You studied Human Resources and Labour Relations at Lund University in Sweden. What attracted you to this field from the start?
I had planned on becoming a lawyer. I joined a law firm and worked there for almost two years after high school – and realised that I did not actually want to become a lawyer. Instead, I chose to focus on the intersection between people and business law in my studies. I have always had a passion for people. The ability to combine this with something more concrete was what appealed to me.

Before joining Verve Ventures in May 2021, you worked in HR roles in Stockholm. How has this experience shaped your outlook?
Sweden is at the forefront of diversity and many other questions close to my heart. I started my HR journey at a big insurance company with a huge HR department. I learned a lot from many people there, but I felt that HR was sometimes a bit too far away from the actual business. From there, I moved on to eBerry, a tech subsidiary within Nordic Choice Hotels. What I loved there was the ability to work together with the business teams on HR topics and have a bigger impact.

You joined Verve Ventures in May 2021. What attracted you to the company?
Many things just clicked when I read about the company, from the smaller team to the culture. After my experience working at eBerry in Sweden, it was clear to me that I again wanted to be part of a smaller team with a very entrepreneurial culture where I could work close to the business. It helped that the business here is so interesting: Verve Ventures is helping startups change the world.

What does your current role as HR Manager involve?
It is a very broad position. My manager – the Chief of Staff – and I cover all the HR topics, from recruitment to building on this amazing culture we already have, and from learning and development to organising events and offsites. This breadth is also what attracted me to Verve Ventures – it is not that you are a specialist in talent acquisition and that is all you do. This role is really hands on and includes everything relating to people and culture.

How would you describe the work culture at Verve Ventures?
It is both entrepreneurial and team-focused, which is one of the parts I like the most. The culture is very much defined by the people; we have a bunch of smart and ambitious people on board. What impresses me the most is how we have managed to recruit many smart people, but still have a very kind environment. There is no ego; people really try to help each other. I think that this team-focused environment is rare when you have so many talented people at a company.

Would you say that Verve Ventures attracts a certain type of person?
Our team members are all very interested in society. They come from a variety of fields – not just finance, but also engineering and tech – but share an interest in society and research.

How do you strike a balance at Verve Ventures between team members who studied science or tech and those with a business background?
It very much depends on their role; we look for different people for different positions. But for example, when you evaluate a startup, you will need to look at their technology, but also their financial planning and the market environment – so you need a mix of skills to fully assess the quality of a young company. So, everyone just comes together in this amazing cocktail. Over the years, Verve Ventures has built a very team-focused culture and it has had no problem bringing together people with different backgrounds. I would say that it is only a plus.

How important is cultural fit – and what does that even mean in such an international team?
The cultural fit is extremely important. We spend a lot of time on recruitment to find that personal cultural fit. Verve Ventures has been growing a lot, so it will be even more important going forward to not lose that. Returning to our team focus again: as we are a small team, we do not have managers who are not doing hands-on work. Everyone is expected to chip in and get the work done. Many of us have broad positions where we expect people to take on a lot of responsibility, not only within their own fields, to help the team succeed. This is something that we really look for in job interviews.

How are you supporting diversity?
Diversity is key for us, not just in terms of educational backgrounds. We have people from more than 15 countries in a team of close to 50 people and cherish the international work environment. We actively look to invest in female founders and mixed founder teams and our numbers in this regard are well above the industry average. This also means we want to encourage women to apply for the open jobs in our team, and we have thankfully already hired a number of excellent female team members, but we would love to add even more women to the team. Verve Ventures is a very good place to break into venture capital, an industry that is still fairly male-dominated.

What kind of person should not apply for a job at Verve Ventures?
Again: no ego. We do not want people who want everyone else to do the work for them. Working as a team is so important and if that is not something you want to do, you would not be a good fit here.

Some of Verve Venture’s current employees started working at the company as interns. Why is the internship process important, both for the interns and for the company?
We recruit interns on an ongoing basis. It is a good way to get people from different backgrounds to join the team. And because this isn’t a very standard industry and because we try to combine so many unique roles, it’s often a great opportunity to see our work up close. We give interns a lot of responsibility from day one, so they grow a lot, but we also get to benefit from many different perspectives – it really is a win-win situation.

Would you encourage a student who is interested in trying venture capital to apply for an internship at Verve Ventures?
Absolutely. Again, this is a good way for us to recruit people from different backgrounds, not just the classic finance background. We invest in a broad range of companies, so we also need people who have specialized in their respective fields to be able to do good deals.

How has the work setup at Verve Ventures changed during the pandemic and how has this affected the work culture?
Even before the pandemic, we were very flexible. We are even more flexible now, but we still have this culture where people want to come to the office. One of our biggest strengths is the people we have on board and our team spirit. We recently held an offsite in Berlin for the whole team, where we could really see that people had missed spending time together and talking about things outside work as well. Going forward, I think that we need to invest even more in the culture, to make sure that we did not lose anything during the pandemic.

How can companies combine culture and data to achieve success?
In the past, HR was not so good at applying data to people-related topics. These topics can be quite fluffy: you have a gut feeling about how the organization is doing. That is a skill in itself, but I think that it is extremely important to be able to measure it in order to monitor progress and ensure that your initiatives are actually having an impact. It is very hard to work in HR today if you do not have data. You need data on subjects such as engagement, strategy alignment and job satisfaction. We are currently implementing an engagement tool to start measuring those topics internally at Verve Ventures, because I think that we are at a size where we need to be doing that.

How can HR processes and new ways of working help staff to reach their full potential?
At larger organisations, you are sometimes programmed when it comes to how things are supposed to work: from hierarchical structures to responsibilities and processes. I think we need to break out of that and think about how we can work more efficiently. There is a lot to learn from agile working methods about how to structure work to foster better collaboration and faster progress. At Verve Ventures, we are very good at this because we have this entrepreneurial culture and people from different backgrounds.

Finally, what do you enjoy the most about your work at Verve Ventures?
I love to be on this journey together with such smart, ambitious colleagues who challenge you all the time, but whom you also want to spend time with.