VC Voices: ‘Culture is the crucial determining factor of how successful people are, not technology’, says LocalGlobe’s Emma Phillips

LocalGlobe is EMEA’s most successful investor when it comes to in backing unicorns at the seed stage.

The London-based firm has supported 19 unicorns, including multiple in the HR tech space like Multiverse, Beamery, TravelPerk and HiBob.

“We’ve been long-term believers in HR tech”, Emma Phillips, Investment Partner at LocalGlobe, tells UNLEASH.

From an investment perspective, employees are the backbone of every organization globally, which means there are a large number of technology servicing employees helping to drive productivity, and there no doubt always will be,” adds Phillips.

As the nature of work continues to evolve, HR tech will continue to be a priority area for LocalGlobe as it continues to support startups in driving their businesses forward.

HR is also a particularly personal passion for Phillips.

She shares: “I come from a place with limited network connections or business role models. I therefore naturally have a love for technologies that can help to even the playing field for any human to access  work or education opportunities and build fairer treatment of workers.”

We are thrilled to welcome Philips as our September ‘VC Voice’.

This is the fourteenth edition of our exclusive interview series with leaders HR tech investors  – Phillips follows in the footsteps of Livia Moore from Antler, Acadian Ventures’ Thomas Otter and Margaret Wu of Georgian.

Find out Phillips’ route into the world of investment, her top tips for how founders and companies can stand out, and how HR leaders should come back to first principles when buying technology for their organization.

Allie Nawrat: How did you get into investing? What is the one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

Emma Phillips: It was an accident more than anything else. I was working in the mining industry in Australia after my masters, and on returning to London, I felt like taking on a completely different challenge.

All my friends who loved their work seemed to be working in tech.

So, I got as many introductions to interesting people as I could, one of which was Saul Klein, who is the Co-Founder of LocalGlobe.

Once I got a feel for what it was like to source the next big technology wave, and work alongside such smart and ambitious founders, I never looked back.

I’m glad to say I don’t have many regrets in life. I’ve tended to work hard, trust my gut, and strive for things beyond my capability, which has been tough but rewarding.

AN: What gets you up in the morning, and what keeps you up at night?

EP: I try to start the day with a high energy plug, whether it’s a HIIT class, or breakfast with a high energy operator or founder that teaches me something about the world. It sets an exceptional tone for the rest of the day.

Come nighttime, I keep a pen and paper by my bed, so any thoughts I have before falling asleep can be written down in order to get out of my head for a peaceful night’s sleep.

I truly believe that if you sleep well, all other aspects of physical and mental health are easier to achieve.

AN: Who inspires you, and why?

EP: Those who have the odds stacked up against them, yet manage to charge on through and win the race.

A couple of examples: Melanie Perkins, Founder of Canva who grew up in Western Australia.

[She is a] female founder, who launched a business during the very early tech scene operating in Australia.

Emma Phillips, Investment Partners, LocalGlobe.

Somehow, despite being female, living in a very remote location, and with so few investors operating in the market at the time, she managed to attain early funding, and has since grown a global business and continues to innovate and strive for greater success today. Incredibly impressive!

Another role model nearer to me is Angela Rayner, who grew up in Stockport, UK on a council estate, looking after her own mother who couldn’t read or write and suffered from bipolar disorder.

Angela left school without qualifications as she was pregnant, and is now Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom!

No matter one’s political views, you cannot deny that she has overcome incredible odds to get to where she is, and that to me makes her one of the most inspiring people.

AN: You work with a lot of inspiring founders and companies – what makes a company, and a founder, really stand out? What are the common mistakes you see them make when building their businesses and teams?

EP: For me, great technology founders have a combination of relentless drive, adaptability, confidence, a product-mindset and are clear and honest communicators.

Through these skills, they also have the ability to inspire and attract the highest caliber of talent to join them on their journey.

[They also have to have] identified inefficient workflows that can be supercharged with the use of technology, or identified opportunities to increase access to work and education, particularly for underserved communities.

Two examples that fall into this bucket are Rodeo who are building a platform for fairer treatment of on-demand delivery drivers, and Multiverse who provide apprentice opportunities for on-the-job training without the requirement of a university degree.

AN: Our readers, HR leaders, are the key customers of HR tech. What is your advice on what they should look out for when buying tech? What should they avoid, and why?

EP: I like to think from first principles, what problem are we trying to solve, and does it really need a technical solution?

If this answer is yes, prioritize the user experience of the product.

In this day and age, a product needs to be completely intuitive to use in order for it to reach wider adoption among teams.

You also need to understand how easy it is to switch products. Vendor lock in can be extremely painful when the current product is no longer fit for purpose.

Avoid long term contracts, especially if your organization is set to change team size, and therefore your needs may change rapidly.

With the new technologies coming though, labelled as AI, if a product is claiming it will save X time on something, really press on how this is being measured, and how pricing should match the improvements.

It’s unlikely that a SaaS fee for a whole team is the right way to pay for certain types of software.

AN: What are the most exciting innovations on the horizon for HR tech? Is there a HR technology that is overhyped, or that the world would be better without?

Virtual and augmented reality for training and onboarding is a really exciting trend, for example Pixaera, who are building holistic safety training programs.

Another exciting wave is compensation management solutions, which both support fairness within a workplace and regulatory compliance with pay transparency.

Companies such as Pave are beginning to support HR teams with meaty strategic tasks such as compensation benchmarking, job levelling and salary banding, to improve fairness within the workplace, and help companies grow their employer brand and compete with peers on attracting talent.

I wouldn’t say the world would be better off without any particular HR technology, but it is crucial to remember that the culture of an organization is the crucial determining factor of how happy and successful their people are, not the technology that serves them.