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05-Feb-2018
Entrepreneurs: The Dots founder behind LinkedIn rival for “no collar” creatives
EveningStandard (Online)
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A rowdy crowd of Antipodean music industry bods were going wild at 37,000 feet on a flight
from Auckland to Sydney during a “mile-high gig”, featuring Dizzee Rascal and local rapper
Scribe. Suddenly a huge bang shocked the plane. The bass speaker blew. Pip Jamieson
looked nervously at the Air New Zealand suits who had trusted her to organise the in-flight
gig. Jamieson grimaced. The suits cheered. She breathed out.
The former MTV music exec, born in New Zealand to British parents, spends more of her
time on water than in the air these days. The 38-year old founded her “LinkedIn for
creatives” business, The Dots, from her houseboat, Horace, on Regent’s Canal in late 2014.
She’s since grown the business to take up more grounded Shoreditch surrounds, boasts
well-known investors and a sexy client list including M&C Saatchi, Warner Music, Google,
the Tate and Sony Pictures. Her networking site, Jamieson says, is aimed at “no-collar”
workers, those under 35 unwilling to don a suit and keen to hop between jobs and projects.
Employers can use the site to hire whole teams who worked on previous projects or cherrypick
fresh young talent. “If, for example, you liked the Natwest app and wanted to hire the
team behind it, you can see them all there,” she explains. Clients pay for a monthly
subscription and can pay extra for more extensive search and, increasingly, data analytics.
She devised the concept during her marketing gig at MTV. “I was constantly frustrated at not
being able to find fresh talent which is really dangerous in the creative industries because, if
you use the same people, what you create can feel very samey.” Entrepreneurs: Meet the
restaurateurs behind Inamo The users’ motivation, she says, is simple: “As we move to a
more freelance, gig economy, people don’t want to spend 10-15 years in one job and are
developing portfolio careers where they might do three days a week on one project, then
work, say, on a blog, podcast or their photography.” Jamieson is thinking big. “I want to be
the next LinkedIn. It might sound arrogant and that it’s insurmountable but the opportunity is
huge, so many people say LinkedIn is not for them.”
To achieve this, she’s set up solid foundations. Through Lastminute.com founder Brent
Hoberman, she met and brought in advertising veteran Sir John Hegarty as chairman and
an investor.
She’s raised money from The Garage Soho, Hegarty’s vehicle with venture capitalist Tom
Teichman and female-focused network Angel Academe which contributed to a recent £4
million raise. She’s just hired Patrick Traynor, an early LinkedIn employee, bringing her
team to 31.
The business did hit an early hitch, however. As the network grew, Jamieson realised the
majority of users in the spotlight in the site’s profile pages were white men. She quickly
instigated a rule that it must be 50% female and 30% people from BAME backgrounds.
Signs-up to the site immediately became more diverse, she says. “I did get some shit for
doing that, but I’d rather skew that way than LinkedIn, which goes the other way.”
Jamieson’s career has, appropriately, been full of varied stints. Her childhood was spent
travelling the globe with her music industry veteran father — who worked with the likes of
Kate Bush. “I’m a true rolling stone,” she laughs. “He wanted me to be in the creative
industries so I rebelled and studied economics.”
That degree, in Edinburgh, was followed by a fast-track civil service programme where she
worked under blind former home secretary David Blunkett (“He was bright and so
competent. He shows having a disability doesn’t need to be a disability.”) She finally gave in
to her dynastic vocation, working on the Brits and then running MTV’s marketing Down
Under aged just 24 with just a brisk read of the Dummies Guide to Marketing as experience.
The dyslexic entrepreneur now spends her weekends rowing her tender, Little Horace, up to
Waitrose in Granary Square, King’s Cross to do the weekly big shop.
She’ll be taking a few more journeys over the next couple of years, with a further fundraiser
planned 18 months away to help fuel international expansion. But the job in hand is growing
quickly to stamp a mark on the capital. “London has the most creatives in the world, more
even than New York, it’s the best possible place to build a network like this.”