January 2017

2016 Roundup
Digital Practice

Andy Botha Group Chief Financial Officer 2016 saw Renaissance continue its successful relationship with the FTSE listed Zoopla Property Group, placing Andy Botha as Group Chief Financial Officer.

Andy Botha joins the online property portal from disruptive retailer Notonthehighstreet.com. Prior to this he spent five years at online gaming firm Betfair where he held senior commercial and financial roles, joining them from lastminute.com where he was UK Finance Director.

Zoopla's chairman Mike Evans said Botha “brings with him a wealth of highly relevant experience in tech businesses and demonstrable success in leading financial teams and business units during periods of high-growth.”

Zoopla Property Group was founded in 2007 and owns one of the UK's leading residential property websites Zoopla as well as comparison site uSwitch, with forecast revenues of over £180 million in 2016.

Meri Williams CTO In 2016 Renaissance was pleased to announce the placement of Meri Williams to the role of Chief Technology Officer of business card specialists Moo.com

Meri joined Moo.com from the M&S Digital team, where she held the position of Head of Engineering. Having spent the first ten years of her career at Procter & Gamble, Meri joined the Government Digital Service, where she scaled up the team to deliver the much lauded website GOV.UK.

During her career, Meri has led global teams ranging from 30 to 300. A published author and international speaker, she also co-curates and hosts The Lead Developer, an international conference for technical leaders.
MOO prints millions of cards a month and has hundreds of thousands of customers in over 200 countries. MOO has also become a much-loved brand, with a 75% NetPromoter rating.

The company has won 3 Webby awards, has been profiled in the Financial Times, and was ranked in the top 10 UK start-up companies by the Guardian Newspaper. MOO has offices in London and Stratford, UK as well as Providence and Boston, USA. MOO is backed by leading investors from the Accelerator Group, Index Ventures and Atlas Venture, the investors behind Skype, Betfair, Lovefilm, ASOS and MySQL.

Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas Chief Product and Technology Officer In 2016 we continued our successful relationship with GoCardless, the online payments specialist, placing Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas as Chief Product and Technology Officer.

Carlos joined GoCardless from Skyscanner, the leading independent metasearch travel company, where he was Chief Product Officer running a technical team of 450 people globally. Prior to Skyscanner, Carlos founded Fogg, an advanced hotels search engine that was acquired by Skyscanner and is the product that now powers Skyscanner Hotels.

GoCardless is a next generation payments company. They make it incredibly cheap and easy for anyone to take payments online using the Direct Debit infrastructure.

Their industry beating pricing, easy payment collection (they automate reconciliation into customer accounts) and instant online sign-up mean that they are rapidly becoming the preferred online direct debit option for businesses like Virgin, Thomas Cook, The Guardian, HM Government and TripAdvisor.

With over 20,000 clients, GoCardless is backed by leading investors such as Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, Passion Capital and Y Combinator.

Joanna Christie Group Brand Director Earlier in 2016 Renaissance successfully placed Joanna Christie as Group Brand Director at Treatwell.

Joanna joined them from the revolutionary fashion and technology platform Lyst, where she held the position of Global Head of Brand and Communications. Arriving as the company’s first brand guardian, she was responsible for defining their brand strategy across Europe and the US.

Joanna came from a luxury background – immediately prior to Lyst she worked for the Richemont Group in various Global PR and Brand related roles, and her early career was spent at London’s leading fashion and beauty PR agency Modus.

Formerly Wahanda, today Treatwell is the largest hair and beauty bookings website in Europe. The business is an eclectic group of 500 people working in offices throughout Europe, with over 20,000 local partners. Japanese internet giant Recruit Holdings acquired a majority stake in Treatwell in 2015.