Excitement and doom

I go to London tomorrow and skiing this weekend.

I'm both excited and can feel the impending deadline of get s*** done before I go.

Is it just me that feels this before a trip?

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 24 Jan 23

#TodayI

Posted about buying poorly run owner-managed businesses.
Had a call with some private bankers about how they can help founders.
Shared Sam Thomas Alexander Royle of SoSquared's video pitch.
Was pitched by Rob Taylor of ChipFlow.
Spoke with Matthew Codd about a shared offering (coming soon).
Did some admin.

#NowI

Have to clean the house before my wife gets back and murders me!

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Public pitch - Sam Royle of SoSquared

#PublicPitch

Delighted to share, with permission, Sam Thomas Alexander Royle of SoSquared's video pitch.

SoSquared is a marketplace that connects businesses with content creators to help them scale their content marketing and provides creators with tools to help them advance their careers.

Please let me know if you would like an intro or feel free to reach out directly.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Buying owner-run businesses

The best businesses to buy are owner run where you know you can run them better.

Why? Ego. The owners believe they are running them well. Then you can buy them at a great price.

Small-scale example:
A riverside pub I visited when canal boating where the owner criticised my 10yo son for ordering a glass of tap water and then took great pride in refusing us dinner when we were thirty seconds after the deadline. It had terrible reviews (I should have checked). The owner had no idea how much custom he was losing due to poor management. This could have been a great turnaround purchase.

Large-scale example:
$145m into $3bn in 3 years in under 6's Youtube - https://twitter.com/PrivatEquityGuy/status/1617246321114578946.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update 23 Jan 23

#TodayI

Asked for guidance on investing in startups with network effects.
Took the kid to school.
Was pitched by Sam Thomas Alexander Royle of SoSquared.
Met Barrie Baxter of Brixx Software for coffee.
Chatted with Emilio Cuevas and Aditya Bodke of Alator Capital and Entrepreneurs Collective.
Bought new father Bobby Phillips a much-needed coffee.
Attended lunch break meditation at Guille-Allès Library.
Had a call with Chris Wyles and John Yeo.
Spoke briefly with Francis Snoding CTA of LTS Tax Limited.
Was pitched by Taya Kudashkina of Penenza.
Collected the kids from school.
Bought food and cupcakes.
Took a kid to table tennis.

#LaterI

Have to collect from table tennis
Need to do admin.
Will start working through the resources on network effects people shared with me earlier.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

The cold start problem

I struggle to figure out if early-stage startups can get past the cold start problem.

Businesses that require network effects need either enough customers and suppliers on their platform or enough people using the product for the service to be valuable in the first place (see Uber, Airbnb, LinkedIn). They are incredible once they've got there.

What should I be looking for?

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 20 Jan 23

#TodayI

Shared that decks should tell a story.
Took the kids to school.
Chatted with Matthew Addison of StepLadder UK.
Booked a Xmas dinner
Shared Chris McAdam of Getahead's video pitch.
Recorded a podcast for Digital Greenhouse Guernsey and the Guernsey Press with Amanda (Mandy) Eulenkamp and Tony Curr.
Met with Daniel Blondel of BTP Limited - Blondel Touzeau Partnership, Chartered Surveyors about our house build.
Collected the kids from school.
Received my Runna t-shirt (below).

Have a great weekend everyone!

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Public pitch - Chris McAdam of Get Ahead Mindset

#PublicPitch

Delighted to share, with permission, Chris McAdam of Getahead's video pitch.

Getahead is a sports psychology-based mindset training program that aims to make mental training accessible, affordable and effective through daily mental warmups and cooldowns.

Please let me know if you would like an intro or feel free to reach out directly.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Every deck should tell a story

Every deck should tell a story.

Too many decks or presentations are just a list of things the presenter feels you ought to know. To be effective they have to tell a story.

How can you tell if your deck tells a story?

Turn each slide into a bullet point. Read your bullet points in order. If they tell a story, you're golden.

If they don't, figure out the story you want to tell in bullet points then turn each one back into a slide.

Optimally, you'd start with the story. I know I don't. I start by getting all the junk out of my head. Then I do this.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 19 Jan 23

#TodayI

Posted about how to think creatively about market size.
Took the kids to school (including a tantrum in Waitrose).
Shared that SaaS businesses should check out Playter Paid.
Dealt with some of the inbound after yesterday's announcement of Kuai Commerce's raise.
Chatted with Hector Mason of Episode 1 Ventures and Riding Unicorns about all the things.
Met JAMES A. MATTHEWSON 🇯🇪🇬🇧 of Kaelo .
Shared Charles Brecque of Legislate's video pitch.
Went shopping.
Collected the kids.
Fed the kids.
Took one to table tennis.
Improvised my joy back with Sarah Hansmann Rouxel.
Collected one from table tennis.

If you can't guess, my wife is away!

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Public pitch - Charles Breque of Legislate

#PublicPitch

Delighted to share, with permission, Charles Brecque of Legislate's video pitch.

Legislate uses knowledge graphs to make contracts machine-readable and easily manageable for businesses, allowing for efficient access to data and answers to questions about the contracts.

Please let me know if you would like an intro or feel free to reach out directly.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Figuring out market size

Figuring out market size when you are creating your own market requires lateral thinking and creativity and evidence.

When Willo® were raising their last round, Euan Cameron and I sat down and figured this out.

We started with how estimating how many people are recruited every year in Europe and the US. Then what proportion might reasonably want to use asynchronous video to screen candidates at scale. Then how much could reasonably be charged per candidate.

We evidenced the latter with estimates of time saved per candidate and therefore the ROI for any customers using the product.

The market size is huge. The ROI for customers is huge.

There is no official market size for Willo®. With lateral thinking and creativity and evidence you can produce numbers that make sense, you can back up and (ROI) you can use for marketing and sales.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 18 Jan 23

#TodayI

Asked what made a difference to founders when choosing investors.
Took the kids to school.
Had a blood test (nothing to worry about).
Shared that unbundled vc has invested in Jonny, Adam and James Campbell of Kuai Commerce.
Had a call with Solomon Bamidele of Totalfiit.
Met someone for coffee and advice.
Chatted with Chris Wyles about investing and fundraising.
Had a remedial massage from Todd Patterson of Infascia ahead of unbundleski.
Did some shopping.
Collected one child from school.
Collected another from football club.
Attended a committee meeting of the Guernsey Cambridge Society.

#NowI

Have to collect another child from football training.
Need to make dinner.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Investing in Kuai Commerce

I couldn't be happier to be investing in Jonny Plein, Adam Knight and James Campbell 甘吉 at Kuai Commerce alongside lead investor Playfair Capital, Haatch and Portfolio Ventures .

Kuai Commerce enables Western e-commerce brands to sell their goods in China using social commerce. It has incredible founders, an unimaginably large potential market and evidenced client demand.

As the first business unbundled vc publicly committed to, this deal is special to me in a number of ways. I am looking forward to great things from them.

https://www.uktech.news/ecommerce/kuai-commerce-pre-seed-20230118

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Choosing between investors

Founders, if you have the luxury of choosing between investors, what factors make a difference to you?

I know what I try to focus on. I'd like a sense check and guidance on what more I could do.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 17 Jan 23

#TodayI

Posted about curiosity.
Had pilates.
Attended a site meeting for our house build with Infinity Construction and DLM Architects Ltd.
Got 'tutto bagnato' walking five minutes from my car.
Chatted with Matthew Codd about his fractional CRO offering and how we might work together.
Shared Daisy Harvey of Loom's video pitch.
Spoke with a VC I have invested alongside to understand their investment remit.
Had a call with Edoardo Cariati of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Private Equity Society and Hannah Leach of Houghton Street Ventures about the fireside chat we are doing next week. My father went to LSE.
Spoke with my professional advisers.

#LaterI

May be going for an early dinner for my son's 10th birthday.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Public pitch - Daisy Harvey of Loom

#PublicPitch

Delighted to share, with permission, Daisy Harvey of Loom's video pitch.

Loom is a sustainable fashion marketplace that connects customers with designers to make custom-made clothes, addressing the issue of unworn clothing due to bad design, fit and quality.

Please let me know if you would like an intro or feel free to reach out directly.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Curiosity

Curiosity is an essential skill.

When I speak to a founder, I am intensely curious. I want to know about their life, what they are building, why they are building, I want to know all the things.

I am hungry to understand and to learn.

#startups #founders #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Evening update - 16 Jan 23

#TodayI

Posted asking the best advice you'd ever been given. On Twitter I got my most views ever because Sara Pascoe replied to my Tweet.
Had pilates with Maria Jose Freeman (Fernandez) of Pilates Core Club.
Took some documents to my accountant.
Had breakfast with a friend.
Chatted with Ryu Wong of the University of Sussex about my career and venture capital.
Installed Google Drive on my laptop so everything is backed up.
Was pitched by Charles Brecque of Legislate who is very close to closing his £3m round.

#LaterI

Am having an early dinner with a friend.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic

Best. Advice. Ever.

Founders, what's the best advice you've ever been given?

I love this that the comedian Sara Pascoe received from her father. She was going to get a teaching qualification so she could pay her rent. 

He said, “Don’t do a teaching qualification. Make it work or starve to death.”

He essentially said, if you have a backup plan, it’s far less likely that you’ll get to do what you want to do.

Via The Guardian.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic