non-exec career as well because you again you clearly set out early that you wanted to get into those sorts of board roles. And I know you do a lot of mentoring for people looking to become them. It's often a question we get asked about as well. So I'd love to know firstly, sort of why that appealed and how you originally found that adjustment from sort of the kind of full-time executive role. And then all of a sudden on the other side of the fence, you're playing a non-exec. They are very different. So how did you find that experience? And what are your advice for other people listening to this that want to become non-execs i mean i think having a non-exec role is unbelievably good for people in exec roles i mean it's a lot of work you've got to you can probably only fit one alongside an exec role but it does give you a totally different perspective and i really recommend it i had wanted to be a ned ever since i got to luckily go to some board meetings at companies when i was a banker and i was just like wow this is where the decisions are really happening this is where the power is if you like, since learned a lot more.