At Copilot Capital, we’re always hunting for opportunities in numbers, beyond just financial results. With his consulting background and operational experience, this is one of Kemar England’s core strengths as an investor.

“My consulting experience taught me to think about the commercial context of companies,” he says. “And that’s how we operate at Copilot; looking beyond the numbers on the page and always getting back to the ground truth about what drives value in these assets.”

From engineering to consulting

Originally from Jamaica, Kemar decided against the traditional medical doctor/lawyer route many of his peers took and instead moved to the US to study engineering at Stanford University (where he also developed an interest in business). Stanford was a time of growth and exploration, and he nurtured a love of solving business challenges through the Stanford Consulting Club which led to a career at Bain & Company in San Francisco. Working with Fortune 500 technology giants, the experience gave him a front row seat to great businesses operating at scale.

“I spent a lot of time understanding the struggles that companies go through to innovate and grow new lines of revenue while right sizing their cost base,” he explains. “All businesses have challenges and opportunities, and those lessons stuck with me. Hands on experience at this level was important in building my mental model as an investor, especially as I didn't originally study business.”

As well as working with Fortune 500 technology companies, while at Bain, Kemar also spent time in the private equity group doing due diligence for technology assets - his first experience of investing. It provided an insight into private equity’s role in building successful tech businesses – the precursors to Fortune 500 giants – and how to lean on data to assess the quality of these investment opportunities.

“Working in the private equity group really does get your antennas locked into what a good business looks like, and how to use primary and secondary data to assess their potential,” he says. “You learn the key frameworks and become a machine for analysing the underlying markets, competitive dynamics, customer satisfaction, product offerings, and blending that to take a view on the company's prospects.”

Strategy and corporate venture at iRobot

After Bain, Kemar took a role at iRobot , the Boston-based consumer robotics company, spanning strategy, M&A, and corporate venture investing. Here, he got his first taste of working with founders and founder-led businesses, not only in the boardroom at iRobot HQ, but also through pursuing M&A targets, and through investing in startups via iRobot’s venture arm.

“The power of founder-led businesses cannot be understated,” he says. “Having that founder mandate in the business daily was an engine that drove innovation, culture, and alignment. The passion founders have for the products and customers is irreplaceable. It is the same passion and impact that I see in the founders we invest in today.”

But it wasn’t all hardware at iRobot; working with the Investment Director of the venture fund provided great exposure to the next horizon of software.

“We were not only investing in advanced robotics but also looking into companies specialising in AI, computer vision, artificial reality and even synthetic data, as well as smart home software,” he explains. “So, I quickly understood that software was the most cutting-edge, impactful element of the technology landscape, with the greatest ability to scale.”

Journey to being a Copilot

Next, it was business school at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a carefully considered move to build on his experience for the next stage of his career. Knitting together the threads of strategy, finance, and tech in business school took him across the world to London to become an investor. And from there, he joined Copilot, attracted to the challenge of building an investment fund from the ground up, alongside an experienced team of investors, and with a focus on doing hands-on work supporting founder-led scale-ups.

“The clue is in the name – we’re copilots,” he says. “We are not trying to run the companies we invest in. We want to back strong management teams, their vision, and their insights about customers, markets, and products. Then we want to support them by being sparring partners, helping to hire the right executives, bringing data to decision-making, and supporting financially to unlock value creation plays.”

He was also impressed with the Copilot team and felt his own background and experiences would be complementary and help build the Copilot Capital culture further.

“It is an inspiring team that I can learn from while bringing my own ingredient to the sauce,” he says. “It’s a small team of serious investors with broad diversity in our backgrounds: we are alums from multiple European software funds; we are former consultants, auditors, and operators; we have large cap and VC experience; and we are from all over the world. This freshness resonates with people looking to work with us and with founders looking for a partner.”

Adding value to founders

Day to day, Kemar spends his time sourcing new opportunities, running at interesting deals, and supporting the growth of portfolio companies through a range of initiatives including M&A. He’s able to draw on his experience to advise founders, describing Copilot as “smart money, but with a human touch.”

“Founders want investors who they can rely on to do the utmost to make the business and the partnership a success,” he concludes. “They partner with us because they know we’ll go the extra mile to support them in reaching the next level, while making the journey enjoyable. And in the asset class we operate in, this really matters.”

‍