Sarah Barber - CEO, Jenson Funding Partners
After qualifying with Deloitte as a Chartered Accountant, Sarah spent two years working as an audit manager before moving into Reorganisation Services. Whilst there, Sarah worked on a variety of projects, including turnarounds, cashflow management, financial reviews and receiverships. Subsequently, Sarah moved into the interim market, providing services to a wide variety of clients gaining a broad experience in all aspects of accounting and financial management.
What is the most rewarding aspect of your role?
The most rewarding aspects of my role are working with a diverse group of people both within our organisation and across the wide-ranging diverse companies within our portfolio. My role also enables me to grow and develop Jenson Funding Partners in a dynamic environment. Everyday is different and provides a new challenge and within that challenge there is usually more opportunity.
How do you see your role changing in the next 3-5 years?
The vision within Jenson Funding Partners is to take start-ups through to a successful exit, to enable this we would need to expand the number of funds we manage. Therefore, my role will evolve into managing a wider variety of funds by providing follow-on funding from Jenson thereby reducing the time our portfolio companies spend fund raising enabling them to focus on their business.
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"...one of the longest running SEIS Funds and achieving five predominantly cash exits to date from the SEIS portfolio"
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What makes your firm stand out?
Being one of the longest running SEIS Funds and achieving five predominantly cash exits to date from the SEIS portfolio, returning between 0.8x original investment and 3.7x which is projected to increase to 12x after the earn-out period. 68% of our portfolio is still active which I believe is a positive aspect of our team input.
What is the one thing that you would like advisers/investors to know about your firm?
What are three things you look for when investing in a business?
- A strong management team that is able work with us to grow;
- Good exit potential; and
- Momentum – revenue generating or close to revenue generation.
How have the recent legislative changes affected your firm?
The recent legislative changes haven’t affected our business, our focus has always been on high growth firms with a risk to capital, in this respect our fund is business as usual.
Who do you admire professionally?
Anyone with the tenacity to start up a business and make it succeed!
What non-fiction book would you recommend?
The Lean Start-up – what I took from this and why I recommend this to start-ups is the key message that you cannot be good at everything and you need to trust other people to carry out the functions you are not suited to in order for your business to grow. Working as a team is stronger than working as an individual, sometimes this may be common sense however when entrepreneurs are protective of “their baby” this may be overlooked.
People Behind the Product is an interview series produced by CoInvestor that highlights the key people behind the wide range of tax-efficient investment funds you can find on our platform. By showcasing the fund managers behind the product, we aim to provide greater insight to the expertise in the market and in doing so, help advisers and investors learn more about the tax-efficient sector.
If you are interested in participating in the series, or would like to find out more, get in touch with Jessica at jessica.baker@coinvestor.co.uk.
About Jenson Funding Partners
Jenson are an experienced team of finance professionals providing a variety of services to a number of clients, ranging in size from start-ups through to fully listed companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Their team of professionals has a wealth of experience across a number of sectors, enabling us to provide an efficient service and bring relevant experience to most organisations to support their strategic requirements.
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