Jeff Lynn is CEO and co-founder of Seedrs, Europe's number one equity crowdfunding platform. Seedrs is creating the world-leading marketplace for the equity for start-ups and growth businesses. It lets investors invest as little or as much as they like in businesses they believe in, and entrepreneurs raise capital and build community - all through a simple, online process.
Jeff began his career as a corporate lawyer with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York and London. In addition to his work with Seedrs, he was founding Chairman of The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), a non-profit advocacy group for digital start-ups and SMEs; and he serves as a non-executive director of Companies House, the UK government agency responsible for company registrations, filings and data.
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Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeffseedrs
Highlights
Having a few hundred people who all now have a vested interest in your success can be really useful when you are trying to acquire your first customers.
…we had a vision, we believed in what we were doing and we just were going to keep banging our heads against the wall until we made it happen.
As an entrepreneur … there is much more freedom to say ‘I don’t know’
I think one of the great successes I have achieved personally has been, somehow or another, I managed to persuade some really, really talented people to come work for us.
…rare are the situations where I say 'I am the CEO so we are doing it this way'
One point I have made many times is not only have I never been a CEO before but I have never actually seen a good CEO in action.
I find myself at thirty eight and running a company that’s growing well but still kind of figuring a lot of this out and you know, I think that’s part of being an entrepreneur.
I think that diversity of background is one of the most useful things in a creative growth driven business.