We started Farview over 5 years ago with a strong desire to build a firm that we would be proud of for rest of our professional careers. From the very earliest days we invested time and effort as a group of co-founders trying to align and define the type of culture and principles that we felt would stand the test of time. Whether or not “culture eats strategy for breakfast” is not a debate we want to enter in here. That said, we are very confident that our strategy has not changed, and so we would like to believe there has not been any failure of the culture we set out to embed in the firm …
With several key additions to the team bringing us to the complete set of skills we believe we need to succeed long-term, we did want to invest the time to revalidate some of our initial cultural markers and align them with both the firm’s and our individual objectives. To help us in the exercise we naturally enlisted the help and support of the brilliant Ciara Smyth, our longstanding Strategic Advisory Team member and People expert. Ciara creating a targeted programme of individual feedback and development objectives, alongside facilitating the team across an offsite session focussed on shaping our collective position.
Following the investment of that time we have cultivated a clear picture and understanding of our respective individual superpowers, derailers and ambitions, in addition to shaping our collective purpose, ambitions and ways of working. We wanted to share those collective elements more broadly as a further means of validation, but importantly to ensure we continue to hold ourselves accountable to them.
We are very pleased to say that the purpose statement we built for the firm 5 years ago continues to resonate with all team members today. Testament to the absolute continuity in our strategy and investment focus. We remain focussed on:
Empowering European enterprise technology companies to grow beyond their current horizons
We also feel proud to have reshaped somewhat our original firm principles (Teams win games, Passion makes things happen, Input improves all of us, Diversity drives better decisions) towards a set of ambitions and matching ways of working that align to our three key stakeholder groups – our LP investors, our portfolio companies and our team colleagues. To that end we are pleased to declare our ambitions as:
For our LPs … to deliver consistently strong and impactful returns over the long-term
For our portfolio … to become the trusted, first port of call for our portfolio executives, as they navigate their scaling journeys
For our team … to foster a culture of trust built on humility, ambition and collaboration
In seeking to realise those ambitions we will seek to operate in a manner consistent with our declared ways of working across each group:
With our LPs … We are always well-prepared, well-informed, knowledgeable, interested and confident in our decision-making. We operate with complete transparency
With our portfolio … We act as a guide to achieve strategic and operational clarity. We offer relevant perspectives, pattern recognition from past successes, and depth of experience. We provide access and connectivity to an extended network of relationships and technical capabilities
With our team … We are ambitious, focused, intellectually curious and open-minded. We work collaboratively, with respect and humility towards each other. We communicate effectively, transparently and honestly. We believe a culture of feedback is integral to each of us achieving our full potential. We seek out diverse perspectives and points of view to improve decision-making
We certainly hope our purpose, ambitions and ways of working will continue to make us an attractive partner for all our stakeholders. We remain as excited by the journey ahead as we were 5 years ago and are delighted to have been able to share our commitments to building a culture we want to be proud of for many years to come.