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Founders Intelligence

Acquired by Accenture

Is this your company?

A differentiated company - Senior Consultant Founders Intelligence Employee Review

5.0
13 Apr 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Fantastic work culture, truly global film with a combination of highly creative and analytical individuals - Really interesting work, from doing innovation strategy to building new corporate ventures (across all industries) - Highly connected with entrepreneurial ecosystem, and part of a larger network of renowned investors and startup founders - Meritocratic culture, job well done is both appreciated and communicated across the company. - Competitive salary and benefits

Cons

- Entrepreneurial ecosystem still mostly limited to Europe (now growing in LATAM) - opportunity to increase reach globally

Explore other reviews about Founders Intelligence

5.0
17 May 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

#1 Without a doubt, the people: FI has developed a rigorous values-based hiring process that consistently manages to find brilliant people who are talented, ambitious, entrepreneurial, humble and fun. This is definitely the company’s secret sauce. #2 The opportunity to shape a new type of consultancy: the company is at a really exciting stage of growth. Having found product-market fit on its core offering, the company is now scaling fast, whilst also developing new propositions. The work is consistently interesting and challenging. For someone who wants to shape and grow a new type of consultancy, FI offers a platform with huge opportunity to grow – both personally & professionally. #3 The Founders Forum network & ecosystem: FI sits at the heart of Europe’s tech ecosystem. Being co-located with the Founders Forum sister business @ the FF HQ in High Street Ken makes for a wonderfully dynamic work environment where you are constantly learning from and sharing ideas with those around you.

Cons

FI puts a big emphasis on working with corporate clients that take innovation seriously and working on projects that will have tangible impact. For this reason, the company prioritises end-to-end projects that are not just strategic in nature, but go right through to the execution e.g. making an investment into a start-up / building the MVP for a new venture. However, as with any consultancy working with big corporates, sometimes innovation initiatives gets deprioritised mid-project which can be frustrating.

1
2.0
29 Nov 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- At FI, I worked with some of the nicest and most interesting people in my career so far - Good networking opportunities with wider Founders Factory/Forum team - although you obviously need to put the work in yourself - Chance to attend Founders Forum - Most of the projects are interesting and offer tangible industry insights for the future - Good social events - Health insurance, free food and other excellent benefits

Cons

I joined FI because I bought into the vision of an entrepreneurial environment but without many of the drawbacks of being on the ground at a startup. Unfortunately, the business has a significant number of its own problems, which are hard to see from the outside. One of the issues I observed was that senior staff refuse to take the blame for problems - manifesting itself in junior staff being blamed for not managing their time properly! Other issues: - No HR or channels to raise issues with management - Opaque feedback process, plus lack of candour on projects - Although it's great that Sanctus sessions are available, the CEO and Partners don't appear to have an understanding of workplace mental health, which is detrimental to morale of many staff - Lack of professionalism and honesty dealing with people moving on from the business

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Founders Intelligence Response
6y
I'm sorry that you felt this way and that the fit wasn’t right. For others reading this review, I wanted to add some context and additional information on the specific issues you raise: - Feedback process: When you join FI you are allocated a Coach whose job it is to help you interpret feedback, form an action plan and measure your progression. You then get three forms of feedback (1) informal on the job feedback (2) project feedback, done at the end of a project, or at regular intervals in longer ones. (3) 360 feedback done every six months. As CEO, I am also included in the feedback process and receive anonymous feedback from every employee during the 360 process. All feedback is recorded in our tool, Lattice, and the team of coaches meet regularly to discuss issues and calibrate how they rate performance. No feedback system is perfect, but we’re trying hard to make ours as good as possible. The coaches are also a channel for upwards feedback where the employee might not feel comfortable approaching senior management themselves. <b> - Channels to management/ HR: We’ve recently made sure that the channels are now clear to everyone in the company and have launched a tool (Notion) which contains all of our HR policies and the appropriate channel for different situations. We have the following channels: (a) your coach to raise all day-to-day issues; (b) our operations lead, to channel things to me confidentially; (c) me!; (d) our chairman for serious issues or if they were to affect me. The company is not big, so even if these channels are not right for some reason, there are always others who will help to make sure your issue is heard. - Workplace mental health: I am deeply saddened by this comment as it’s something we have taken extremely seriously. Obviously we cannot advertise interventions we have taken, but we are extremely supportive of anyone who brings problems to management. We have two employees certified as mental health first aiders, in addition to two qualified mental health coaches that come in fortnightly through our partner Sanctus. All employees have access to mental health services through their BUPA health insurance. I care deeply about the welfare of our people and am committed to providing the support needed to ensure people can take care of themselves and perform at their best. - Dealing with people moving on: We are an entrepreneurial and high-performance culture. We take pains to interview rigorously and make sure the fit is brilliant on both sides. On occasion, we have had people who have not worked well in our company. We always give them every opportunity and support to develop, but as you can imagine, when it doesn’t work out the parting process is painful. We make these decisions based on the rigorous feedback process described above. Happily these cases are very rare and the vast majority of our leavers are life-long FI and personal friends who we celebrate and admire, as you’ll read in other reviews.</b>
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