Since we first founded Dawn nearly 15 years ago, we’ve been a team that shares the highs and lows, and everything in between, together. We have become a family that relishes in watching each other grow and reach personal and professional goals, whilst shaping our business into what it is today.
Our team is our greatest achievement, and is drawn together by a shared passion for helping B2B founders build category-defining companies. And we are still growing: as a family, as each member develops as an individual, and as a whole, as we challenge and complement one another. The diversity within Dawn means each individual has the capacity to learn as much as they can inspire. We come from a broad range of countries and backgrounds, speak over 20 languages, and are constantly supporting and learning from each other.
So we couldn’t be more excited to share four well-deserved promotions within our family: Henry Mason to Partner, Shamillah Bankiya to Principal, and Virginia Pozzato and Daniela Raffel to Vice President.
These promotions, as well as those of Mina Mutafchieva to Partner and Evgenia Plotnikova to General Partner last year, demonstrate our commitment to nurturing talent from within to develop our next generation of leaders. Half of our General Partners and two thirds of our Partners are internally promoted, which we believe sets us apart and reflects the strength and depth of our team. By valuing our in-house talent and providing clear pathways and opportunities for our people to reach their full potential, we can maintain the culture we’ve cultivated over the last 15 years.
Henry is one of the youngest partners in the industry and the fourth Partner we’ve promoted internally. Since joining us as a Principal in December 2016, he’s had a big impact, bringing his expertise as a former enterprise software and cybersecurity consultant to lead our investments in some of Europe’s best early-stage data and cyber businesses. To date he has led our investments in Vulcan, Harbr, Quantexa, Onna, Element and Garrison, and continues to support them on their exciting growth journeys.
Henry’s commitment and curiosity to learning about everything means he looks at companies holistically to gain a deep understanding of what systems and processes are supporting how it functions, how they can be improved, and what should be prioritised. His insights and guidance help our founders to make better and smarter decisions everyday, and they are very forthcoming with gratitude and praise for his support.
“Our close relationship with Dawn has been instrumental to our continued development over the past few years, and Henry has played a significant role in this, consistently offering guidance and advice, helping us to evaluate strategy and execution decisions to grow and progress our business as we have built towards the future.” — Vishal Marria, CEO at Quantexa.
Sharp as he is funny (“not much of either then”, as he would say) — he’s humble too, and a true role model and shaper of our culture, with a constant drive to make all of us and our founders better. He’s always there to lend a hand, crack a joke when it’s needed, and celebrate everyone’s success as if it were his own.
“I’m delighted for Henry. We have a strong working relationship with him and his support and guidance has played a key role in our journey. Dawn brings a unique perspective to our process and the support they have provided our management team has been crucial in allowing us to scale effectively and deliver significant outcomes.”– Salim Elkhou, Founder and CEO at Onna.
Shamillah, Virginia and Daniela all joined us in 2020, and despite (too) many Zooms and virtual team events in the early days, very quickly became deeply valued members of our team and family.
Shamillah joined us following two years as a Senior Associate at Softbank Investment Advisers, where she discovered her passion for B2B software, and prior to that she gained valuable experience at Bain & Company advising private equity on their diligence into tech companies. Since joining us at Dawn, she has been involved in our investments in Lokalise, Ably and Minute Media and last year we were thrilled to see her listed in Forbes 30 under 30 for Finance!
Virginia joined us from JP Morgan and is focused on fintech, dev ops and infrastructure in the UK, France and the Nordics. She’s already supported our investments into Access Fintech and LeanIX, as well as playing a role in our longer standing investments in Dataiku, Soldo, Gelato and Collibra.
Daniela joined us from SME-lending fintech Capital on Tap, and is also focused on fintech and the future of work space. She’s been involved with our investments in Copper, BRYTER and Quantilope.
Each of them has made a tremendous difference since joining, both to the Dawn family as well as the founders we meet. They have enabled us to support our founders more effectively by applying their own experience to enhance our processes and deepen our focus to find the most exciting early stage B2B software businesses across Europe. We are incredibly proud of them, and they absolutely deserve this recognition.
These well deserved promotions come alongside the recent additions to the Dawn family of Pierre Bricault as Associate, Josh Clift as Senior Fund Accountant, Kyriakos Souroulla as Financial Analyst, Alice Urquhart as Office Manager, and Chloe Dodson as Talent Associate. We are now as well placed as we are excited for the year ahead, which we are confident will be marked by more successes in the Dawn family and our wider network as we continue to back European founders building the next generation of global software leaders.
