Sebuh joined Notion in June 2021 as Funnel Marketing Manager

From the streets of South London, to the hearts of founders: my journey to helping Notion Capital redefine how VCs do marketing.

Sebuh joined Notion in June 2021 as Funnel Marketing Manager

As a graduate of the inaugural cohort of Included VC - a fellowship aimed at diversifying talent within the venture capital industry - it’s an absolute pleasure to join Notion Capital as their first Funnel Marketing Manager. Sitting within Notion’s Platform team, I will be using my B2B marketing experience, strategies and playbooks to engage, build relationships and add value to Europe's best early stage SaaS founders. The opportunity to re-define how VCs “do marketing” is an exciting challenge - and something I have been thinking about for a long time.

But, I’m not the only one. Stephen Millard has also been thinking about this challenge. Over a couple of virtual coffees, we ‘geeked’ out around how Notion can use data, product and marketing to engage extraordinary founders and help Notion become the best B2B SaaS investor in Europe. This is an important moment, not just for me as a working-class South London boy breaking into VC, but also for Notion - as we embark on the next step of our evolutionary journey together.

How did I meet the Notion team, and what does ‘funnel marketing’ have to do with it?

Let’s rewind back to October 2019, Included VC’s first live in-person retreat, before the pandemic and endless zoom meetings. The location is Berlin and there is a buzz of excitement and magic in the air as the fellows, partners and Nikita Thakrar (Included VC’s matriarch) all get to meet each other. We can all tell this is the beginning of something special.

As is standard practise, we all had to do a 30 second intro slide about us and our interests. My opening line? “Hi my name is Seb and I build funnels for a living”. Shortly after that, we went into breakout sessions where I got my first experience of Chris Tottman. He was leading our session and I loved his story, his energy and his brutal honesty. But what really stuck with me was his analogy of VC being a funnel … a funnel aimed at finding extraordinary founders that will change the world. At that moment, something clicked. I smiled to myself with the realisation that my passion for building digital funnels could one day be leveraged by a VC firm with the right vision.

Startups, marketing and Seb: A true love story.

My love story with marketing and startups began after I graduated in London and met the coolest banker in the world - James Reichman - who also happened to be Head of Digital, Corporate Banking at Investec. He told me about his top secret fintech skunkwork project he was running called Project Berlin (coincidence much?) and asked if I was interested in interning and learning more - the answer was HELL YEAH!

During my 3 month internship at Project Berlin, I got the chance to learn as much as possible from some of the best devs, product managers and marketers in the country. I was particularly fascinated by the work of our growth marketing guru Oren Greenberg. He gave me my first intro into the world of digital marketing...and I haven’t looked back.

Since then, my journey has been led by a passion for working with exciting startups and awesome founders. As a self-taught marketer, I have developed my operational skills by working with 20+ businesses, from small bootstrapped startups, to well funded scaleups and everything in between. Many of these have been in the B2B space, where I have had the chance to work with CEOs to supercharge growth - giving me a unique perspective - one which will enrich Notion’s strategy when engaging with founders.

What have I been up to recently? Working at Fanbytes & co-founding the Angel Investing School.

Prior to joining Notion, I spent 1.5 years as a Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Fanbytes, the UK’s leading Gen Z advertising agency. I was lucky enough to work underneath Forbes 30 under 30 CEO Timothy Armoo - building a B2B digital marketing engine that helped us scale from 25 to 50 employees during the pandemic. I had a lot of fun unlocking new revenue channels (with 8x return on investment), using automation to streamline our processes, driving massive brand awareness with creative ads and generating thousands of leads with our digital funnels.

It gets even better. During that time, I linked up with diversity, tech and investing powerhouse Andy Ayim MBE to co-found the AIS (Angel Investing School). Driven by our conversations around the importance of education in making the space more diverse, we built an online angel investing school and community. The aim? To provide a pathway for diverse professionals to learn how to become extraordinary angel investors and make an impact. Now on it’s 4th cohort, we have taught over 150 AIS graduates who have gone on to make 10+ angel investments.

So...what now? Taking Notion to the next level.

Well, now that you have read a bit about my journey, you can understand the significance of this moment for me. But what about Notion? As Europe enters its ‘Golden Age of Tech’, and with increasing VC competition from the US, it is now time for Notion’s next evolution. It’s time to change the game, time to take Notion Capital to the next level, and it’s an honour to be part of this mission with such a talented, intelligent and passionate team.

One last thing. I wanted to give a special shoutout to Nikita. This wouldn’t have been possible without you. Your bet on the wildcard paid off. Thanks for believing in me.

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