What we look for in exceptional founders and early-stage startups
We look for ideas that are unique. These are often based around an insight you have learned in your job or from life experience.
It's all about defensibility. If you can't find a way to build a barrier, you will end up competing on price.
An often overlooked but critical piece of the puzzle. The first 2 cornerstones are integral to being inevitable, but they have a limited half-life. A unique insight or edge in GTM enables the execution of the idea and erection of the moat.
Ability, vision, execution, dynamic. These are all great words to describe a great founding team. More detail below in the specific of what we look for in a founder.
You can build a great business with two or three, but nail all four and you're building something special.
Evidence of early validation / PMF
Goldilocks TAM – If your idea has a market size measured in £100mn's you are unlikely to be going down the VC route. We don't expect a VC outcome from every investment we make. But if we don't shoot for the stars, we don't have much chance of lift off…
The era of selling £10 notes for £9 is over.
Like the man said on the homepage, it's the ability to look at what the rest of us are looking at, but see something different…and better.
The tech allows making the world a better place to be profitable, so why wouldn't you?
Critical for 2 reasons. First, trustworthy founders build great teams. Second, as a minority investor, once I write that check I am in your hands. Unlike VC money, Angel investment comes with no strings attached, so minority rights protection is very limited.
Valuable knowledge is dynamic not static.
Early stage startups are in a constant state of change. The ability to react fast to multiple changing inputs and define the central learning is key.
In my experience, founders who build diverse teams build better, fairer businesses. They are also a more exciting environment to be a part of.
We are focused on first round investments, often the first check in the first round. We write 1st round checks in the range £25k - £125k. We would usually look to help build the first round with target round size of £300k - £750k. We can follow on in several rounds.
Too addictive
Too specialist
Too hard
Too aggressive
If you can describe your business closely enough to a whole bunch of competitors then I am not an investor. It means that it will likely cost a huge amount of marketing dollars to gain the attention of your target audience long enough to convince them of the superior merits of your product. This is another way of saying we focus on balance sheet efficiency. Unique ideas are cheaper to scale.