While it might seem that London-based VC firm Atomico has been adding Partners to the roster left, right, and centre, there might just be a method to the madness. Some of Atomico’s appointments have come from within the ranks, but much like former Director of Business at Uber and ex-Vice President of Global Business at Revolut Don Hoang, first employee and Geo Vice President of Snowflake EMEA from 2017 to 2021, Thibault Ceyrolle is an external welcome to the family.
Of sorts.
For the past seven months, Thibault has been serving as an Executive in Residence in the Rathbone Street ranks, offering his 20 some years of experience and sales and go-to-market execution know-how to Atomico portfolio companies. Particularly, Thibault is working with these startups and helping them hire the right sales leaders, scale sales functions, build up repeatable processes, and develop early sales teams.
When viewing the market shift from growth at all costs to a sustainable revenue model as of late, these skills and knowledge become all the more valuable.
“The nice-to-have solutions are not where people are investing today. Now what’s required is having a product with a business case focusing on value, being able to do business value assessments with teams articulating this on top of having a good solution is where people need help.”
And such is the case for Atomico, as so great was the demand for Ceyrolle’s experience, connections, and overall presence at the table, that as of today, Atomico has made the relationship official and welcomes Thibault as a Partner on the Growth Acceleration platform, an in-house group led by Partner Dan Hynes (Talent at Google, Skype, Cisco), with ex operators including Caro Chayot (People at Twitter, Google), Julia Prada (M&A at Farfetch), Shamal Thakar (Business Development / Strategic Partnerships at McKinsey) all aiming to directly support Atomico’s portfolio.
“As an operational guy before, I was missing on the VC side proper help and proper coaching on the go-to-market side of things. I had many VCs that would drop names that I could meet, but having someone that can provide me with practical experience in the field, for example, EMEA expansion, I was missing that.”
Ceyrolle says that he’s helping 25 to 28 portfolio companies at present, and in his new role will offer support to companies from the initial investment up to the end of year one, but also notes that later-stage companies aren’t off the table.
Speaking to the value that Thibault has already brought to the table, Atomico portfolio company and Finnish open source phenom Aiven CEO and co-founder Oskari Saarenmaa concludes, “Thibaut is a great addition to Atomico’s group of operators, providing hands-on advice about how to scale our go-to-market operations and team. He knows everyone in the industry, providing quick and direct feedback about what’s needed for our culture and scale.”
Lead image: Hermione Hodgson
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