Daniela Raffel - Dawn Capital

Daniela Raffel

Investor

Daniela looks for exceptional businesses in the fintech and future of work space in the UK, DACH and Iberian markets. She’s involved with our investments in BRYTER, Quantilope and Copper.

Daniela joined us from Capital on Tap, a London-based SME-lending fintech where she focussed on automating customer onboarding, product and partnership development, and operational improvements. Before that, she was at McKinsey, advising retail banking clients on how to implement new technologies and ways of working.

She holds an Economics degree from Princeton University where she graduated with honours.

Connect

In conversation

Why B2B software VC?

There is so much variety and activity in the B2B software market alone — you could easily spend a lifetime and some on it! I have great respect for investors who can do B2B + B2C, but I find I work best when I can narrow down my scope and really focus. The added advantage of focusing on B2B is that you learn about things that you never would have known we...re complex, interesting, or needed fixing. If you’d told me before I joined Dawn that procurement was sexy, I’d have laughed. Now I nod vigorously.

Most exciting moment at Dawn?

Roaming (running) around Berlin from founder meeting to founder meeting. It wasn’t just the fact that they were face-to-face meetings which, as we all well know, Zoom really doesn’t compare to, but realising that my job means I get to meet interesting people, and learn from them, all day every day.

What do you think is the most interesting trend in the industry, and why?

I think the enablers of any trend are the most interesting. AI and ML are the buzziest of buzzwords, but it’s the software that checks that a system isn’t going to fail, or the software that helps people prepare the data for these models that really fascinate me.

And the quick fire round…

Book you'd recommend

Harry Potter. I confess to having queued for the books as well as having them on audiobook and listening to them in times of stress — there’s nothing quite as soothing as Stephen Fry telling me about adventures at Hogwarts.

Best piece of advice

“No one cares as much as you.” I can agonise over details, and sometimes it’s important to remember that if you’ve already given it so much thought, then it is probably in a good place!

Favourite SaaS metric

Magic Number. A) the name is great and b) it’s fantastic for understanding the efficiency of growth. Naturally, this efficiency evolves as the company scales but it’s a good thing to track as it holds you accountable to whether the investments you’re making in sales are paying off.

Best & worst thing in a deck

Best: numbers - ultimately, there is always going to be interest in traction to date, whether you measure it in revenue or not, at the Series A+ stage. Worst: honestly, if you think it’s important to share then I want to understand why. So I guess the worst thing is a slide that says nothing, or is skipped over in a pitch.