Patron is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in a future shaped by games.

Non-profit encouraging entrepreneurial spirit in young women across the UK & US https://athertonaward.com/

GBx is a private community for Brits in Tech in the Bay Area. In my 3 years as Board Chair we: - Achieved record breaking funds raised - Increased membership revenue to closely covering Op-Ex - Generated all time high gala profit - Brought on and trained up a talented community manager - Increased the community referral rate and retention to the highest it's ever been - Refreshed the GBx Brand and Positioning - Recruited new high profile Board Members

Author of ‘The Rise of Virtual Communities’ Published by Apress. Through a series of interviews with the founders of Discord, Reddit, Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel and more, join Atherton and she dives into the evolution of online communities. Experience more atcommunitiesbook.com

I joined Discord via the acquisition of my startup Zyper. Here I led a talented global team, responsible for the growth of new communities on Discord across initiatives like the App Store, creators, developers, international, businesses and brands.

I like to invest in founders who understand and prioritize community building, as that's where I can be most helpful! mindsdb.com, plymouthstreet.com, looni.co, shibuya.xyz, raincards.xyz, stemplayer.com, zellerfeld.com, nodal.com, kalecard.com, ongoody.com, july.ac, theexpert.com, italic.com, contact.xyz, vacationoil.com, askdiem.com, cashmereapp.co.uk, goss.media, thisoutfitdoesnotexist.com, wifidabba.com, p00ls.io

• I founded Zyper (originally called Brand Fan Girl) in 2017 in London after seeing the business impact of bringing everyday customers into a private community together at my e-commerce company My Flash Trash (see below) • We raised a seed round in London before joining Y Combinator (W18) and relocating to San Francisco. • Forerunner Ventures led our next round and we rapidly grew to a team of 30 connecting over 45 brands from Sephora to Kelloggs to Toms shoes to their fans and fans to each other. • We built a customer facing analytics dashboard (like a community mission control) and a consumer facing app, spearheading a movement that shifted the industry focus away from paying influencers to seeing the power of connecting with your true fans no matter how many 'followers' they had. •There were highs and lows on a crazy 3 year journey, helping brands recognize their everyday customers through our patented ML technology to co-create marketing campaigns, new products and just hang out! • In 2021 Discord acquired Zyper and our team is continuing on this great mission to help brands centralize their community of customers and fans in a new digital third place.

• I've always been curious about computer vision, so in between startups I played around making a caption app that would solve the millennial epidemic of what to caption your instagram photo. • Rubric was built on react and plugged into clarifai and google's tensor flow for object recognition. From there I used a super simple thesaurus hack that would change standard recognition words like 'man' to 'homie' or 'landscape' to 'scenes' • I then plugged into rap genius and goodreads to match the recognized words with popular lyrics and quotes along with the day of the week and location .• The app garnered a lot of media attention and reached the #no 2 spot for most downloaded app in the UK app store for several days.• It was a super fun ride and fun toy product to put out into the world- but ultimately i needed to focus on my new venture zyper and starting Y Combinator so I closed the app down in 2018.

• After a childhood spent coding and building things on the internet, at age 16 I started a jewellery blog and online community from my dorm room at school. • That scaled to become at one point Europe’s largest online jewelry marketplace, with over 300 designers and a community designed house brand that sold in Selfridges, Harrods, Forever 21, Argos and 50 other retailers. •I dropped out of university, raised a seed round, grew the team to 20 people and an eventual exit via a merger with a HK based manufacturer. • The #charmgang community of customers and fans inspired my next venture into community software with zyper.

Social Media & Digital Marketing Research and Assistance. This was a fantastic time to be part of Wednesday, when brands were beginning to realise the importance of investing in quality digital experiences. I spent a summer crafting social media and content strategies for the launch of various luxury websites from Mr Porter to Bally. This was also where I ran into our office neighbors, Monkey Kingdom, a TV Production company, and started collaborating with a runner there on what would eventually become the hit UK reality TV show, Made in Chelsea.

A mid university internship. Mainly I opened editor's mail for them and avoided getting accidentally locked in the fashion cupboard. Vogue House was round the corner from my university campus so I'd hop over from classes to the Editorial Department. I racked up 11 internships by the time i'd left school and my advice to you if you're still at school reading this is don't wait for someone to tell you what to do. Be pro-active!

Visual Merchandising & Marketing Dept aka if you need a novel way to display a tie or small leather good i'm your gal. Fascinating summer internship gaining first hand insight into the Chinese luxury consumer and how to balance brand consistency with local market relevance.