Tim Farazmand - Non-Executive Director, Catalyst
My decision to join IBM after graduating was a relatively straightforward one. I had had great fun working for them in my year off before university and had subsequently gone back there in my summer holidays to pay off the overdraft. Recruited initially as a systems engineer, I went up a very steep technical learning curve and somewhat unbelievably (especially in view of my lack of technical nous today) understood how mainframes operated and how to fix them. I fairly rapidly switched across to the sales side and enjoyed a couple of years working on large account opportunities.
However, I was still in my twenties and convinced that I could take on the world and became increasingly restless in the patriarchal multi-national culture. I would like to claim that I saw the writing on the wall in terms of the problems that IBM experienced in the late 80s. The reality was that I really needed a new challenge and starting combing the job ads. I was attracted by a 3i advert in the Sunday Times and applied albeit I had no real understanding of what venture capital was all about. I was fortunate that at the time 3i were looking to recruit “non-accountants” who could bring other skills to the business and they thought that my selling skills were relevant as by 1987 they were starting to experience serious competition. Having left IBM at 9.30pm on a Friday night I walked into a 3i training course at 9am the following Monday. By 4pm I was convinced that I had made the worst mistake of my life, I hadn’t understood a word that had been said all day. However, several Financial Training courses later, they had managed to “respray” me and I realised that actually it was probably the best decision I had ever made.
I enjoyed 7 years with 3i during which time they relocated me to London from my native Birmingham in 1990. I was fortunate to work with some inspiring management teams and excellent intermediaries and became fully immersed in the venture capital “village”.
By the mid-90s I was again becoming increasingly restless; I wanted to stay in the industry and in London but wanted a new challenge. A friend introduced me to Royal Bank in 1994 that a year earlier had sold Charterhouse but retained Charterhouse Development Capital’s Scottish office and rebranded it Royal Bank Development Capital. They were going to open an office in London and I along with one of their existing team duly set this up. On my first day I walked into the room above one of the Royal Bank branches that we had managed to “borrow” to establish the office to find that it was completely empty other than a phone on the floor in the corner. It then dawned on me that in reality this was a start-up! Developing the business over the next 8 years was immensely challenging and satisfying. Again I worked with some tremendously talented management teams who built some very successful and valuable businesses. I was flattered to receive the BVCA MBO deal of the year award in 2002 for the igroup investment, which was sold to GE Capital in 2001.
Having worked for “large corporates” for nearly 20 years I started to look for a new challenge within the industry in early 2002. I set myself a number of criteria including independence, a “young” company, a small team with a desire to actively build businesses in a hands-on approach and a desire to have fun. Catalyst was the ideal fit. I had first met Rod Schwartz in 1999 and was hugely impressed by his drive, ambition and vision. It was a long “courtship” but I was able to see Catalyst evolve and mature from the outside, which meant that I was completely comfortable in accepting the offer to join and the attendant challenges.
Despite our best endeavours Catalyst was unable to raise its second financial fund and therefore after much deliberation I decided to move to Lloyds TSB Development Capital Limited (“LDC”) where I now run LDC’s team in London and the South East. However, I had a most enjoyable and productive two years with Catalyst and remain as a Non-Executive Director providing support to Rod Schwartz on both the management of the EFSVF fund and the strategic direction of the business.