Build Fast, Learn Faster : Gemma Bloemen | Venture Partner, Systemiq Capital

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We're pleased to share the latest episode of Inside the Founder's Mind, featuring Gemma Bloemen (Venture Partner at Systemiq Capital, former Principal at Creandum, and former Operations Leader at Uber). With a career that spans hypergrowth operations, impact investing, and over 15 angel investments in climate and health tech, Gemma brings rare practical depth to the questions every founder building in the physical world is wrestling with.

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Episode Snapshot

In this episode, we explore what it really means to build fast and learn faster — why the best founders don't wait for the perfect product before shipping, how Uber scaled internationally by trusting local teams with full autonomy, and what Gemma actually looks for when she decides to back a founder. The conversation moves through hiring philosophy, engagement metrics at seed, the challenge of scaling UK healthcare cross-border, and the first signal that tells Gemma a founder can actually build something real.

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Key Themes We Cover

• The atoms problem — why scaling a business in the physical world is fundamentally different from scaling software, and what founders consistently underestimate.
• Uber's autonomy model — how giving local teams strong values, clear metrics, and genuine freedom to execute was the real engine behind Uber's international speed.
• Hire for the spark — why aptitude and attitude beat experience at early stage, and what Gemma still looks for in every founder she backs.
• Engagement as the only seed metric — frequency, duration, retention. Everything else is noise until you can show those three things working.
• UK healthtech's cross-border problem — why healthcare systems are too local for most UK-first models to scale easily, and why US-focused founders raise faster.
• Execute fast, deploy fast, learn fast — why speed of iteration is the habit that compounds most in a founder's first year, and why UK founders are still too afraid of failure.
• The first signal — how a founder tells their story in the very first interaction often reveals more about their leadership potential than anything else.

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