Julie Meyer – Ariadne Capital

It’s 11o’clock on a Monday morning and Julie Meyer has already achieved her first goal of the week. She is feeling serene and harmonious.

Given Meyer spent the weekend at a Spa with her girlfriends, surely this can’t have been too difficult. In fact, take a closer look at the 42-year-old Californian and her eyes tell a different story.

On the outside, Meyer, the CEO of global investment and advisory firm Ariadne Capital, is an advertisement for serenity. Her skin is glowing, long blond hair bouncing, tall, slim figure clad in an elegant beige, figure-hugging dress, with a battered brown suede jacket thrown over. But then behind that perfectly done-up face, her eyes look a little watery, a little red… In fact, Julie Meyer looks tired.

It’s hardly surprising considering that alongside the Spa and giggling girlfriends, Meyer has also been working. She works seven days a week, has always done, freely admits it and isn’t apologising either. She works long days during the week, dines out with clients in the evenings, works four hours on Saturday and then another six on Sunday.

“In the global scheme of things, that’s not a lot,” she insists. She does it to get through emails, to clear the work that clogs up her Monday mornings so that she can achieve that weekly goal of hers - serenity and harmony – even if only for a few hours.

Meyer is big on goals. She has a whole host of them for her firm, now in its ninth year. They include taking advantage of the downturn by growing the business, raising their own fund, hiring more people, doing more deals and investing back in entrepreneurs and businesses.

“I can honestly say I have never thought about having children. People say ‘Oooh, go on, it’s not true’ and my mother says ‘Don’t tell anyone!”

At the moment, they’re well on the way to achieving those. Ariadne, named after the Greek goddess who helped Theseus out of the Minotaur's labyrinth, currently has equity stakes in 23 companies, advises ten clients and receives 80 applications each month from businesses asking for their help. In 2008 alone, £80m was invested.

Meyer and her team of 18 are essentially the fairy godmothers of small entrepreneurial businesses. They pinpoint start-up companies with a niche and good entrepreneur behind them, help them raise capital through their network of 50 private entrepreneur investors and then advise them on how to grow and maximise their business.

That she and her team are still doing deals in a recession (they completed two, million-pound private investments deals in December and February) is testament to her reputation in the market and Ariadne’s success to date. Put simply, Meyer’s judgement is trusted.

And it’s hardly surprising why. Meyer’s professional track record is impeccable. She founded First Tuesday, the largest global network of entrepreneurs during the dotcom era before it was sold for $50m in July 2000. Using her share of the proceeds to establish Ariadne the following month, she has since advised leading companies such as Skype, British Telecom, CarPhone Warehouse, EMAP, Morse and Sage, and a portfolio of start-ups including LogicServe, SpinVox and Zopa.

But it’s Meyer’s personal dedication that truly sets her apart. Take what she considers to be ‘the happiest moment of my life’. It was having the responsibility of taking First Tuesday international during the summer of 1999. And she wanted to achieve it by 7 September that year.

She remembers thinking: “‘Because then we are announcing it and then we are on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And if we haven’t done it, we won’t be on the front page’. Everyone else was away on holiday and I was working my butt off!”

“Let’s face it, the government cannot make revenue, they can print money but they cannot make revenue. Companies do that. And the SME sector is going to get us out of this global meltdown.”

And yet Meyer doesn’t consider herself ambitious. She just loves her job and is always looking for the next goal. Interestingly, one she never set herself was motherhood. “I can honestly say I have never thought about having them [children]. People say ‘Oooh, go on, it’s not true’ and my mother says ‘Don’t tell anyone!’” she throws her head back, roaring with laughter. “But it’s honestly never occurred to me.”

She does have seven godchildren though, who keep her busy once they’ve reached age six. Before that age, she says: “I don’t do that well. If you want to see me totally out of control, put me with a three-year-old who’s wailing!”

Her own childhood was a happy time in which she identified strongly with her father, a doctor with a strong entrepreneurial streak. It’s he she credits with inspiring most of her business journey to date. After gaining a degree in English Literacy, she moved to Paris at age 21 where she knew no one. She gained her MBA at INSEAD business school at age 30, moved to London at 31 and worked at New Media Investors (now AIM-listed New Media Spark) where she helped fund Lastminute.com. It was while there that she began setting up networking events for the new media set, which became First Tuesday.

These days, Ariadne comes before most things in her life, which is perhaps more understandable when she explains its wider implications. “Let’s face it, the government cannot make revenue, they can print money but they cannot make revenue. Companies do that. And I feel that it is out of the SME sector, the high growth private companies of the future, that we are going to get ourselves out of this global meltdown.”

In fact, so enthusiastic, so driven is Meyer about her business that she rarely finishes one sentence fully before speeding onto the next. In this way, the investment world suits her. Along with its hectic pace, it means she is always ahead of the trend, always on the lookout for the next big opportunity or entrepreneur in which to invest.

This fast-thinking, fast-talking mentality hasn’t helped in all spheres though. She ‘fesses up’ to making many mistakes in her time, including ‘not always hiring well’. Pressed further and it comes down to the lightening speeds at which she operates.

“There are some people out there who are not comfortable with a start-up environment and we work like a start up. We have that clock speed energy and some people just don’t want that. I’m used to moving really fast and reacting. I have to spend more time communicating. Those things are work in progress,” she smiles.

But, for the most part, Julie Meyer has done pretty spectacularly. She was named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000, one of Wall Street Journal’s top 30 Most Powerful Women in Europe, described as ‘Britain’s Most Powerful Woman’ by Management Today and was named one of the ‘100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow’ at the World Economic Forum.

That’s all since her ‘AHA!’ moment 11 years ago. “I had just come to London and I said to myself ‘Julie, stop trying to be this Renaissance woman who is going to be perfect at all things. It’s never going to happen! You’re bad at some stuff and you’re good at others, now focus on what you’re good at.” She’s done that ever since.

Visit www.ariadnecapital.com  for more information on Julie Meyer and her company.

By Barbara Walshe