Her Story
About Laura
I've been working for 17 years total, with the last 7 years focused on startups. I started in financial services in London at Cambridge Associates, doing consulting, project management, and investment work for 4 years. After my MBA, I moved to the U.S. and worked in private equity before making the jump to tech and startups. At CapCase, I joined as chief of staff without a defined job spec and just figured it out as I went, stepping into various functions like partnerships, marketing, go-to-market, alignment, OKRs, planning, and investor relations. I'm most proud of being able to step into different functions and lead them without prior knowledge of those specific areas. I helped scale the company from 60 to 120 people and also managed the difficult downsizing process. After maternity leave, I joined Default where I currently handle operations, covering accounting, finance, people, internal alignment, and cross-functional projects. My specialization is in operations and strategy, particularly quarterly and annual planning and alignment.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Laura
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think often, especially after college, you think that you need to have everything figured out, but it's not the case. You can definitely try different things, and if anything, it's good because you get to experience different fields. Every field teaches you something new. Like, me working in a large corporation taught me how to be structured and organized, how to document decisions, and that really helps me in startups where things are messy and hectic. I'm the one that can bring structure. I would also say that out of college, you kind of expect to be on this timeline where you work a few years, then get promoted, then get promoted, but everyone has their own timeline. Some people will figure it out in a few years, some people in 15 years. There are examples of founders that start companies when they're older, or examples of people who start companies in their 20s. Everyone has their own timeline, and there's no reason to stress about it. You might take shorter, you might take longer, but eventually you'll get there. It maybe sounds cliche, but it's all about the journey and enjoying every stage of your career and getting the most out of it.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think in startups, the biggest challenge and opportunity is basically AI, artificial intelligence. It's an opportunity because everyone's adopting it, but I think in a way it's a current challenge because it's happening so fast that in a month, my answer might be different. It's just figuring out all the different tools within the AI space that you can use, and then also training yourself, because it might be that the best solution is just for you to develop your own agent, your own AI tool, versus purchasing something. Basically the market is flooded with new AI solutions, and I think it's challenging to figure out what are those that actually have good, high ROI impact. So it's about sorting through those, what's the most impactful, and what can you do yourself, and teach yourself how to work with AI best.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think in work, and this is just true for work and personal life, honesty and transparency is very helpful in the organization. And then I think just the ability to make difficult decisions and make them quickly. I've seen in my career that when you delay difficult decisions, it's never good. So yes, making difficult decisions and making them quickly with transparency and integrity.
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