Norman is co-founder and General Partner at Dawn. He invests across automation, data, security, and vertical software, and has led early investments into category leaders including Mimecast, Gelato, Collibra, Quantexa, Qogita, and Blackwall.

In the early noughties, I bought from Reuters a fund of 44 companies that I had been investing in. In the run-up boom I had learned nothing. I learned everything in the subsequent bust, living every mistake, and the rebound, where the exceptional few prospered. I decided to co-found Dawn to put these lessons to use.

Since then, some more memorable moments working with founders: A CEO cutting loose a $20M customer because they were no longer ICP — gutsy. Another deciding product-market fit wasn't there yet and committing to another year of building. A market leader aggressively pursuing M&A to broaden the category it had created. And minutes before publicly announcing our IPO date, just when we thought we'd made it, a massive DDoS attack took the service down, awkward when you're a security business.

The founders behind those decisions were all different. One led from the front, personally delivering the year's number. Another focused obsessively on product and technology. Another built a culture so aligned the company moved at astonishing speed — culture compounds where org charts don't. What they shared was an ability to keep evolving: the product, customers, and people all changed over the journey. Making those calls well, while moving quickly in markets with near-unbounded opportunity, is the hard and fun part of building a company.

Dawn's culture is built around treating our portfolio companies as our customers. Our job is not to perform in board meetings, hedge our views, or optimise for our own objectives; but to help founders make better decisions under pressure.

Prior to Dawn, Norman was a GP at Reuters' $450M corporate venture fund, which he later acquired via MBO. He holds dual BSc and BA degrees in Engineering and Quantitative Economics from Stanford, and an MBA with distinction from INSEAD. He began his career at Bain & Company.

Away from work Norman is a Director at Balance in Business, a volunteer-led organisation promoting gender balance at all levels in business. He has four daughters, whom he is indoctrinating to follow in his footsteps as university foosball champion.