Rhiannon Smith

S

Co-founder & CTO, Kestrel Energy - hiring · healthcare · fundraising

Kestrel Energy
Belfast, UK · GMT (UTC+0)
16+ years experience
University of Southampton
English
Raising
Messaging unavailable

Overview

I started Kestrel Energy to fix vertical SaaS for clinics for teams who were tired of the workarounds. Took Kestrel Energy from zero to $3 million ARR. Raised $17 million across 3 rounds. Before that: McKinsey & Company and Tesco. Board member at a local non-profit.

Good reasons to reach out
  • Investors who back our stage and sector
  • Speaking or podcast invitations
  • Second opinions on go-to-market decisions
Please don't message about
  • Paid accelerator offers
  • Fundraising consultants
  • Offshore staffing offers

Answers in batches on Fridays

Skills
healthcarehiringfundraisinggo-to-marketHR tech
RaisingRaising capital
closes in 3 months

Pre-seed round open - energy audits for shipping lines, 185 paying customers

Stage
Pre-seed
Raising
$1M
Instrument
Priced round
Committed so far
$199k from an existing fund
Lead investor
Looking for a lead
Traction
185 paying customers after 25 months
Use of funds
Go-to-market in two new countries

185 paying customers after 25 months. Looking for investors who know B2B SaaS and can help with hiring.

Belfast, UK · remote OKfundraisinghr techgo-to-market
Open

Experience

  1. Co-founder & CTO
    Nov 2021 - Present
    Kestrel Energy · 4 yr 11 mo · Full-time · Belfast, UK
    • Took Kestrel Energy from zero to $7 million ARR.
    • Previously built and sold a small vertical SaaS for clinics company.
  2. Staff Software Engineer
    Mar 2018 - Nov 2021
    McKinsey & Company · 3 yr 8 mo · Full-time · Belfast, UK
    • Built the experimentation framework 26 product teams use to ship changes safely.
  3. Site Reliability Engineer
    May 2014 - Mar 2018
    Tesco · 3 yr 10 mo · Full-time · Belfast, UK
    • Moved 72% of growth traffic off a legacy monolith without a customer-facing incident.
  4. Senior Engineering Manager
    Feb 2012 - May 2014
    Salesforce · 2 yr 3 mo · Full-time · Belfast, UK
    • Mentored 11 engineers through their first promotion.
  5. Senior Engineering Manager
    Oct 2010 - Feb 2012
    Rightmove · 1 yr 4 mo · Full-time · Belfast, UK
    • Wrote the HR tech service that now handles 61 million requests a day.

Projects

Side project: a recipe search engine
2026

Built with go-to-market and hiring. 3552 people used it last year.

Open-source go-to-market toolkit
2024

A small library for vertical SaaS for clinics that 804 developers star on GitHub.

References

No references yet.

Education

  1. University of Southampton
    MEng, Engineering
    2013 - 2015
  2. London School of Economics
    BSc, Engineering
    2007 - 2010

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