Nick Wilkins
Nick is our head of marketing, based in London. He’s responsible for the Creandum brand as well as supporting our portfolio founders in developing narratives, seizing marketing opportunities, creating communication strategies and making sure no great story stays untold.
I had a huge passion for history growing up and planned on becoming a diplomat. That took me to the LSE where I studied International Relations & History. In my second year there, I interned at the British dotcom, Lastminute.com and got the tech bug. Sitting next to Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox for 2 months was an incredible learning experience and really opened my eyes to the power of PR and being part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Johan and Nick
After 7 years working in PR, I got a call asking if I would be interested in joining British mobile operator, O2 who (I didn’t know at the time) had got the exclusive to sell Steve Jobs’ latest innovation; the iPhone. Working on the UK launch was an opportunity once again to be at the heart of a cultural moment dominating the news agenda every day.
In 2013, I was looking for a place to stay in Barcelona and the hotels were either booked or incredibly expensive. So I decided to try out this new travel app I’d read about: Airbnb. After that, I was determined to find a way to work at the company. In January 2014, I officially started on the Airbnb Communications team, joining the 10-person London office above a hardware shop in Shoreditch.
We were very lucky at Airbnb with a founder and CEO, Brian Chesky, who instinctively got the power of storytelling and narrative. We used product launches as major moments to set out the company’s vision and direction. We also focused on driving word of mouth by placing Airbnb into popular culture.
2020 was probably the biggest rollercoaster ride of my career. In the early weeks of the pandemic many thought that Airbnb (a travel company) would go under and the news headlines read, ‘is this the end of Airbnb?’. We laid off a quarter of the company which was the hardest thing I’ve ever been involved in. By mid-year, the business had rebounded as people sought relief from lockdowns and we decided to go for the IPO that December. It really showed me the power of story and narrative in a successful IPO. We had a comeback story which is one of the best you can have.
After more than eight years at Airbnb, I left in 2022 to move back to the UK and started consulting with founders on their narratives and how to approach PR. When Creandum reached out, it felt like the perfect opportunity to continue helping founders tell their stories, while also shining a light on the firm’s incredible track record of success.
