Pip Jamieson Founder and CEO, The Dots

Interviewed by Tara Harandi-Zadeh

My brilliant Dad worked in the creative industries and I had this wonderful upbringing surrounded by creatives. It was our shared passion and my family just assumed that I’d follow the same path.

However, my slightly strange, rebellious nature led me to do an economics and math degree. I guess I wanted to prove that even with my dyslexia, I could carve a career path that was my own.

To the surprise of my whole family – and to myself, to be honest – I walked away with a top grade and was approached by, and then joined, the UK government as a fast-stream economist.

I went into government because I had aspirations to change the world. However, I quickly realised that an economist’s role in government was primarily to produce results that justify political policy, not to inform them.

So I jumped ship and joined the creative industries, working frst for the Brit Awards in London, then in various roles at MTV around the world.

Describe your typical working day.

I’m so blessed that no two days are the same. I live on a houseboat in London, so my morning usually starts on the boat, sipping coffee and feeding the ducks.

I then walk to my offce in Shoreditch listening to audio books.

My day is then made up of meetings with the team, partners and clients... or working on product ideas.

I love being out and about meeting my community and partners, so it’s usually a wonderful whirlwind of meetings with people from across the creative industries.

This helps me understand what worries them about their careers and helps me innovate The Dots (the-dots.com).

I was never one of those people that dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, and I had no tech experience to speak of. I just saw a problem while I was working at MTV, and (somewhat naively) wanted to build a solution to solve that problem.

The whole idea came about because I was surrounded by incredible people who were adopting very different career paths (and in many ways had very different value sets) to the traditional white-collar workforce.

Our careers were much more fuid! We were increasingly working on a project-by-project basis, had side hustles, working freelance or adopting portfolio careers. LinkedIn just wasn’t working for us, so I wanted to invent a new professional networking solution that was ft for the 21st century.

One that helped ‘no-collar professionals’ –creators, freelancer and entrepreneurs – build their personal brand, network and connect to dream roles. The rest, as they say, is history.

What bound us all together is we were coming up with ideas and building teams around us to execute those ideas. So a very basic level, the core difference between The Dots and LinkedIn is, instead of promoting yourself via a CV, people post projects and credit the whole team behind those projects.

Kind of like a community-driven IMDB. For example, you could post the latest issue of a magazine you are working on, and credit the full team that brought it to life, from the editor to the writers, stylists, photographers, producers and so on. It’s a recognition that creativity is a team sport – you can be a rockstar creative but if you’re not supported by an amazing team, that idea is hard to bring to life.

In 2014, I sunk everything I had learned into starting The Dots from my houseboat, Horace. Fast forward four years and we have 100,000s of members and over 10,000 brands using us to hire full-time and freelance talent.

It’s been a LOT of hard graft, but my goodness it’s been worth it!

Why are you passionate about diversity in the workplace?

When I was seven I was diagnosed with dyslexia – I am one of the lucky ones, as my family sent me to a creative school that specialised in dyslexia, resulting in me being the frst person in my family to make it to university.

My education helped me cope with my crippling dyslexia and to go on to have a wonderful career. I do often ask myself, what if I hadn’t won the middle-class lottery of life? There is a strong chance that I wouldn’t be where I am now. There are so many squandered minds and creative innovators that we’ve left behind.

During my time working at MTV, I also experienced how dangerous a homogeneous workforce can be for creative thinking. As with most creative businesses, we hired via word of mouth, resulting in an inherent lack of diversity – our creative output became stale.

There is now endless research proving that diversity is good for creativity. A London Business School study found that more gender-balanced teams are best to promote environments where innovation can fourish.

A Harvard Business School study found that teams that include workers from different backgrounds and experiences come up with more creative ideas and methods of solving problems. The list of examples is endless.

So, I’ve dedicated my career to helping democratise talent and helping businesses increase diversity in their teams in all its guises. For example, 68% of The Dots’ members are female, 31% black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME), 16% LGBT+, and I’m also a massive advocate for disabled and neurodiverse talent – those with dyslexia, autism, ADHD and other superpowers. We removed the ability for the 10,000+ companies who use The Dots to be able to search for talent based on where people went to university, to help people rise to the top irrespective of