Elliot Moss
That was Ray Charles with What I'd Say, jaunty it was too. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul, and blues. My guest today is Amelia Miller, Co-founder of Ivy, an AI upskilling and talent network. Having seen their mum struggle to regain her old position on the career ladder after leaving work to raise three children, sisters Amelia and Lydia realised the job market, as they said, was not set up for people outside the workforce. Launching Ivy in 2023 with the initial focus of helping women re-enter the workplace after career breaks, offering webinars, bootcamps, assistance with building CVs and more, it was their appearance on Dragon's Den, you may have heard of it, in 2025 that brought them thousands of new members and job candidates and boosted employer interest. But shrinking diversity, equity and inclusion budgets, as well as the overwhelming impact of the small thing called AI in the workplace, drove Amelia and Lilia to expand their offer into AI upskilling. They now support individuals to learn and improve their AI skills through practical lessons built around real tasks, and companies can use Ivy to upskill their teams, increase AI adoption, or hire from Ivy's AI fluent network. How neat is that? Amelia joins me imminently. And the music in today's Jazz Shapers comes from Cal Tjader, Minnie Riperton, Esperanza Spalding, and here's George Benson with Give Me the Night.
That was George Benson with Give Me the Night. Amelia Miller is my Business Shaper today. She is the Co-founder of Ivy with her sister, Lydia, who we will not mention ever again, just Amelia. I've got the…
Amelia Miller
She must not be named.
Elliot Moss
…she must not be named. I'm only kidding. We sometimes have both founders here and sometimes we have just one of them, but just the one here is Amelia and she is, as I said, the Co-founder of Ivy. And tell me in your own words how you, the psychology graduate, got into this thing called your own business and then why the business that you created in the first place?
Amelia Miller
Great question. It's been a journey, that's for sure. I didn't know anything about the world of start-ups or entrepreneurism when I was, to be honest, at school or even at Uni at Cambridge and I fell into a job in banking, sales and training at Goldman Sachs when I graduated.
Elliot Moss
Small company.
Amelia Miller
Tiny little company, yeah.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, haven't really heard of that one.
Amelia Miller
No, no, me neither, um, and was there for 3 years and realised too late, to be honest, that it wasn't the environment for me. It's one of those things, you know, when you're at university, everyone falls into these big companies. You're either going to, you know, big consulting, big bank, and you sort of think that's the path that you should be on. And yeah, it did take me a few years to realise, oh, wait a sec, I don't think this is the path for me. I then…
Elliot Moss
Quite early on though, actually, 3 years is not, I mean, you say you're hard on yourself when you go, you know, it took me a while to realise that isn't that long. And it is, I mean, a first job, big company, you're going to learn some stuff.
Amelia Miller
For sure.
Elliot Moss
Whether it's your, and I've watched Industry through the years and I'm sure Industry is a massive exaggeration, but, and Amelia is smiling here because if you haven't seen Industry, go watch it. It's kind of powerful and it's a bit shocking and it's obviously an exaggerated version of what life is like working in a banking environment. But I imagine if you know it's not for you, but you're getting paid well, that isn't an easy equation immediately.
Amelia Miller
Exactly, exactly. And I think that's why I say, you know, I was there for too long because I agree, you know, 3 years in a career isn't massive, but I knew after year 1 and it was that internal battle with, but this is the career everyone wants, I'm being paid well, I have a bonus. This is it. This is what many people see as the pinnacle. I can't leave this for nothing.
Elliot Moss
What was missing?
Amelia Miller
For me, it was a sense of impact on the world. It was a sense of ownership, you know, at very big companies. For me personally, I did feel like a small cog in a big wheel, and I feel like I needed more ownership, um, and I wanted to have that entrepreneurial input into, like, the workings of the company. And I'm very driven by seeing, like the immediate fruits of my work and trying new things. I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades. In banking, you know, it's very focused on one particular thing like, you know, I'm sales and trading in currencies. It's niche. You're living on one software on Bloomberg, whereas what I do now is so varied, and that's what brings me joy, and that's what I think was missing.
Elliot Moss
But you, so, so there was a short moment when you were involved in another business. Is that right? Zuki?
Amelia Miller
Zuki, yes.
Elliot Moss
Zuki. It's a good name.
Amelia Miller
Great name.
Elliot Moss
A great start-up. But then you quickly go, you know what, I'm going to do my own thing. And at that point, point where you and Lydia both aligned on, we're going to do it together?
Amelia Miller
So the stars did align. It wasn't necessarily anything massively pre-empted. We always knew we were going to start a business. We have always had that entrepreneurial streak. I think it comes from our granddad who was, he's a, he's great, he's like a classic East London market trader. He's done, what hasn't he done? He's just sold anything and everything at all the London markets. He was back when Covent Garden was a flower market, he had a stall, he sold crystals outside like Dalston Kingsland Station for a few years. And so, yeah, in our childhood we'd always do, you know, what every kid does, wash cars, shovel snow. But as we got older, we started to have more serious conversations about what are the problems in the world that we can solve. At that point, I was working at Zuki, which is a start-up so I was feeling so motivated by the world of start-ups. I was learning so many new skills and Lydia was in VC, she was at Deloitte Ventures. And both of those skill sets were very aligned at that time when we were both ready to do our own thing. She had the VC experience, I had the operational experience, and the problem was right at that time as well.
Elliot Moss
And we're going to pause there and find out what the problem is in just a moment, because actually it's a very important moment. But though, understanding just how the two of you came together, serendipitous on the one hand, and kind of very practical and strategic on the other.
Amelia Miller
Mm.
Elliot Moss
We could argue it both ways. Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper, it's Amelia Miller. She's the Co-founder of Ivy and they are in the talent and AI business and they've been in a few other pivots as well, which we'll be talking about very shortly. Right now, Cal Tjader with Lover, Come Back to Me.
Cal Tjader, Lover, Come Back to Me. That was nice, wasn't it? Amelia Miller is my Business Shaper. She's the Co-founder of Ivy. And we were just at the point, and I'm going to let you in your own words say the problem to solve was, and then you're going to write in the exam paper, the problem to solve was, Elliot, here she goes.
Amelia Miller
Keyword is was, because to your point, our original business is not the business we have today and we've been on a journey of pivoting and expanding. Our original mission was to help women get back into the workforce after career breaks. Lydia and I are sisters, and we watched our mum experience this exact problem whereby she was an accountant, had risen very quickly to director level, left the workforce. In her case, it was to raise three daughters. We've actually got another sister, an older sister.
Elliot Moss
Oh, she's getting a mention now.
Amelia Miller
She's getting a mention.
Elliot Moss
Let's give her a shout out.
Amelia Miller
Shout out, Hayley.
Elliot Moss
Well done, Hayley. So hold on, the age gaps are what between each of you?
Amelia Miller
About 2 years between. Hayley's older, I'm middle, Lydia's youngest.
Elliot Moss
We're with the middle child here.
Amelia Miller
Middle child.
Elliot Moss
That explains a lot Amelia.
Amelia Miller
That's why I'm so cool.
Elliot Moss
Well, you learnt enough, but you've still got someone nipping at you. So you're kind of on, you're on, you're ready to go at any given time.
Amelia Miller
100%.
Elliot Moss
Looking both ways.
Amelia Miller
I love being the middle child.
Elliot Moss
Do you?
Amelia Miller
Some middle children have a bad experience. I only got good things to say.
Elliot Moss
What do you love about it?
Amelia Miller
I just feel like I've had a great, great life. I've, I’ve…
Elliot Moss
Have you wiggled through?
Amelia Miller
Yeah, I've managed to somehow just sort of fall into things that have worked well. And that must be, you know.
Elliot Moss
I mean, there is a, you know, people we all know that the theory around middle children, lots of very, very successful people are middle children. I'm thinking of one at the moment, Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister, I think was a middle child, but so many, and I forget the examples, but I think it's that people talk about resourcefulness.
Amelia Miller
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
And they talk about not quite being the centre of attention and having to vie and say, "Hello, I'm here," which is probably part of… did you lead the charge as we get to the Ivy thing? Were you pushing Lydia to do this?
Amelia Miller
Well, actually, no and we have the original voice note, which was on, I think, the 24th of April, 2024.
Elliot Moss
You think? I love that. Some people are bad at dates. You're not bad at dates. That's a very specific memory.
Amelia Miller
I think you know.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, I completely know. I'm just being humble.
Amelia Miller
And coming back to…
Elliot Moss
Yeah, the why. Yeah, what is the why?
Amelia Miller
We watched our mum leave the workforce and struggle to get back in. It was so hard for her to find work because she had a break in employment. I remember once we were in the kitchen, she was on speakerphone to a recruiter, and she mentioned the length of her career break, and they literally hung up the phone on her. And we thought, as if a candidate of this calibre with this experience is being treated like this in the labour market, in the job market. There must be a bigger problem here. And then we started researching, we started having conversations, and that's when Lydia sent me the voice note and essentially said, you know, I think there's a business here. And this was in 2023, and it wasn't until 2024 that we left our jobs to actually turn that idea into a working MVP of the platform and, and launch it to the market. And at that time, the tailwinds were really there, you know, DEI was very top of mind. AI hadn't totally led to a collapse of vacancies. And we took off quite quickly and we had clearly hit a problem that is faced by pretty much every single person that's trying to get back into the workforce after a career break.
Elliot Moss
Can you remember mum's emotional state at that time? Because you can tell the story and you go, it makes perfect sense. And I've, you know, underpinning the strategic reason why there was a gap in the market is to address that. But for mum as a human and your mum, what did you observe?
Amelia Miller
It was horrible to watch, to be honest, because she was at a time in her life where her children were leaving home, so empty nester syndrome, and she was ready to get back in. You know, mentally, she wanted to work, she was ready. She didn't have caregiving responsibilities anymore, and she was all in for working for an employer and being loyal to that employer and it was just rejection and she wasn't even getting far along to be like, "Oh, you know, I missed out. I was one of the final two." It was, it was upfront rejection and so, it was this melting pot of, "I, you know, frankly, have lost my purpose as a mother, um, and now nobody wants to hire me." And so, it was just, you know, a really emotional time for her, not to necessarily put words in her mouth, but that's how she was feeling. So, you have the financial stress, the emotional stress, wanting to work but not being given that opportunity, and feeling quite invisible.
Elliot Moss
Massive impetus then for her children, two of her daughters and Hayley, I'm sure you were thinking about it, but Lydia and Amelia Miller, who is my Business Shaper today, went off and actually did it. We're going to be hearing much more from her very shortly. Right now though, we're going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip, we hear from Ethan Frankel, Co-founder and CEO of Prograd, a UK fintech platform aiming to empower Gen Z to earn side income and improve their financial future.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers, lucky you, on the Jazz Shapers podcast, and you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is Amelia Miller, Co-founder of Ivey, an AI upskilling and talent network and we were hearing about the initial impetus, which is mum and women into work. How long, getting women back into work, how long did that focus last? We talked about the, you mentioned DEI, the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda changing. Started with the US headwinds into the UK and basically saying, yeah, we're kind of gender, not as interesting as it was. I mean, for the good companies, I hasten to add, they carry on focusing on brilliant people, brilliant women coming back into the workplace after, um, having children. But for you, at what point was there a hold on a minute, we need to pivot this business?
Amelia Miller
We launched our MVP, minimum viable product, the first version of the platform. Looking back makes my skin shudder how bad the tech was but we launched that in April of 2024. And I would say about six months later, we really started to see these market dynamics come into effect. Trump got elected.
Elliot Moss
Mm-hmm.
Amelia Miller
DEI budgets went out the window. Teams were getting, DEI teams were getting slashed and hiring was freezing. But that was due to a much larger tailwind, which was what AI was doing to the labour market. When I was at Cambridge, I did a lot of research into skills prediction. I'm currently a fellow there now looking at skills prediction in the labour market and what's interesting, not necessarily anything new to listeners, but AI is completely reshaping the workforce. We are living through the largest reallocation of labour since the Industrial Revolution. Not to get doomsday, but it's happening. AI is here to stay. And what we were noticing with what we were teaching our candidates at that time was all of our AI upskilling content was just absolutely flying. We're talking 400%, 500%, you know, amplification in any learning content we would put out. And for us, that's a clear market indicator that people want to consume this. And what we also knew was this was going to make our candidates more employable. And the best way to serve this cohort is to ensure they're AI fluent so that they can get jobs. And so for us, it was a very natural evolution and expansion into the upskilling game because the market was crying out for it and we were just seeing that so blatantly in, in all of our data as well. We were also getting thousands of DMs from people that weren't quite eligible, and I put that in air quotes, because it was from either men saying, hey, can I sign up? Or people that were employed saying, hey, I'm not on a career break, but I'd love to learn about AI, I know you guys educate on it.
Elliot Moss
So suddenly the market changes. There's a different shape to it. But are there still, is there still a huge percentage of women that are involved in your, your vision and also in the practicalities of who's using the platform?
Amelia Miller
Yeah, Ivy is a platform for anybody, anyone, whether you're employed, whether you're out of work and you want to learn about AI, if you're feeling overwhelmed by all of the new tools coming out, because they are coming out hard and fast, that's for sure. But because of our original mission, we are actually skewed female, which is really rare in AI and in AI learning today because women are about between 30% and 40% less likely to be utilising these tools and that for me personally is a massive win because I'm very passionate about gender equality in AI, um, outside of all things Ivy. And so it's great to see the initial cohort that we set out to serve of remaining very engaged. And what's been even better is also seeing them stay with us through this expansion.
Elliot Moss
They need it. I mean, everyone needs it, but if you're still serving women, that's absolutely, that's absolutely critical. But I just wondered, just a brief question, is this at every level? You talk about the changing job market. Are you seeing it more at the entry level or is this literally going right the way through the thing?
Amelia Miller
It's a great question. We have a knowledge graph, we analyse market trends. We analyse every single job description that's ever written, like millions and millions of job descriptions a day. We analyse previous periods of tech change and what that meant for the labour market. And to answer your question, right now we're seeing it in easily automatable roles at first, but the domino is falling. Anthropic actually just released a really interesting report looking at which types of roles are going to be automated and already are. And it's what you would expect right now, you know, it's repetitive, computer-based things like executive assistant roles or admin-based roles, customer service roles, but it's, but it’s creeping into every single role. And what we're seeing in job descriptions is even a role you think might not be touched by AI, I don't know, like a social media manager, everybody is asking for some level of AI fluency in those roles. And you need to be able to work with these tools.
Elliot Moss
I think that's the phrase, isn't it? AI fluency. Um, Amelia Miller is my AI fluency guest here. She's the Co-founder of Ivy, serving everybody in a way who's looking to get into the workplace and it happens to be that a big percentage of those are still women, which is a brilliant thing. Right now it's time for some more music. Minnie Riperton, Adventures in Paradise.
The funky sound of Minnie Riperton with Adventures in Paradise. Amelia Miller is my Business Shaper, Co-founder of Ivy. They're the AI now and talent business. And the pivots are important. I want to put the pivots to one side for a moment and just, um, in, in researching you and the business, something struck me which was dissonant with my view of life and it's around this notion that reaching out cold to people can produce results. And what I understand from you is in terms of going, hello, we're here, do you want to invest in us? And we've got something interesting. You did just that, whether it was Balderton, Dragon's Den, we'll come on to. Some of you will know that Amelia was on, you and Liddy were both on Dragon's Den, I think last year. The Techstars accelerator you're involved in, the Asian Investors. A lot of these things came from you just saying, hello, we're here. That's unusual to me. How did you pull it off?
Amelia Miller
Great question and my real answer is I got no clue. But we weren't necessarily blessed to have loads of industry connections the, especially the fundraising landscape is still very who you know, cold.
Elliot Moss
And tougher for women. Again, I've had many people…
Amelia Miller
Don’t get me started.
Elliot Moss
…whether it's Debbie Wosskow, and I always mention Debbie because she's on the task force.
Amelia Miller
She is a legend.
Elliot Moss
She is a legend. The 2% number, I mean, it's ridiculous. Um, I've had Sahar Hashemi on the programme, the woman behind Buy Women Built. We talk all about the lack of female founder investment. It's insane, uh, but you, you sort of bashed through that?
Amelia Miller
I would, yes and no, you know it’s, I would be lying if I said it's been easy. Many a tear shed, many a tear shed in our fundraising journey. Whether that's due to our gender is kind of a question I don't know the answer to. Fundraising's hard for any founder. It's the worst part of the job. Nobody likes to do it, especially when you don't have a business. But we did so much cold. Pretty much every investor we have half has come through cold outreach. And it's…
Elliot Moss
Literally emails, often.
Amelia Miller
Usually LinkedIn DMs.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Amelia Miller
LinkedIn is our best friend. LinkedIn is such a powerful social network if you use it to its best of its abilities.
Elliot Moss
So let's pretend I'm, I've, I've got 100 million in the bank, which I hasten to add I do not have, and you want to get money from me. What would you have said to me a year and a half ago? What's the three-liner that, that falls inside my direct messages?
Amelia Miller
Well, what the best thing to do is actually I wouldn't have gone to you. I would have found someone that knows you that has high social status, and I would have sent them a forwardable blurb that makes me sound like I'm really hard to get. Like, I'm not begging you, but you want to speak to me. If that doesn't work and I go straight to you, it's crafting a message that could not be read by anyone else and sound the same. So I'm not just replacing that first name, I'm making it a very highly personal message. I'm seeing what your interests are, I'm seeing what maybe you've recently posted about or reposted, are you in the news, and I'm leading with that. In that very short 300-character LinkedIn DM, and I'm hoping for the best.
Elliot Moss
But that's what you did.
Amelia Miller
Yeah, that's what we did.
Elliot Moss
So it's possible. So if you were pitching me right now here on Jazz Shapers, how would you express why Ivy is different and why it's going to be successful and why I should invest?
Amelia Miller
Mm. We're building the, the missing layer to unlock AI productivity. There's so many tools out there, the problem is adoption, and nobody is fixing that problem right now and we’ve, we've built a brand and we've built equity within the space, which means we are the people to solve it and the market opportunity is massive because this is the new software.
Elliot Moss
Final chat coming up with my guest today who just pitched. It's Amelia Miller, and I did put her on the spot, but that's okay, she seems to have coped admirably. And we've got some Esperanza Spalding coming up for you too, that's in just a moment, don't go anywhere.
Esperanza Spalding, I Adore You. Amelia Miller is my Business Shaper and she's the Co-founder of Ivy and we've heard the pitch and I hope you're convinced. Um, one of the things that interests me when I was finding out more about you, a lacrosse player, 2015 to 2018 at Team England. So you've played sport at a very high level and obviously it was a good few years ago. Is there a sense of, resilience and discipline that you think is important to you, Amelia, being effective in what you do?
Amelia Miller
100%. I think playing team sport is one of the best decisions I ever made in hindsight as a founder. The skills you build; communication, leadership, operating at a high level under pressure, discipline, it's insane, you know, leading a team, I'm so thankful for all of the sport I played. I still play lacrosse, actually.
Elliot Moss
Do you?
Amelia Miller
I've got a game this Sunday. Very much not at that level anymore, but it's a great outlet.
Elliot Moss
But you still enjoy it?
Amelia Miller
It takes your mind off business.
Elliot Moss
Do you manage yourself well, do you think, psychologically, because you are that kind of person, that you've sort of trained your brain and your body to keep going and to be fit and to be ready? Do you think it's a big part of who you are?
Amelia Miller
Yeah, I really do, um, and I still I do a lot of sport. I played rugby at university as well and there's something about just getting absolutely the wind knocked out of you when you're being tackled and being humbled, for lack of a better phrase, builds up resilience. And being a founder, you're being humbled every day, every hour of every day. You're getting rejected by, on sales calls, by investors, you're getting knocked. So it's basically a psychological tackle every single day and so having that experience of what that actually feels like, you know, we won a medal every World Cup, at least that I played in, but we lost out on the silver medal, for example. And it really is that mind-set of you are so gutted, but you have to pick yourself back up, you have to keep going, and you've got to get it the next time. And that genuinely is the life of a founder.
Elliot Moss
And in terms of looking at the people that then use the platform, I mean, a lot of those people are going through that journey themselves. Do you, at this stage, because there's 80,000 people, I think, who are connected to the platform, and you can correct me if that number's wrong.
Amelia Miller
About over 100,000.
Elliot Moss
Over 100,000, wow, I love these things, it just goes up. That was only, that was only this morning, a couple of hours ago. Um, do you personally get involved or is it much more like they're, you know, they're behind the screen?
Amelia Miller
Oh no, we absolutely are so involved. I was with all of our users last night at an event and we do a mixture. So we have live learnings and this is from anyone that's a beginner and just starting their journey with AI to individuals that maybe use ChatGPT or Copilot a little bit, but that don't know how to prompt, all the way through to people that are advanced and are building out their own agent workflows. And we're a very founder-led business. The reason Lydia's not on the show today is she is leading and running one of our live sessions on Claude Cowork and we have a very high standard with how we deliver our content to users. Our secret source at Ivy is we break down what can be seen as a very technical and complex and overwhelming industry into something interesting and something fun and something that actually makes you want to sit behind a screen and learn it. And to your point, we try and do as many in-person events as we can to actually get everyone in a room together because the energy you feel actually meeting your users is unmatched.
Elliot Moss
And if your grandpa was sitting here now and the guy who was doing the market stalls and was selling his crystals in front of Dalston and all that, what do you think he'd say?
Amelia Miller
He'd be pocketing some equipment on the side.
Elliot Moss
And selling it later. There’s nice equipment in here.
Amelia Miller
He's so proud of us. When he watched us on Dragon's Den, we did a big watch party in, uh, in Brixton, and he came, and he was just so proud. Yeah, he absolutely loves it.
Elliot Moss
We can watch the clip back on YouTube, I'm sure.
Amelia Miller
Yes.
Elliot Moss
It's been great chatting to you. We could have talked for much longer, but, um, I'm having to say thank you for joining me today and ask you what your song choice is and why have you chosen it.
Amelia Miller
My song choice is Etta James, ‘Sunday Kind of Love’. Why I chose it, and I was, I was umming and ahhing between Etta James and I do love Andra Day. I know she's a bit more R&B soul, but it's a very, it's very slow and I find it quite a meditative song. And I think in the life of a founder where you're so busy and your brain just feels like it's got a million thoughts going around at once, it's nice to have music that can relax you, slow you down. And that's why I like listening to it. I listen to it most Sundays.
Elliot Moss
Etta James, A Sunday Kind of Love, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Amelia Miller. She talked about wanting impact, and that's why she left the corporate world and set up this business with her sister. She talked about facing the psychological tackles and dealing with them every day, and that is the reality of being a founder. And finally, successful cold calls can happen if you craft and tailor with great precision and thought with regard to who you are talking into when you're trying to raise money. It is possible. You can do it.
You can hear my conversation with Amelia all over again whenever you'd like to as a podcast, just search Jazz Shapers, or you can ask your smart speaker to play Jazz Shapers. Alternatively, if you're up with the larks, you can catch this programme again Monday morning just before the Jazz FM Breakfast at 5..00am. Up next after the news at 10.00, it's Nigel Williams. He's got great music, interviews, and live sessions too. That's it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
That's it from Jazz Shapers, have a great one and I'll see you Saturday.
On this Saturday's Jazz Shapers, I'm joined by the Co-founder of Ivy, an AI upskilling and talent network. Amelia Miller is my guest. I'm Elliot Moss, and I'll have more of that alongside the music of the shapers of jazz, soul and blues this weekend.
On this Saturday's Jazz Shapers, we heard from Amelia Miller, Co-founder of Ivy, an AI upskilling and talent network. That programme is now available for you to listen to again as a podcast and through your smart speaker, just search or ask for Jazz Shapers, or you can hear it again nice and early Monday morning, 5.00am.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul, and blues. My guest today is Amelia Miller, Co-founder of Ivy, an AI upskilling and talent network.
We're back next Saturday with my next Business Shaper, Abigail Tan, CEO of St Giles Hotel Group and Founder of the Hotels with Heart Foundation, a charity giving back to local communities.