Appointment brief

Appointment of CFO August 2021

Reference: FAHADC

TECH NATION | CFO

SB

About Tech Nation

Context Tech Nation’s story began in Shoreditch in 2011, launched as the Tech City Investment Organisation, by then Prime Minister, David Cameron, to support the East London tech cluster known as Silicon Roundabout. Since then, the company has been on a scale-up growth journey, spinning out of government and becoming an independent organisation in 2014, known as Tech City UK. It spread its activities to cover other parts of the UK, setting up Tech North in 2015 to run programmes across the North of England. In November 2017, the Prime Minister, Theresa May and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond announced the launch of Tech Nation, consolidating Tech City UK and Tech North’s impact. Now, as Tech Nation, we’re expanding our network of growth programmes, events, skills visas, and reports and data resources across the UK. Tech Nation’s mission is to help digital tech companies grow through a series of programmes, research, and events, aimed at building a pipeline of high-growth businesses, raising the profile of the sector, and providing a feedback loop from business to government to help shape policy. Since launch, Tech Nation (formerly Tech City UK and Tech North) has helped the digital tech start-up and scale-up sector become the UK’s fastest growing industry. An independent audit of its economic impact found that Tech Nation generates a benefit cost ratio of 6:1 which is clearly strong by global standards and benchmarking. More than 2.1 million people now work in the UK’s digital tech sector, and jobs are being created at twice the rate of other sectors in the economy. According to Tech Nation 2017, the tech sector has a turnover of £170 billion – an increase of 22% in five years. Tech Nation believes that if the UK is to retain its position as Europe’s centre for tech, it needs to develop and strengthen digital tech clusters all over the country into a nation-wide network of digital excellence.

TECH NATION | CFO

SB

The company’s headline objectives fall into four areas:

1. Build a national network of ambitious digital entrepreneurs through local and national engagement with fellow-founders in our business lifecycle and sector programmes

2. Monitor, inform and champion the UK digital tech sector through profiling, data and insights 3. Scale learning and digital entrepreneurial skills through digital learning tools, content and visas 4. Grow a sustainable business through commercial activities such as sponsorship, custom

research and subscriptions

Our Culture We are a small but fast-growing, high-performance team of 72 passionate people with high standards and big ambitions. We strive for excellence in everything we do. Our aim is to be transformative and collaborative in our work. We focus on speed, scale, smart resourcefulness, and unbounded optimism. We never start with ‘no.’ We’re solution oriented and focus on the outcome and the impact of any project or priority. We’re a curious bunch, creative and a little quirky. We debate things passionately in team meetings and stand-ups. We agree and disagree on how the world should work, but we all agree on making a big difference through our work at Tech Nation. Which is why we love it here and never take it for granted. You can find out more about Tech Nation on our website https://technation.io/ or on our social media channels.

TECH NATION | CFO

SB

The role Reporting to the CEO, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is to take a leading strategic role at the executive team level in terms of growth of the business and sound management providing guidance on corporate and financial strategy and resource allocation. The role will oversee the building of core infrastructure and capabilities to enable the business to meet its strategic objectives and revenue growth ambitions in line with the three-year business plan. The CFO acts as a Business Partner to the CEO.

The role will manage the following teams:

• A Finance team with the necessary skills, systems, people and capacity to support bill clients across public and private sectors; provide effective decision support capabilities; and ensure regular, timely and value add reporting, forecasting as well as suitable controls;

• A Strategy & Business Insights team to support the business with data to make timely and informed decisions to optimize resource allocation and drive continued improvement in business performance;

• A People team to acquire, retain, train, develop and manage an organization with operations across territories; this also includes the provision of tools, systems, premises and administrative support, to enable the effective functioning of the organization;

• A legal team (internal & external) to monitor and navigate the shifting regulatory landscape, manage compliance and corporate risk and execute an IP strategy.

The CFO is a member of the executive team and an attendee of the following:

• Strategy Board • Ops Board Call • Audit & Risk Committee • PREMCO

Key Responsibilities The management of the capital and cash flows both actual and forecast to fund the three-year plan is the primary responsibility. Key Responsibilities include:

• Board management (with CEO) o Oversee the Company Secretarial responsibilities and function.

• Government Funding Relations (with CEO and Chief Comms & Stakeholder Engagement Officer) o Play a leading role in Government funding relations with both existing and potential future

departments. o In conjunction with the CEO and the Board agree the scope and timing of funding

requirement. • Stakeholder engagement

o In conjunction with the CEO maintain regular marketing and dialogue with the public sector and corporate stakeholders about performance and likely funding needs and timing.

o Preparation of Annual Reports with CEO Office. • Finance Strategy

TECH NATION | CFO

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o Ensure timely and accurate production of financial and management reporting and ensure internal controls are in place to mitigate risks and exposures of the business.

o Oversee the control and distribution of existing financial resources to maximise returns. • Corporate Strategy, Performance management & capital allocation across group (driving ROI)

o In conjunction with the CEO and exec team, maintain a framework to agree the roadmap, yearly and quarterly targets in a seamless effective way.

o Develop and monitor the KPI toolset - LTV, client churn etc with the objective of ensuring the company's capital is allocated efficiently.

o Ensure that appropriate performance data and analysis is generated and shared to enable effective and rapid decision making.

o Conduct routine and regular reviews to ensure business performance is optimised, including oversight of OKRs.

o Ensure that the “data room” is current and “clean”. o To drive an effective roadmap, that generates the appropriate impact and financial profits.

• Management of group wide risk o Preparation and circulation of quarterly ARC reporting. o Maintain and oversee the Board Risk Register. o Oversee corporate governance and compliance.

• Commercial negotiations (as required) o Oversee the financial and legal aspects of commercial relationships with customers,

suppliers, and advisors. • Oversight & Co-ordination of HR/People, IT, Legal/Co Sec (Insurance, IP), Facilities, Finance, Tax,

Treasury, I/Analytics o Tax planning and transfer pricing o Insurance risk management o Update and maintain the Cap Table o Oversee IP and trademark portfolio.

• Share Tech Nation best practice, role model and support with external events

TECH NATION | CFO

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Person specification The candidate profile is as follows:

• Experienced finance and business professional with at least 10 years’ experience in high growth businesses.

• Graduate with a professional accounting qualification e.g., FCA or CIMA. • Strong IT skills and familiar with cloud-based systems. • Good people skills and strong facilitator. • Hands on yet ability to delegate when needed.

TECH NATION | CFO

SB

How to apply Saxton Bampfylde Ltd is acting as an employment agency advisor to Tech Nation on this appointment. Candidates should apply for this role through our website at www.saxbam.com/appointments using code FAHADC. Click on the ‘apply’ button and follow the instructions to upload a CV and cover letter. The closing date for applications is noon on Thursday 7 October 2021.

TECH NATION | CFO

SB

High growth tech entrepreneurs find our programmes highly valuable, as they uniquely focus on building leadership capacity through peer learning at scale, as feedback cycles in tech businesses become shorter and shorter.

"Good events. Good selection of companies. Good selection of people at events. Well-connected and great for building out profile."

Aaron Gelbard, CEO, Bloom & Wild. Future Fifty 5.0

“The Upscale programme has been amazing. The opportunity to connect with other founders going through the same challenges as us, combined with Upscale sessions that address the growing pains of scale-ups at our stage; it's been huge for us!”

Wesley Rashid, The Accountancy Cloud. Upscale 4.0

“Off the back of Tech Nation Rising Stars, we secured our first commercial customer and raised a further £100k.”

Amy King, Co-Founder and R&D Director, People Matter Technology. Rising Stars 1.0

“In no time I could take away some focused, practical insights, on topics that were most relevant to me.”.

Kayla Herbert, Co-founder, Branswer

“It’s a fantastic programme, it is one of the things we have been shouting about over the last month. The government needs to get behind UK fintech more and Tech Nation is a great example of how to do it.” Matt Smith, CEO, SteelEye. Fintech 1.0

“I’ve met some of the best tech companies in the UK and some really interesting companies launching in the U.S.” Charles Wells, CMO, Just Giving. Future Fifty 3.0

TECH NATION | CFO

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