Ollie on Work Andy Ayim - Investing in yourself and others
This week's guest is Andy Ayim. He's an angel investor and founder of the Angel Investing School, which teaches professionals from all backgrounds how to begin investing in startups. Its mission is to get women and people of colour onto the cap tables of the world's best performing startups.
Andy grew up in Tottenham, which is just around the corner from me and after starting his career as a management consultant, he then moved to Silicon Valley in 2015 where he worked as a product manager in tech. When he returned to London he'd made the decision to follow his true purpose in life, which is reducing the barriers for founders from unexpected places and backgrounds to access funding and support.
His contribution was recognised in 2020 with an MBE awarded to him by the Queen for services to diversity in the technology industry.
Andy and I had never met before this recording, but he's a lovely and fascinating guy, and after about 10 minutes, I felt like we'd known each other for years!
We discussed how having kids changes your perspective on work and life and the importance of networks and community in providing support and opportunities to founders.
We also talked about how Andy helps the founders he works with access capital and build relationships with the people who can help on their journey. Plus, why he feels like this is his calling.
We have a fascinating conversation about how Andy journals, collecting insights in what he calls his tracker every day to help him record significant events and emotions. This provides him with his 'external memory' and provides an amazing resource for new ideas as he spots connections between patterns of behaviour and thinking.
I loved this chat with Andy, and I'm sure you will too.
I'll put links to Andy's LinkedIn profile and the Angel Investment School in the show notes, along with links to the Future Work/Life newsletter and website.
Just a reminder, my new book, Work/Life Flywheel is now available to pre-order so get your copy sorted early doors. It features my thoughts on the opportunities presented by changes at work and how we can take advantage of them - and Andy will, of course, be featuring.
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