FounderTech Decoded

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast it was a pleasure to talk to Jem Stein who is the Syndicator at Daring Capital focused on reimagining the social enterprise model - particularly in its early stages.   We discuss how in this social enterprise space, even more than most early stage venture sectors, the asymmetries around networks and access to capital that we often explore on the podcast, really come to the fore and into play - frequently affirming biases around what and where things get founded.    In his case, how does a really great social entrepreneur, with high founder market fit, trying to navigate and unlock the potential of a niche in which they are trusted and embedded, access that initial tranche of capital that enables them to demonstrate the potential of their approach, show the nuanced skill of their operational delivery and evidence their complex market understanding.   We also touch on how traditional venture models with high 5-10 x (and beyond) models do not align with the potential of this type of social enterprise founder, where a 2-3 x return might be a real strategic result, generating a lot of value and achieving a lot of social impact in the process.   We also talk about how the increasingly popular syndicate model of investors - that is sensitive and open to leveraging agile capital tools alongside aligned FounderTech - is most likely the right model to innovate this social enterprise investment sector and how Daring Capital as such a syndicate based model wishes to take advantage of the market timing and opportunity around these emerging and evolving early stage market shifts.   Explore and connect further: > https://www.linkedin.com/in/jem-stein-8751959a/ > www.daringcapital.co.uk  > https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/adebowale-commission-on-social-investment%EF%BF%BC/  > https://www.consideredcapital.io/  >https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast, it was a pleasure to talk to Sam Marchant, an early stage founder turned investor with multi-stage asset manager Hambro Perks. A fund relatively distinct in its market positioning in its capability to come in at the initial pre-seed stage but also scale up to a Series C round and beyond.   We get into a deep and nuanced conversation around whether the initial runway for early stage is now becoming flatter and longer. In the sense that with less capital a truly talented exceptional domain expert founder can now achieve more with less. Leveraging increasingly Gen AI and no code Foundertech to test, prove and even monetise the minimum viable assumptions behind their startup quicker.   We explore whether this involves a recalibration - for those exceptional founders who are often unique in their ability to navigate, identify and unlock new value in deep verticals -  of expectations around their ongoing operations, future scale and eventual exit.   Finally we ask whether we just at the beginning of how this emerging conversation and how it will now play? Particularly if this change in early stage founder dynamics has a knock on effect in how venture and their LPs start to reconfigure their early stage founder portfolios and value offerings.   Connect further > https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-marchant  > https://www.hambroperks.com/

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast, we talk to Sarah King about how her and her Co-Founder Claire Dunn are positioning Obu to find and back female founded UK companies seeking £250,000 to £1,000,000.     How they’re trying to amplify and leverage the power of inclusive design to try and unlock the potential of these businesses as a force for good. To empower a new wave of  investors to see early stage investing in female driven founders - that currently only receive just 1% of venture capital - as a chance to bring new perspectives to the problems in the world they now want to see tackled and hopefully solved.   We hear how alongside recently successfully securing their first two investments for Moody Month and Proper Plan via the Obu platform, they have also engaged inclusive design principles to successfully lobby the government to increase the eligible SEIS time limit for startups from 2 to 3 years. A very concrete example of how a big win for female founders also then creates a longer SEIS runway and window of opportunity for all entrepreneurs in the ecosystem!   Building on this, we discuss how if a lot of the change that FounderTech wishes to bring about is behavioural rather than technological, is there a better way to frame and tell the stories and engage the tools that help re-engineer current diversification biases simply and fundamentally because they no longer serve and nurture the best economic outcomes?   Finally we touch on how this feeds into and fuels the core of the mission behind and woven into their brand name itself. Obu - Over Being Underfunded!   Connect Further > https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlking  > https://www.obuinvest.com/

In this episode of the podcast it was great to talk to Adam French who is a partner at Houghton Street Ventures, a previous co-founder of Scalable Capital and active angel investor. Houghton Street Ventures is quite unique in that it is a dedicated early stage fund investing across a wide thesis specifically for founders emerging from the 200,000 alumni, students and faculty of LSE.   As such Adam is consistently across a diverse and constant range early stage deal flow with founders across multiple sectors. In that way he is very placed to sense, synthesise and suggest what the imminent future horizon looks like for the early stage ecosystem.   Building on this we discuss how FounderTech might unlock a whole new wave of untapped latent entrepreneurial potential. How this might lead to the rise of the 1 person million dollar business, driven by agile fractional teams, leveraging and amplifying capital efficiently inside scalable niches, to the point that founder’s first round might also be their last round.   Adam notes that the rise of the ChatGPT and more recently specialising GPTs are key to this ecosystem shift. A shift that he is not just exploring theoretically but has personally leveraged himself to design, doe and build “evAIuate”. His own dynamic FounderTech that leverages AI to put a pitch deck in anyone’s pocket.   Visit and connect at > https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-french-2192034a  > https://www.evaiuate.com/  > https://houghtonstreet.com/  > www.scalable.capital

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we get to talk to Judy Leung who is the founder of Sweqlink. A marketplace for work-for-equity opportunities that is targeting a key bottleneck and catch-22 in the startup ecosystem. Namely how when you’re an early stage founder with limited resources in terms of capital to attract the talent you need, do you incentivise and engage that talent?   To help with this process, we hear how Sweqlink divides that talent into 3 distinct categories - Makers > Movers > Manifestors. Each bringing different skill sets and perspectives to the table. How the platform - which is still in its MVP phase - essentially acts a middle man and matchmaker between founders seeking that talent and people with those skills now looking to deploy that talent into an early stage startup.   We discuss how this feeds directly into the shift and orientation around the engagement and leverage of fractional teams by that early stage founder. How status is starting to be recognised and conferred on those founders who are using FounderTech to experiment and test their operational acumen and execution before committing to the huge capital and human resource of engaging and servicing a full time executive and management model.   Finally we touch on how these changes are generally welcomed because they increase agility, openness and transparency in the early stage ecosystem. However, like with most experimental and emerging FounderTech, they are still fundamentally behavioural rather than technologically driven - in order for the new dynamics and engagement model around platforms like Sweqlink to be tested, flourish and succeed.   Engage further > https://www.sweqlink.com/ > https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyleeleung/

In this episode we talk to Marcus Exall, an experienced UK based angel investor that takes a distinctly different approach in contrast to the volume, numbers game and tax efficient driven approaches utilised and leveraged by many of his early stage investor contemporaries.   We hear how over the course of his 30 angel investments, Marcus does not have a particular thesis or portfolio bias.Instead we hear how he genuinely sees angel investing as a journey. With the first key and non-negotiable step being evaluating the founder for their values, intent, agility, resilience and gaining a deep understanding as to their deep motivation why they are trying to launch their startup in the first place. For him writing a cheque typically in the £25,000 to £35,000 range, also represents his bet on empowering a founder to try to navigate and create a future that he might also want to participate and live in.    This is mirrored within the criteria and evaluation Marcus applies to himself, where he will assess whether he is the right investor to provide a safe harbour of honest feedback and value-add support for the founder as and when they invariably need it, as they navigate the increasingly complex and uncertain terrain of their launch.   Equally we hear upon making an investment, Marcus wants that money to be deployed and go to work as quickly and efficiently as possible and how to that end how is an angel investor in leading FounderTech like Odin and also MVPR.   Finally, we also hear how Marcus has helped productise and scale this approach by launching UP AND TO THE RIGHT to help founders successfully create, build, and scale their start up by offering playbooks, original tools, and helpful courses to further incubate and accelerate their journey.   Explore and Connect > > https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusexall > https://www.u2r.co/ > https://www.endvr.biz/

In this, the first episode of Series 6 of the FounderTech Decoded podcast it was a pleasure to talk to Joe Lewin, CEO and Founder of Foundy.com the UK’s leading M&A platform. We hone in on the increasing difference in expectations around planning and framing an exit. Between founders who have bootstrapped and fuelled the growth of their startup with sustainable revenues and ownership versus those who have taken VC money early and are therefore focused on chasing that 20-30x return of the mythical unicorn. Building on this we talk about and explore the key concept of efficient capital.  Capital that fully adopts and integrates the potential and reach of FounderTech tools, alongside leveraging increasingly popular operational modalities like fractional teams to now change perceptions around status, legitimacy and investor norms. How this shift in legitimacy will increasingly lead to placing a higher value on smaller teams executing and achieving traction quicker and more agilely with less capital. We explore how at Foundy they are now adopting and amplifying this approach around things like using AI to reduce legal due diligence around a deal from months to minutes.  How they are also busy currently closing their next round, so they can continue to incorporate and amplify these new dynamics in order to radically alter and re-engineer timelines and functionality around all aspects of M&A planning and execution.  With the ultimate aim and vision of becoming the Rightmove of M&A!

In this special edition of the FounderTech Decoded Podcast we document the first live in person gathering of the UK community at the invite only FounderTech Collective event in London - 15/5/23. Over the course of the evening we explore via a 4 part fireside chat format, the key themes and strands that have emerged over 5 x Series over the past year of the FounderTech Decoded podcast. It's a chance to intimately listen in to the emerging debate live the room, that is also hopefully shaping and informing the future of this important conversation for startup ecosystem. As it now evolves and iterates to become more open, agile and transparent for all. Part A | The Problem of Asymmetry Featuring the insight of: Martin Barnes @ Pitch Club, Ken Valledy @ The Startup Lexicon and Serkan Ferah @ PitchSpace The recalibration of deal communication  The valuing of “Fast No’s” over Slow Maybe’s The rebooting of legacy systems, tools & frameworks The translation of cryptic language Part B | The Conditions for FounderTech Featuring the insight of: Hattie Willis @ IfWeRaise, Serkan Ferah @PitchSpace and Chris Booth @Findrs The rise of no code/low code/MVA The increasing currency of ecosystem intelligence The untapped potential of deep and scalable niches The opportunity for diversified and fluid capital Part C | The Shifting Financial Terrain Featuring the insight of: Gareth Hawkins @AngelSyndicate, Anthony Rose @SeedLegals and Ifty Nasir @Vestd  The role of ASA’s in compacting deal flow timelines The rise of SPV’s, syndicates, solo capitalists The need to coordinate liquidity in the angel community The influence of dynamic cap tables and incentives Part D | The Potential Future Ecosystem Featuring the insight of: Daniel Sawko @ Ship Shape, Jim Shirley @ FundingHero and Matt Hussey @ The Brink The valuing of openness and transparency The initial elevation of founder market fit The new KPIs for startup teams and talent The nurturing of healthier founder archetypes Want to keep in the loop of the evolving FounderTech conversation, then please subscribe at foundertech.substack.com

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded it was fascinating to talk to Tom Lawrence founder of leading FounderTech PR, comms and content platform MVPR.   We talk about how his experience working for Edelman - the largest PR agency in the world - informed his sense and perspective that there was a gap in the market for startups who increasingly didn't have the budget in their funding to warrant hiring a boutique agency to handle and manage their comms on an ongoing basis.   Alongside this supply side of the comms value chain, Tom increasingly saw opportunities in the demand side. Where journalists who themselves were increasingly being distributed and dispersed to a wider range of niche audience delivery hubs - Substack / Medium etc - alongside more traditional media channels, needed a constant flow of filtered and considered content to write about. He launched MVPR to be the platform that bridged the gap in that double sided marketplace.   Additionally, we discuss how once you have a platform like MVPR in the mix, interesting perspectives and opportunities present themselves when it comes to data. Suddenly in both real and residual time you can see a founder and their startups' current and historic comms reach. A ROI insight that can not only be leveraged in planning going forward but also with investors as you start to scale up.    Where a sort of new Content Intelligence emerges.    A classic case of FounderTech coming in and providing agility, more openness and transparency in an area of the startup ecosystem that was still largely informed by opaque practice and legacy systems crying out to be reinvented.   Connect further with Tom:   > tom@mvpr.io > https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmlawro > www.mvpr.io

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast it was really good to talk to Gareth Hawkins, who is Investment Director at the Block Dojo London incubator and Partner at Henley Business Angels.    Gareth has also invested in a portfolio of 30 startups - several of which are key FounderTech platforms such as Connectd.co and Pitch.Space - which we’ve previously been lucky enough to talk to and feature previously in this podcast. Given Gareth’s insight into the space, this discussion is a insider tour through the state of play in the contemporary angel landscape as it stands today and where it could potentially arrive in its next iteration. With FounderTech now playing a potentially key role in driving and evolving that new horizon.  This is being accompanied by a rise of an emerging generation of investors, who increasingly see angel investing as a new asset class and are demanding new models and platforms that help them access and manage the agility and liquidity of that asset.  We talk about how lack of innovation in the systemic structure in the ecosystem is itself possibly a key driver of market failure and contributes to hindering unlocking its untapped ‘idling’ founder potential. This includes angels still primarily acting in silos rather than in groups that are fluently aligned and coordinated around their ongoing portfolio preference and a curated funnel focus. To address this, we discuss how Gareth is currently launching AngelSyndicate.uk in June, as an end-to-end community, syndication and deal-execution platform for business angel networks, that provides a single point of application for founders to reach multiple regional groups of angel investors.    Connect with Gareth: > gh@angelsyndicate.uk  > https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-hawkins/  > https://www.angelsyndicate.uk/

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we have a long overdue conversation with Serkan Ferah founder of PitchSpace. Long overdue, because a lot of the original impetus for the original FounderTech conversation came from working with early stage founders across all sectors and consistently experiencing their ongoing frustration with the pitch deck - as a creative tool, strategic framework and also as the go-to driver of nearly all initial investor communications. Pushing this further, you can say the pitch deck has become the key symbol of the lack of innovation and change in the venture ecosystem. Still relying on a legacy tool that clearly doesn't consistently perform well.  So it’s no surprise that Serkan has come along with Pitch Space to radically redesign and rethink how it fundamentally functions and operates. We discuss how the clue is in the title and a key to unlocking the potential future of the pitch deck is to understand that it is informed by two components that are present and backed in and one that is too frequently absent. 1> the Pitch which is its narrative 2> the Deck which is its mechanic 3> the Relationship which is its function We explore how with PitchSpace they are trying to bring all 3 dynamics together and ask whether this is melds into a new category of 'Narrative Design'. That automates and innovates the mechanical parts of 1 & 2 above whilst focusing on and elevating the narrative and relationship components, so they're embedded and baked into the process from the start. It feels like the start of a completely new conversation for what the much dreaded Pitch Deck could now evolve into and empower founders and investors going forward. Connect with Serkan: > https://www.linkedin.com/in/serkanferah/ > www.pitch.space

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we talk to Hattie Willie, who is deeply involved in the ongoing support and development of founders navigating the early stage ecosystem from a capital, personal narrative and wellbeing point of view.   Drawing on that broad experience, we explore how a typical founder has to experience and endure wave after wave of rejection. Which means that psychologically they to have a degree of resilience that is too commonly unacknowledged let alone understood, when charting a course to launch their startup and navigate trying to secure early stage venture.   Added to that, we discuss when you enter that investment room and deal conversation say as a woman or from a minority background, those odds are often inherently and substantively stacked against you. Where long held confirmation biases unfortunately still hold much influence and sway on deal flow and decision making.   We try to reframe one of the key assumptions that puts strain on founder and an expectation that is baked into most investment conversations.    To suggest that we need to understand that the founder that charts a complex path into launching a venture, is very often not the same founder to operationally grow and scale that venture - and more often than not should not be expected to be so.   Building on this, we question is it time to redefine a different version of and model for what constitutes and successful founder and if in doing so, could we collectively unlock and tap into the current latent 'idling capacity' of the venture ecosystem as a whole. Connect further with Hattie: > https://www.ifweraise.com/ > https://www.linkedin.com/in/hattie-willis-she-her-2b47b376/ > https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fundraising-as-a-diverse-founder-with-guests/id1622164990?i=1000584583714

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we get the chance to talk to Jonathan Hollis, who is Managing Partner at Mountside Ventures and whose mission is to optimise the fundraising process for European startups and investors.   We discuss how asymmetry around network effects continues to influence and inform most of the capital allocation in the early stage space. One perspective as to why is that in the course of their lifetime, even an experienced founder will probably be at most across 2-3 companies, whereas an experienced VC will review 100s of deal flow opportunities - possibly and probably per quarter.    This creates an imbalance in market perspectives and network effects that spill into and inflect ongoing deal dynamics.   We explore the lack of diversity, regionally and impact currently in venture and ask whether this due to inefficiencies in capital deployment identifying and backing talent early or as a result of the reliance on primary and secondary networks to source and fund deal flow. With warm intros still making a successful investment 13 x more likely!   Finally, we talk about the 3 categories of capital allocation that Jonathan thinks might be help drive innovation in the deployment of venture:    i) data driven capital ii) alternative / revenue based finance and iii) SPV vehicles.    All of which are currently generating a much need optionality and choice for both founders and investors engaging with and evaluating deal flow.   Connect further with Jonathan:   > https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhjhollis/ > jonathan@mountsideventures.com > https://www.mountsideventures.com/startup-and-vc-events > https://airtable.com/shrqhI5iowDahtunb

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we talk to Marion Marincat. The dynamic founder of hearing wellness platform Mumbli, that is currently reshaping the way cities are designed and social spaces are navigated for sound. For the first time designing, delivering and scaling Sound As A Service.    Mumbli is a startup Marion felt compelled to launch, after himself going through an unanticipated but dramatic period of personal hearing loss, which caused him to become aware of how many of the environments we have to daily navigate have not properly considered, let alone factored in sound and hearing wellness into their architecture, design and utility.   In this way it's a chance to hear a founder with exceptional aligned founder market fit, pioneering a valuable 'Scalable Niche', with a developed team, that is underscored by demonstrable IP, consistent founder thought leadership and market case studies, still have to consistently experience the erratic frustrations of navigating the early stage startup ecosystem.    Without naming names, hear Marion walk through investment case studies that range from all too desperately familiar to any fundraising founder to the tragic-comedy of feeling compelled to respond after an investor provided arms-length feedback, after just 17 seconds of pitch deck review. Just to try introduce some equanimity and rebalance the inbalanced asymmetry that seems to creep into the experience of way too many early stage founder investor conversations and interactions.   Connect here: > www.mumbli.com > marion@mumbli.com > https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionmarincat

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we talk to Ollie Austen the Co-Founder of Startup 2 Standup. A diverse, growing and engaged community of experienced founders who want to help and support each other as they navigate their journey through the startup ecosystem. The conversation is a window into the current status of the founder conversation, drawing on Ollie's experience of personally talking to up to 100 founders a month, to listen to and understand their current needs, frustrations and the frequent isolation between their current erratic experience contrasted with investors often demanding expectations. We talk about how if founders are the wealth creators of the future, why the expectation is always on them to have all the answers to prove themselves up front and whether the new emerging alternative modes of funding are a way to break that asymmetric deadlock, by creating more options and early stage paths to startup capital and funding. We explore how what Olli calls 'resistance points' play a role in this. Those typical barriers and milestones that a founder must cross in order to be on the road to being 'successful' and why engaged communities like Startup 2 Standup are so vital in making founders feel like they're fundamentally not alone in that often lonely journey. Explore and connect more here: > https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-austen > https://www.startup2standup.com/