Do I fit Exceptional Promise criteria? (hey Francisca)

[PPEE]

Hey everyone, I am in the beginning stages of my application and wanted to set a clear direction.

• Where do I my evidence in terms of Main vs Secondary evidence. It feels like 1 evidence can attest to 2 criteria at the same time.
• How do you rate the strength of my evidence for exceptional promise.

Main criteria

show they have been recognised as having potential to be a leading talent in the digital technology field in the last 5 years.

• I do Product Management for an international ride-hailing company. Not Uber but not some no name company either. Recently I led the adaption of our App to enable the launch of our service in a new country. Thanks to my direct input, we were able to launch and have already earned a few hundred thousand pounds there. As evidence, I would like to show a letter from the CEO attesting to that.
• Last summer I was a speaker at an online product conference in my country. It’s one of the largest conferences we have but it was online due to COVID. I have a YouTube video with 10k+ views on it. Is it a good evidence?
• I have 5k+ followers on Twitter where I write about product management, although not too often. But when I do, I get likes and retweets etc.
• I was offered a job at a UK company with a salary north of £100k + stock options + senior position. I was also offered a Skilled Worker visa support but I would like to get Global Talent instead.
• anything else I can show?

Secondary criteria

At least 1 example of innovation as an employee working on a new digital field or concept

Here is where I get confused. Can I use the evidence here again that I led the product adaptation to be able to launch in the new country and we earned quite a bit of money? Or does it need to be brand new?
If I have to use something else:

• I worked for a startup before my current company and also had a senior position at product management. The startup was acquired for X USD, but it’s all very private. The best evidence I can produce is a letter from the CEO or CFO that my product initiatives were crucial in this acquisition and as a result, I got $100k+ payout in stocks. There is no media to support this however and even the old domain name is not functioning anymore since everything was integrated in another company’s product.
• In my current company I led the product development of the feature that helped us acquire hundreds of new drivers which in turn let us fulfil more rides and grew the revenue. I can produce a reference letter from the CEO about this and there is a webpage about this feature but there is no my name on it.

I also feel like all of the evidence above can be applied to this criteria:

at least 1 example of significant technical, commercial or entrepreneurial contributions to the field as an employee of a product-led digital technology company
So which criteria do I choose in this case?

I also have these cool evidence:

• I took a break from my career after the startup acquisition and pursued a masters degree. During my studies I developed a really cool app for my classmates. The story about it was printed in the local news paper that mainly circles on campus. I have an actual printed copy with my name on it.
• There was also a news story filmed about it on the campus TV. This video has a few hundreds of views.
  Where can I fit these evidence? Can I attribute them to this secondary criteria:

at least 1 example of proof of recognition for work beyond the applicant’s occupation that contributes to the advancement of the field

It’s a silly question but can I just send them all of the pieces of evidence I have and let them figure out what is what or do I have to specifically link each evidence with each criteria in my Tech Nation application?

In terms of recommendations:

• VP of Product from one of the largest companies in the UK will write a very strong recommendation about me. Knows me very well
• A senior executive from a competitive ride-hailing app in my country will write that my contributes provided real competition to their company and were top level from the quality perspective.
• Another ex-senior executive from Uber will write something similar.

@Francisca_Chiedu @mclarenf1 your feedback is especially welcomed

[mclarenf1]

Hi there!

Funny enough, I have a ridesharing background as well, and I highlighted similar things like product/feature launches and new country launches in my Talent application.

A couple of quick thoughts:

Your LoR look good. In order to make their jobs as easy as possible, you might consider providing your recommenders a bulleted list highlighting the most impactful work you did together, or that they’re aware of. Make sure all of your contributions are backed up with metrics: growth %s, trip #s, revenue generated, etc. If you managed a P&L in the country you launched, that’d be great to highlight as well.

It looks like you’re starting to do this, but what I found helpful was outlining the criteria and mapping my achievements to them. Be ruthless with yourself - does each achievement easily map to the criteria, or is it a stretch? The criteria from Tech Nation is not flexible.

Right now your evidence feels a bit all over the place and some of the evidence doesn’t map to the criteria. Your job is threefold: show you’ve been recognised by others as being a potential talent in the digital technology field in the last 5 years, and then show evidence that meets the two criteria you select. You want to make the assesors job easy. As I mentioned above, attach growth numbers to everything. If you led a new product or feature launch, include data around how it grew your business, solved a core business problem, etc. If you launched ridesharing in new markets, how did those markets perform? How did they compare to other recent launches? Was there any significance of those markets to your business that make your launch unique?

This is not legal advice and I am not a solicitor. To my knowledge, the contents of your application materials aren’t shared outside of the Tech Nation selection committee. Tech Nation is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK and all organizations in the UK are governed by Data Protection Act 2018. If there’s data about M&As or other company data that make your application especially strong, you should consider asking your rescommmendors to include it in your LoR or reference letters. There are legal protections on that data.

It seems to me that you could definitely fit the EP profile, but I think you need to do a bit more work to ruthlessly prioritize your achievements and mapping those achievements to the criteria, with data.

[Francisca_Chiedu]

Your application looks promising, however, you need to select two optional criteria. Check the tech nation guide and see which of the optional criteria you are suited for. Your mandatory criterion looks ok but the twitter evidence may not be strong enough as you tweet occasionally about product and social media evidence like LinkedIn and medium is not acceptable evidence.
Don’t do a lazy application, put in the work, don’t just send a list of documents. Besides, you may not be able to do that, at the point of submission you’d be asked to state the optional criteria that makes you eligible for the visa. All the best