Ada’s 1st Hire

Check and I have had many “o wow!” moments over the past couple of years, and here’s another big one we wanted to share with you. In yet another pinch-ourselves event, the amazing Xun Ning Choong has joined Ada Ventures as Head of Operations!

Team Ada!

At Ada, Xun will be helping us with the next phase of our growth. We are scaling rapidly and need to build a team of diverse, values-aligned people to help us with this mission. Watch this space for the next opportunity to join our team…

We first met Xun when she was a lawyer on the Funds team with Oli and Rob (shout out to them — what a team!), now at Morgan Lewis, advising Ada Ventures our our first fund raise. We loved working with Xun as our funds counsel and had no inkling we’d one day be hiring her.

In Ada’s spirit of OpenVenture, we’d like to share the process by which we ultimately ended up recruiting Xun:

1. We work with the brilliant Applied to reduce bias in the recruitment process — the first thing the software does is to gender-neutralise language in the Job description
2. The JD went live and we pushed through our social channels. Our application process was blind, so all Check and I saw were the answers to five questions we asked all candidates
3. We had 130 or so of these blind applications (answers), all of which we each reviewed and scored
4. We interviewed the top 20+ candidates from this group. At this point we can see CVs, LinkedIn, etc.
5. We took three amazing candidates through to the final round, which included psychometric profiling to check for fit with the existing team (the two of us), and interviews with our amazing coach Jo
6. Xun agreed to join us!

As Head of Operations at Ada, Xun’s responsibilities will cover compliance, business ops, fund administration and finance, and many other areas of a scale-up VC business. Xun, Check and I will continue to work closely with the fabulous Kelly McDaid who manages the Ada Scout community (almost 100 now!) so brilliantly.

The mission of ours is about the community that’s building around Ada, about diversifying our ecosystem and driving change that pushes our industry forward. We’re humbled be able to share Ada even more with our first FTE. In joining us, Xun is welcomed by a widely distributed existing team of almost 100 scouts, 5 angels, ±30 LP investors, 20 former/current venture partners and many more supporters and friends. Ada Ventures is building a huge and diverse community, which I know will join us in welcoming and supporting Xun on her part of this amazing journey.

Let’s go!