Issie James, Co-founder at Onstage: BREAKING: Onstage has been acquired by Sifted

0:00Hello and welcome back to the Skinny Europe show. I'm Sir Johnson. Today on the show we have a very special guest, long-time friend of the show, Issie James. How are you doing today, Issie?

0:09Issie James:Good, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. How are you doing? Very good. Look, we are here to talk about some very exciting news. What is it? Take it away. Spill the beans. Yeah. So, as of today, we can announce that Onstage has been acquired by Sifted. Let's go. That's amazing. Very exciting. I mean, how did this come about? What does this mean for the future of Onstage? Tell us more. Yeah. So for Onstage for a little while now, our strategic next move has always been about how we can build an audience that our founders, that our VCs, our partners can essentially leverage to get more reach across the ecosystem, to get more customers.

0:58Issie James:and when the opportunity came up with Sifted, we felt like this was a really amazing natural next step that fit in with that strategy. So Sifted are basically right now in the early stages of making that early stage startup offering more robust. I think people may associate Sifted with kind of more the slightly later stage or growth companies and the acquisition of OnStage is essentially forming part of this new offering that Sifted are gearing up towards more early stage. Super interesting. Okay, so Sifted want to do more stuff with early stage companies. This is going to fit into that broader strategy.

1:38And so I guess what's changing? What's staying the same?

1:43Issie James:So demo day, as everyone knows it, is going to remain pretty similar. We're quite big on continuity. I think there's a lot of parts of demo day that we've always tried to keep pretty sacred over the last few years. We've always wanted it to feel pretty personal, pretty grassroots. We are still going to be powered by our VC partner base. We've got about 350 VC partners that actually work with us to host Demo Day. So they will post about us on LinkedIn to spread the word, drive applications. And then they also go a step further and help us actually decide which founders pitch at Demo Day by requesting introductions to founders that have applied.

2:22Issie James:so that process will still very much be there and then the the actual format of Demo Day itself will be the same so we'll still be hosting Demo Day live we'll have around 20 founders pitching in Soho in October and so all of that will remain the same I think that the key thing here is just that we are doing this with the insane audience that Sifted has they've got about just under 400 ,000 people in their audience combined. So it's going to be a pretty big change in terms of the reach that Demo Day actually gets. Amazing. And so, you know, you're calling from the sifted offices right now? Yes, I'm in one of their phone booths.

3:06Issie James:It's actually my first day in the office, which is quite funny. Yeah, I was saying earlier, you know, the onstage team has been relatively small for the last three years. and obviously Hector and Taos have worked full time in another VC fund. So going into an office full of 30 people today has been a shock to the system, but they're all really great. Yeah, and I imagine you spent some time with them over the last few weeks, months to kind of kick off this handover, run the process. What's that been like getting to know the SIFTA team? Yeah, I mean, they're brilliant. I think Florencia, who is a CEO at Sifted, has some kind of really brilliant vision for where she wants to take things.

3:50Issie James:And then we've got Anissa, who is working quite specifically on this early stage startup offering. So Anissa will be working together with me for the transition period ahead of Demo Day. And then essentially we'll be taking Demo Day even further. Amazing. What does this mean for you? Are you sticking around? What's going on for Izzy? Yeah, I mean, so I'm staying on at Sifted for the transition. And then after is a bit of a mystery. Right now, my focus is just making sure that everything just feels as continuous as possible for people that take part in Demo Day. and just making sure that like October is such a huge huge success which is what I've been saying for the last like three years like it's been like my focus and and and kind of a bit of a baby of mine so it's going to be weird kind of handing that over but that's where my head's at for the next couple of months and how do you feel about it I feel I'm excited I think it's um it is it's like a huge change for for us in terms of like how fast we've been able to execute this strategy that we've been speaking about and almost like agoning about uh agonizing about for so long um you know audience growth is uh quite often a is a very kind of like rigorous uh like dedicated process it doesn't happen quickly unless you're seb johnson um and so um this just feels so right for us and i think for like hector and taos as well they've been working on this for the last six and a half years it's been like a huge part of their lives that has literally seen them from when they were kind of babies in the vc ecosystem and they were doing this literally just to kind of almost gain more street cred and and uh and more visibility to now where if you actually look at their profiles they're very impressive on their in their in their own right now so like it does just feel like the natural right time to pass on stage onto someone else and then and then we can all do our own thing separately.

6:00And so you've got the demo day I understand the fund is going to continue in that separate what about Deploy?

6:06Issie James:Yeah so again similar story with Deploy like Sifted are really keen to keep Deploy as is like they see it as a fundamental part of this early stage ecosystem that they're building out so I think essentially the way that we're looking at it is you've got the early stage founder proposition which is Demo Day then you've got Sifted Summit which is the kind of more growth stage proposition and then there's also the capital layer which is Deploy our GPLP event so that will be running as normal in the new year. Amazing so they're taking that over as well. What's this experience been like for you? I mean you're relatively early on in your career still this has been a bit of a whirlwind for you I I imagine joining was did you join three years ago you must have run six or seven demo days now and now being acquired what's it been like for you in your career yeah I I was I was reflecting on this uh over the last few days and uh Taos Hector and I were kind of sending our nice thoughtful messages to each other as everything was wrapping up and it it's been pretty transformational and I think if you look at my if you look at my background like what I'll always say about my own personal career trajectory or even like academically like I don't think I've been like a standout standout person academically I actually really didn't enjoy uni uh didn't do super well like I was literally just trying to get by then I went into like a corporate accounting grad scheme which again like if you look at me now is quite random thing to do uh then I went into a startup which was kind of the start of me thinking about the startup space and um and um like I guess I guess my experience on stage has been like a combination of luck but also just the fact that it's such a great fit for for me and going from three years ago I started essentially as a grad it was a graduate level role that they were actually hiring for and then two years later I was made co-founder it's kind of completely changed the trajectory of my whole career it's opened up conversations with people that I would never be able to to have conversations with so I'm super grateful to Pector and Taos for basically unlocking this for me amazing yeah I mean it's um I can definitely relate to your experiences like university server rated my first job was actually like uh consulting and I was just like what am I doing here like very so naff yeah so naff but what are some lessons I guess like you know you manage to find your fit but lots of people in their 20s something I've really struggled to do until I did my own thing is the thing that like everybody goes through their 20s almost like trying to find the thing that they're good at or they want to do any learnings from that journey from you you think I I I think I've always taken on a bit of risk so if I if I look at like even even when I was doing my accounting grad scheme there were so many people that I was working alongside that were hating what they were doing but the mentality was you know let's just get through these three years of exams and then after that you've got quite a cushy cushion to essentially land on it's a decent job it pays the bills whereas that's never really sat very well with me uh it was a huge and I was absolutely terrified to leave that setting so when you're in that type of space same with consulting you kind of think that's that's all that's out there um and then same with it's basically basically same with like everything that that I've approached like I have always wanted to I don't really like doing the easy thing I guess um which is always terrifying at the start there's so many things with on stage that I was exposed to conversations that I had functions that I took on what I was terrified to do them at the start and I felt so out of my comfort zone and if I look back now it just feels it's like it's like water off a duck's back it you know they're they're not scary to me at all anymore so that's basically how I view my career is just doing the terrifying stuff because there's only so many times it could feel terrifying so you've had this amazing experience you've been on this very interesting career journey you've now like had this exit in your 20s right it's quite unusual what do you want from the next challenge and I know you don't want to talk too much about it right now but like what are the things that you're now looking to no longer be scared of or the things that you're next looking for yeah I um I'm I'm really keen to learn under someone so on stage basically I have worked alongside Hector and Taos for the last three years I learned I've learned so much from them but ultimately um I was a co-founder of the business and we were a small team and we were a young team I am terrified but also excited to work alongside people who have heaps of experience in like very specific functions very specific industries and essentially take on like insane levels of new knowledge that's what I'm really excited for I feel like when a lot of people work in in startups especially if you're young in more senior positions it's very easy to feel like you are learning at you you're not learning from um many people around you like you kind of have to wing it and hope for the best which is so good like it's a brilliant skill to learn but i am keen to learn from the best now as well yeah that's interesting yeah i guess you've like really over indexed on being thrown into the deep end figure it out and now you're saying actually maybe some more structure someone to that learn more from directly um let me ask about events right you've been running this events business essentially for like three years doing you know good revenue bringing together some of the biggest founders and investors into a room together what advice would you give to to anybody who's looking to do events on like what makes it good i would always just think about the aims this is the way i do like the way i do everything like if the start of any kind of event that we're planning I just think so deeply about the aim of it and then just work down from there and like every single element of that event every single touch point um should feed into into those aims and then as a second point I almost look at aims by stakeholder so demo day for example you've got so many different types of person in that room you've got investors you've got founders you've got sponsors i you break down each individual stakeholder and think what do i want a sponsor to feel when they're at this event what do i want a founder to feel um what do i want investors to come away and tell other investors and it's about like breaking down like step by step like everything you can do to to hit those aims for for each person um that's that's how i've planned everything over the last few years and if you look at like the next year two years what would what would it be what a sign of success look like for the acquisition like how will you know okay we made the right decision and sifted have done a fantastic job yeah i think to continue to grow this onstage brand under the expertise and the audience that sifted has like sifted team in comparison to onstage team there's so many talented people there with specific knowledge in their individual function I think Onstage can benefit so much from that um Sift has got great marketing people um great comms people sales people people who are just so knowledgeable about the startup space with amazing experience and I hope that Onstage can essentially just feed off that knowledge and talent um I think the the overarching aim of on stage should stay the same like we want to match the best early stage founders with the best vcs in europe and like there's genuinely no reason why we shouldn't have all of the vcs in europe taking part in in what we're doing and requesting introductions to our founders so um i think this new team will basically get it there and any key learnings that you've seen I don't even know how many hundreds if not thousands and thousands of startups apply to be on stage to then you know putting their pitch together for the vcs who then review it and then actually on the stage themselves doing their one or two minute pitches is there anything that you've seen or you've learned from the way that startups position themselves that you're going to then take away and either for future startups or just like a learning an insight on on how the very best do it I think storytelling is is the best one if if you're if you're pitching and you've got two minutes you you just need to be interesting and engaging and speak on a level that anyone would understand and the best way to do that is by telling some kind of story and it's such a skill it's like I I would love to learn it properly.

15:26Issie James:Like Joel and our team, if you want to speak to anyone that knows how to tell a good story, message Joel Hambly. He's absolutely brilliant at it because it's those people that can raise money, whether it's as an investor or as a founder. Like you kind of, you have to sell the vision and not everyone can do that. Yeah, it's never about the decks or the metrics. It's like how, you know, being to, I think both two out of two, the live events that you've done now, it's so true when you see a yeah when you see the founder up there who can really tell the story and it's so engaging and you are and it stands out especially when there's like lots of founders back to back being really like investing in someone's story is so memorable so there's um um jameson who is partner at chapter one ventures so they uh she she pitched at deploy which is our GPLP event.

16:19Issie James:She got up and she she caveated it by saying you know she's really nervous and normally when someone does that you kind of you don't really know what to expect from what comes after but she blew everyone away. She went into such detail and told this amazing story about how she worked Twitter in the mid 2010s. She was basically working during the American election and building out algorithms that were basically part of detecting the bots. And she told this insane story and everyone was absolutely hooked. And she was by far one of the favourite pictures from that deploy. And you knew that she was impressive from her ability to tell that story, despite her even saying at the start that she felt nervous.

17:04Issie James:So yeah, people like that are absolutely nailing it. Tell a great story. Well, look, Izzy, thank you so much for joining me. This is amazing news. I think the ecosystem is going to love it. I think it makes a perfect sense combining the business that you've built with the reach that Sifted and the reputation that Sifted has. I think it's a match made in heaven. Super excited to see how the transition goes. And congrats to you and the team. It's like a remarkable achievement to build something of the scale and the standard that you did in such a short space of time. So well done. And thank you for spending time with me.

17:40Issie James:Amazing. And thank you so much for the support because I know we've worked together for the last year or so now. And it's been a huge help. Yeah, my pleasure. It's been fun. Thanks, Seb.