EVONA - Founding Team of the Year

Company: EVONA, Bristol, United Kingdom
Company Description: Through excellent service and experience, EVONA empowers growth within the space sector – successfully matching a multinational network of companies with talented candidates from around the globe. Based in Bristol (UK), by streamlining the recruiting effort, we enable the companies we work with the time and resources to innovate, evolve, and shape the futures of humankind.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Founding Team of the Year - Business Services Industries

Nomination Title: EVONA: Never go to space alone – four founders take a giant leap.

EVONA

EVONA is a unique, dynamic, and disruptive business born in June-2018. Four passionate, entrepreneurial, Bristol-based recruitment specialists (aged 30-32) (see Appendix 1) teamed up to apply their skills to improve long-term prospects of the international space industry. We work with some of the most innovative companies on the globe (and off it!) in a market estimated at $3trillion. Today, every company is a technology company – in the future, every company will be a space company.

Collectively, we have such joint passion, and want to stand out, so the importance of our brand is key. EVONA screams space, and you can hear it. It works on multiple levels:

-Meaning – EVO (to evolve) ONA (people) – evolution of people.
-Design – young, unique, dynamic – just like us.
-Brand – the betterment of the planet and beyond.

Dream job

Historically, the space sector has been filled with barriers, apart from a few fitting a narrow set of social and educational parameters – we break these down. For us, and candidates, we’re shaking up space recruitment – inspiring, educating, preparing, and opportunity-matchmaking clients and candidates globally to access jobs dreams are made of. We began EVONA to open doors, demystify space, and make careers within the sector (both upstream design/build and downstream data) accessible and achievable, no matter location. We’re emotional intelligence meets specialised knowledge, empowering space companies to grow.

Having worked together previously, we noted the gap for a specific space industry recruitment agency – not just for those wanting to go into space, but all supporting functions and quadrants, including engineering, tech, supply chain and more. You can’t get to space alone!

Shared passion and vision

With mutual passion for making a difference now and for the future of the space-focused STEM sector – as well as our planet – EVONA started to take form as a young, unique, dynamic company leading the way in the global space sector.

Specialising in IT and engineering recruitment within the sector, our founding entrepreneurs have been on a rollercoaster, realising magnificent success in a short time – with no intention of slowing – all without external investment.

With no external venture capital, no salary, and no pipeline, we started from zero. We had no doubts about being a success, but planned for the worst-case scenario, and weren’t intending to take dividends for the first 6-12 months. As it turned out, we got off to a fantastic start, so were able to cover this much more quickly – recognising return from January-2019.

Rapid growth, solid foundations

Since January-2019, we’re now a 25-strong team in bigger offices – and growing from strength to strength (see achievements in the next section and Appendix 2).

All four founders share a passion and commitment, building the foundations of the business as it is today. We believe in working in a way that has:

-No egos.
-Collaboration at its heart.
-Accountability for our actions.
-Responsibility for clients, candidates, and the broader community.

We started from an idea to break into a traditionally elite industry, enabling more people from more backgrounds to be part of the future of our planet and beyond. We’ve already placed 200+ candidates since launch.

Passionate STEM ambassadors

We partner with schools and universities to encourage students to explore science, technology, engineering, and maths – changing the present and future of space sector recruitment by playing key roles in building the critical pipeline to ensure sustainable sector growth.

Inspiring the future

We pledge to make a difference – for clients, candidates, the planet, and the future. We:

Own our own EVONA forest to offset our carbon footprint.
-Raise money for our chosen charity, YoungMinds – fighting for young people’s mental health.
-Coordinate food drives – e.g., donating 450 Easter eggs for families in need in 2020.
-Conduct beach cleans and recycling projects.
-Create thought-leadership materials for STEM students and candidates.

EVONA started from zero – four young entrepreneurs with no external venture capital, no salary, and no pipeline. Now a 25-strong team, with a plan to be 100-strong by 2022.
-Delivered 400% growth after our first year
-Based in UK (Bristol), clients spread globally – including Asia, USA and the UAE – we’ve announced our US expansion (Appendix 3).

Internal investment:

-90% staff retention.
-Structured internal development and succession plan.
-Market-leading benefits and rewards (Appendix 4).
-Extensive CSR strategy. (Appendix 5).
-200+ candidates placed – five-star reviews, happy candidates and clients (Appendix 6).
-Pushing gender balance statistics – despite only 17% of senior executives in New Space identifying as female, nearly 38% of our placements into these positions are women.
-Making a difference for our candidates, clients, and our planet