Oliver Beach - General Manager UK Jolt

Today’s guest is Oliver Beech who runs Jolt in the UK, one of Octopus’ portfolio companies.

I first met Oliver when he came into No.10 to talk to me about Kano, a computer that young children could self build to learn about hardware, software and coding… Although, frankly it probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea for this early 30 something to have tried it at the time too.

He is now running a company called Jolt in the UK, which describes itself as a business school for self-made people.

The world moves so fast now that people need to be almost constantly reskilling and Jolt is helping people to do this in the modern era.

They are financially backed by the partner of this second season of Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future, Octopus Ventures who are part of the Octopus Group.

They are built to specialise in the four areas they believe will change the world for the better: health, money, deep tech and consumer.

They have backed the founding teams of more than 100 companies including Zoopla, Secret Escapes, graze.com, tails.com, Swiftkey, Depop, and Cazoo.

Some of their portfolio companies have gone on to join forces with the world’s largest businesses including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter.

With £1.3 billion under management and investing over £100m a year, Octopus Ventures is one of the largest and most active venture investors in Europe.

Their typical investment is from £1 million for Seed to £10 million for Series B and they have funded companies who have gone on right through IPO.