Welcoming Laura Connell, our newest Partner in Atomico’s Growth Investment Team
The boldest, most progressive founders need investors with the knowledge and capital to support them for the long-term. Laura brings a wealth of growth investing experience, including deep private and public expertise, from her experience with global technology hedge fund Marcho Partners, Balderton Capital and Goldman Sachs.
Laura’s passion for working with founders is driven by a lifelong interest in innovation, which she has pursued both as an investor and an academic researcher. She joined Balderton in 2018, where she took a leading role in their first venture growth stage fund and in launching the firm’s growth strategy. Laura’s time at Balderton involved supporting some of the region’s most exciting founders, including fellow Atomico partnerships Truecaller (STO:TRUE-B) and Graphcore, as well as Darktrace (LON:DARK), Flywire (US:FLYW), Lendable, Vestiaire Collective and McMakler, amongst others.
Laura went on to join Marcho Partners, a global hedge fund investing in founders at the helm of publicly-listed tech companies in Europe, the US, LatAm and South-East Asia. While there, she invested across fintech including global payment and banking infrastructure, as well as enterprise SaaS, and consumer marketplaces.
Laura understands the complexities of navigating challenging market environments, having started her investing career at Goldman Sachs during the global financial crisis. At GS, Laura invested across assets in public equities, fixed income and alternatives before joining the Financial Institutions Group. There she covered European banks, insurers and fintech in the aftermath of the European debt crisis.
Outside of her career as an investor, Laura was an Assistant Researcher in the Brain Sciences Team in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College. She was previously educated at Oxford where she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Business School for her MBA.
While we collectively face a volatile macro environment, the tailwinds for tech have never been stronger. Europe continues to produce some of the most ambitious teams solving the largest global challenges we face. We have a big opportunity to leverage an incredible platform and a home court advantage to expand Atomico’s growth strategy and support gamechanging innovators. I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.
Laura will work closely with Atomico’s existing Growth focused senior team, Luca Eisenstecken, Carter Adamson and Hillary Ball, on the next phase of Atomico’s later stage investing. Within Growth, Laura will retain a generalist approach, leveraging her experience across multiple sectors.
Welcome, Laura!
