I’ve Invested in Lick, SURI & Mother Root… Here’s What I Know About Building a £100M Brand

0:00Say I have a business idea. I source you out as a good investor. I send you my deck. What are the three things you're going to look at first straight away? The first thing, quite a high level, is just the general kind of look and feel of the deck. Like this is how you're getting your brand across. And I think it's really important that you sell yourself well. What does the fundraising process actually look like? There's no sort of easy answer to that because sometimes, you know, it all depends on a load of factors. Sometimes funding rounds can be done and dusted in a couple of weeks. because sometimes they can take a year.

0:30I've worked a lot of startups. I've worked underneath a lot of great founders. It's not always the thing that makes you want to go to the pub with that person. You know, you're not necessarily looking for your like best mate. In many ways, the best founders are going to be pretty hard, tough skin people. So it's not just like, do I think they're a lovely bloke? Am I going to hang out with them all the time? What would make you walk away from a deal? I think just finding a founder hard to work with. You know, if a founder suddenly got a bit ahead of themselves and suddenly said, you know what, we're about to close around.

0:56but actually I think the valuation should be way higher and suddenly kind of moving the goalposts what advice do you wish every founder raising money could hear before they start the process get the materials ready get the data room ready all the you know what you're going to be asked you know so get that in a good place but another thing that's a massive turnoff for investors is when you get young founders saying we are going to sell the business in year three for this money giving you a 7.8 times return on your money and you're like what bullshit is that why have you been saying that how do you know the right founders to back and the right ones to not because I guess that is a really hard task before we get into today's episode I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor Sam Lawrence recruitment we all know that finding the right people or the right job can feel really overwhelming and that's exactly where Sam comes in he really just gets it it's not just about ticking boxes it's about connecting the right people with the right opportunities.

1:53He takes the time to understand you and exactly what you're looking for, whether you're building a team or taking that next career leap. So definitely get in touch. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Charlie is a three-time founding member of Startup Brands, taking each from 0 to 1 million within 18 months across different categories, channels and countries, including launching operations in the US and Australia. He is now the founder of Plugin Brands, an award-winning outsourced FMCG sales agency working with the fast growth food and drink brands, and Dive-In Agency, a tick-top shop agency helping brands turn social commerce into real revenue.

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4:19Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, actually, it's quite a different one. So he is a founder. Sorry, you are a founder. But as in like a founder of a, not necessarily like a, not a product, but I guess a service, which is your money. Yeah. and you put your money into businesses within FMCG. So I'd love to welcome to the podcast Nick Green, FMCG angel investor. Hello. Hello. Nice to be here. How are you? Good, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on Getting to Grow. I thought it'd be interesting to have a sit-down chat with you because we speak about investment a lot on the podcast.

4:58You know, I've spoken to upwards of nearly 80 founders. You know, some have raised, some haven't raised, some are looking to raise, some never want to raise. and I thought actually it'd be great to being like a proper expert in their field as to like all about the world of investment and kind of raising and investment and funding and all that jazz that as I say I don't know much about so I'm interested to get into it but Nick you've sat on both sides of the table so as an operator at companies like Deliveroo, Weezy and now you're an investor backing over 100 startups which is amazing. Talk us through your journey I guess what you were maybe doing before and then how you kind of got to where you are now.

5:41Yeah, I mean, so it's a little bit of a kind of convoluted route, but I started out, as you say, on the other side as an operator. I left university, didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do, thought I was going to go into finance and law like everyone else that I was around. And then, yeah, kind of fell into the startup world, joined a few that, you know, you wouldn't have heard of that hadn't sort of turned into much got very lucky and joined Deliveroo as a very early employee there and went through a really interesting journey um for a couple of years with them so as head of sales at Deliveroo for a few years as you mentioned I was at a place called Wheezy and that was a weird story where I actually angel invested in Wheezy it was an SEIS like super early investor in Wheezy and then ended up actually coming on full-time as a as a director and was there for a pretty brief period of time because we then we then sold the business So that was an interesting journey and lots of other startups in between.

6:35But I mean, I won't go into all of them, but essentially a lot of kind of senior commercial roles. I helped a couple of US businesses enter the UK and Europe and so did a few jobs in that space. And along the way, I just started racking up a few angel investments. It was never a kind of thought through strategy. It was quite random. But I guess I had gone down the startup route. as I mentioned, all of my friends were bankers and lawyers and consultants and much more, you know, mainstream jobs. So anyone's friend of a friend of a friend has a startup idea, and they would say, Oh, you've got to go and speak to Nick, my token startup friend.

7:13So I ended up speaking to a lot of founders about their ideas kind of, you know, before they'd even done anything. And at the same time, Deliveroo in particular kind of obviously became very successful, was very visible so a lot of potential founders thought oh well this guy you know knows what he's doing in certain area so yeah I just had a lot of deals come my way I wrote a few small checks into them and some have gone on to do really really well and you know becoming household names and you know hopefully going to do well out of them you know plenty haven't but as you say I've done a lot and there's a bit of a hack involved in how I've done so many because what started happening was with me doing more and more I started having funds and family offices and much much richer investors kind of come to me and say hey random guy we keep seeing your name crop up you know we're looking into a business we're getting excited about it we look at who the existing investors are and there's your name so they wanted me to start sending them stuff so I became a bit of a scout for different people I was you know sending around a lot of deal flow trying to be helpful some funds would send me stuff and say we'd love to get your view but mainly it was just me being the person that found stuff and just shared it and what I started doing was saying to the well actually more the other way around founders started saying to me look it's really great that you want to invest your ticket sizes are quite small we're trying to raise you know a lot more money than that um so we'd love to have you as an investor but also if you could help us find the rest of the round you know that would be really helpful so what I kind of fell into was basically helping founders fill the rest of the round and the way I'd work is I would charge a small success fee if I was to introduce them to people and then I would just reinvest that back into the rounds that allowed me to invest in way more companies I could see something but like oh I really love this don't necessarily have you know enough money to do the full round but I can go and find those people and so yeah I have raised money for 120 plus different businesses and that allows me to kind of get involved in in all of them um and it's just been ramping up and up and up and I raised money for and invested in 25 or so different businesses last year so so yeah involved in a lot whoa seriously you definitely have your hands full hey um and I know we spoke about like your journey just then but was there like kind of a proper moment where you thought I want to like leave a business from building them to kind of like backing them yeah I think I'm slightly I wasn't a great employee and I think I kind of recognized that about myself and that I would be at a company you know for a couple of years and I'd sort of get itchy feet and it was both in terms of pouring all of my effort into one thing and constantly seeing new businesses come along and sort of thinking they looked exciting so it's a combination of I really loved that side of angel investing constantly being able to see new things speak to new founders you know dip my toe in the water and also you know with obviously a couple of exceptions I also found kind of pragmatically that you could put a lot of time into a startup that you were working for full-time thinking your equity was gonna you know let you retire and then so many of them go wrong that actually maybe a better approach to this early stage game is to hedge your bets and have lots of different you know lots of different holdings and also I think it plays into kind of yeah what I like I like connecting people I'm a good networker so it sort of played into that so I was able to do it as a side hustle for a long time and then it's just over over time grown and grown and grown and become the sort of the main thing now and how did the Seed Funder the active partners shape the way you look at founders I guess in today's world yeah it was interesting so active um that came about because I had known them for a number of years they they were traditionally a later stage investor coming in when businesses were doing you know really big numbers in terms of revenue and they used to invest in checks of kind of five million plus I'd sent them a lot of deals over the years that they said no to because the deals were just too early for them and then they were starting to basically see that those businesses were going on to you know later reach the stage where they would look at them and they were kind of kicking themselves because they could have got in you know a few years previously and got all of that upside so you know there were various businesses I had sent them you know that fitted that mold whether it's wild deodorant or moth cocktails or lick paint or whatever so they came to me and said we'd actually like to be in a position to take advantage of those kind of deals and do an earlier stage fund you've got lots of deal flow you've got experience as a as an operator you know why don't you come on board and do that it was really interesting going into an actual kind of professional finance setup because you know i'd been dabbling in this game but it was just you know i'm not doing a huge amount of financial you know analysis i'm looking at obviously the high level numbers it's more kind of gut feel for the founder for the market my own experience of being an operator and knowing what the challenges are going into more active which has been going for you know decades and is much more rooted you know most of the team i was probably one of the very few people in the team who hadn't got a background in investment banking for example they're used to looking at businesses in a very very different way so so yeah it was just a different approach kind of a more professionalizing that kind of investment lens i guess but it was interesting and and they you know they have backed a lot of great brands over the years whether it's so house which we were talking about earlier you know through lots of things in hospitality like honest burgers and um leon and things like that so they've got they've gone through cycles you know they've seen the ups and the downs they've invested in all types of businesses and um and yeah no it was a really it was a really interesting experience to go into a you know professional investment environment.

13:09I'd say, you know, coming back to that, you know, not being a great employee, not loving working in a kind of corporate structure, I always wanted to be running my own thing and, you know, eventually have my own funds. So I think, you know, it was a great, great experience, but I, you know, not necessarily destined to work in that kind of environment. And what was the first company that you ever put money in? very good question the first one um and i and it is actually hopefully approaching a good outcome um was it was actually a really good example because it uh started out in a certain area it was originally a recruitment platform called talent pool um and it has morphed and broken into multiple other different businesses and yeah it has become a very different um business today but you know very very good founder who has been very adaptable very resilient and the business is nothing like the business I invested in in 2013 but it is you know 2013 2014 but it is yeah it is still doing well some of the early ones um I also invested in a legal tech business I started out quite techie yeah before the kind of consumer stuff came later so one of my other early investments which done really well was a legal tech business called Juro which which I was using in my role at Deliveroo as head of sales we were sending out a load of contracts we started using this really early stage company and I preferred it to the big big companies in that space and just said to the founder if you're ever fundraising you know let me know and I'd love to put some money in and it turned out the other people investing in that angel round were the guy that founded transferwise the guy that founded indeed.com the guy that founded gumtree and me so i i was very lucky to sort of get in that but then in terms of brands things like yeah lick paint moth cocktails suri toothbrushes surreal cereal coming on in two three weeks fantastic well i yeah you should you should absolutely um you should absolutely find out his fascinating story i mean that business is doing incredibly well and yeah mark and have done a great great job and I think they just launched in Target in the US so things are going things are going well I mean they you know they've done a great job in the UK but now now they're on to bigger and better things so yeah I was the first first round into that um right back at the beginning of the Suri journey I think I had one of the first sort of prototype Suri toothbrushes before they were actually on sale and it's still going strong so it's a good testament to the uh to the product but it's funny because i i did i found a lot of investors that went into that business and you know hopefully they'll they'll be very grateful to me one day when that turns into a you know big big return for them but a lot of people didn't see it and it's another example of it's easy with hindsight but actually someone coming along and saying we're doing electric toothbrushes you know sometimes it's quite hard to believe the hype and get super excited about something like that but actually huge category a couple of big businesses that have dominated for ages and you know they've got weak points and you know blind spots and along came these guys really really smart really kind of focused and have built an amazing business which is you know taking a lot of market share off some really massive companies so yeah so but that that's a really good segue i guess actually to something then how do you have that gut feel because you know I don't I'm thinking now god I want to invest my£10.50 that I have in bank account but like I'm how do you know the right founders to back and the right ones to not because I guess that is a really hard task yeah I mean look if I had a really simple answer for that we'd all be doing it right and and you know no one would ever back the wrong founders and we'd all be you know we'd all be sequoia or whoever but it you know it's just a feel for it and there are combination of factors you know they've got to be they've got to be smart they've got to be compelling and charismatic for a number of reasons because they've got to hire the right people they've got to raise money off the right people you know you've got to think of all the different things that founder has to get right over the next few years they've got to as i say build an amazing team around them they've got to probably convince you know round after round of investors different types of investors from you know little old angel investors like me at the start to big institutional investors later on they've got to also be able to deal with all sorts of you know much more kind of granular you know nitty-gritty things of dealing with suppliers and dealing with factories and whatever there's a real kind of range of skills and you're just going to think do they have that and crucially you know back to that point previously do they have the resilience because there are going to be loads of really tough times.

18:10Even some of my most successful investments, which are now flying and people are like, oh God, I know that brand. Oh my God, that business has always been amazing. I can tell you times when lots of these businesses have been weeks away from going bust or funding rounds have nearly fallen through or huge issues in supply chain, all sorts of nightmares. And so it's that combination of are they smart? Are they charismatic? Have they got all those things but are they also tough enough to deal with the fact that it's not going to go right and so it is just it is a massive cliche and it's not a very satisfactory answer but you are just you just meet people sometimes you think you're gonna I know you're gonna do well it might not even be this business but you've got something I would back you and you know sometimes I look back and I think god I met that person I wasn't convinced by the idea but I did just think they were great and I should have just invested anyway because they they managed to make it work somehow and you do get a lot of investors talking about like oh I always knew their first business wouldn't work out but their second business would be great and that that you know that's another story if you're doing with your own money that's quite hard to do as a fund maybe you can play that game of being like just getting in with the right founder even if you're backing the wrong business but yeah it's just just about feel for people and I you know I've worked a lot of startups I've worked underneath a lot of great founders been very close to them and you start to see what makes them work it's not always the thing that makes you want to go to the pub with that person you know you're not necessarily looking for your like best mate in many ways the best founders are going to be pretty you know hard pretty like tough tough skin people so it you know there's definitely probably a high correlation with successful founders and certain kind of quite negative traits so it's not just like do I think they're a lovely bloke am I going to hang out with them all the time um but yeah I'm sorry I can't give you a more a more sort of detailed answer but it is just you get a feel for people and you and I say that in the full knowledge that I get a feel for someone and often doesn't work out so I was gonna ask you have you um talk us through maybe a round that you invested but maybe it didn't go to plan yeah I mean look a few a few over the last two years that have have not gone right um i'm trying to think of a couple that have gone gone bust recently there was um a business called hanks h-a-n-x which was like a condom business and like really great founders you know really interesting space that the thesis was basically that actually a really high percentage of condoms are bought by women but all the brands are very like macho masculine focused and they were doing a kind of holistic uh you know there were more products than just that but that was their main their main thing and you know they were a doctor and an ex-goldman sachs banker and like really amazing people and it just you know i'm sure there will be big brands in that space at some time they were just maybe a bit ahead of their ahead of their time and it just didn't work out but that one has has sadly failed recently i packed a really amazing um organic baby food business called mama maids the product was great reviews were great i really feel like now it would probably be doing really well there's been quite a lot of interesting structural stuff going on in baby food if you've been sort of keeping keeping track of that i think they'd probably be doing really well off the back of that but they just yeah weren't in the right place at the right time they had some supply chain issues it didn't work out um i was an investor in a um better for you donuts business called urban legend yeah i've seen and again that was it was really interesting because it was initially so beautifully timed in that it was when the hfss yeah stuff came in at one point in time crispy cream were going to be kicked out of all the big supermarkets because the products were too unhealthy to sell in the way that they were sold and merchandised so it looked like they were going to get an incredible deal where essentially they were going to this this brand urban legend we're going to replace Krispy Kreme in Tesco and Krispy Kreme does tens of millions of revenue just in just in Tesco so it's going to be an incredible place to start for the brand then the government sort of rode back from the HFSS and loosened it so actually Krispy Kreme could still sell so then this company was selling alongside Krispy Kreme and you know it was a healthier product but arguably not quite as tasty so you know there are some categories where consumers will uh take a sort of less tasty product for for health something indulgent like donuts less so so sadly um that one didn't work out and look I could go on about plenty um that's the reality of this is that you know plenty do do not work out but and loads of good ones as well do you um do you literally lose your money so you put the cash in if it goes bust you get nailed back not quite because so if you are a uk taxpayer investing in a uk business there are some quite nice incentives the government gives you so that you do you do get some of your money back okay you do you do protect some of your downside so in in rough terms so this is called the eis scheme entrepreneurs investment scheme and you or maybe it's enterprise investment scheme i always forget that and anyway if i invested 10 000 pounds into a business i would get 30 of my investment straight back from hmrc so i get 3 000 pounds straight back regardless of you know of what happens in the long run so that and when i say get it back i can knock off my tax bill yeah i then if that business does really well and goes up in value and it sells or whatever, I pay no capital gains.

24:01So usually if you buy or sell a property or shares and something and it goes up, you still pay a tax on that. These are exempt from that. So you do get more on the upside. But sorry, we're talking about the downside. If it then goes bust, you then get further bit of cash back. You get something called loss relief. So you've only risked 70 % of your money because you've got 30 % straight back. Of that 70%, you get a percentage equivalent to how much you pay an income tax. So to make that make sense, if you pay 45 % income tax, you will get 45 % of that 70 % back, if that makes sense. Okay. So you essentially...

24:39You are quite covered then. You're quite covered. And actually, not to get too technical and into the numbers, but the first 250 grand that every single company raises, they have something even better called SCIS, which is the same as what I've just said, except rather than 30%, it's 50 % straight back to you. So if I invest£10 ,000, I get£5 ,000 immediately back and I still get that downside protection if it goes bust. So yeah, you really are quite protected. And as I say, if it goes well, you keep 100 % of it. And that's what people really like because, you know, you've just sold something, done really well.

25:19And then you're like, God, I've got to pay tax on that. anything that's tax you know exempt is obviously always very nice so that is that's why fortunately we have a very thriving angel investment kind of community and culture in the UK because we have this good scheme and there are lots of other countries that are quite jealous of that and you know trying to sort of copy it in many ways because it is it is really good and successive governments have actually you know kept it going and in many ways expanded it if it wasn't there it would be a lot harder to raise the startup because obviously as we you know alluded to plenty of them do go to zero if you didn't get anything back and you were risking 100 of your cash um it would be it would be a bit scarier to to make those small checks for sure yeah absolutely i think that well that would then actually we probably wouldn't have like the thriving kind of entrepreneurs that we do in the uk because if they can't raise because angels are scared of like losing 100 % of their cash and stuff it's it would be like a real push pull yeah absolutely and we need angels because there are lots of great funds in the UK but increasingly you know over time funds tend to manage more and more cash therefore need to write bigger and bigger checks and so what they end up doing is ending up investing later and later and later in a business's life cycle so so many of the great funds have to just turn around to companies and say come back to us when you're doing three million of revenue or whatever so there's this bigger and bigger gap before the funds are relevant when you still need to raise capital you've still got to pay for loads of stock i mean you know you could do it yourself but most people aren't in that position where you've got a you've got an awful lot of growing to do to get to a point of your revenue funds who do you raise that from you've got to go and raise it from angel investors and it's it would be incredibly hard to do that yeah without this stuff yeah yeah so say i have a business idea i want to start i don't know lunch boxes for example and um i source you out as a good a good investor i send you my deck what are the three things you're going to look at first straight away i've been i've been sorry i'll give you a bit of context i've been um running the business for three years I'm maybe a five mil no that's probably too high maybe I'm at a two and a half mil revenue yeah so like I'm not I'm not small but I'm well I'm pretty small but as in like you know it turns over money um and yeah that's about as much as you know at this point okay I mean it the first thing at quite a high level is just the general kind of look and feel of the deck like this is your how you're getting your brand across and I think it's really important that you know you get the look and the feel of the brand across that you you sell yourself well I see plenty of decks which have been put together by you know probably the founder or someone who hasn't got any kind of background in design and it's just a it's a real missed opportunity because for a very small amount of money you could probably get someone to tart it up and make it look really good and it's just if that's your you know it's like paying for a big billboard or a tv ad and just sort of doing it slapdash and doing it yourself you just wouldn't yeah you wouldn't do that so general kind of look and feel I think um combination of facts obviously you know your actual traction you're doing 2.5 million revenue what what does that actually look like what are the channels you know how has that grown has that been has that been a really kind of smooth you know journey or have you sort of unlocked a couple of things is that suddenly wrapped up really really recently um so you're understanding at a more granular level what what that revenue looks like i mean and crucially understanding the size of the price because you might be reaching 2.5 million you might have smashed it you might that might be the whole market you know you might be the market leader there's no room for growth is there actually a really interesting market to go into or one to build you know is there actually a compelling reason for why this is going to be the product that everyone's going to want and that 2.5 million is scratching the surface and this could become a 250 million revenue business in in five years time so i think it's it's sort of getting across is this exciting at scale can this really be like a amazing business that we all we all know and love is there an opportunity to for this company to own that you know is there a gap in the market are the big incumbent companies doing it doing it badly and leaving some open space or is it genuinely a case that this doesn't exist and the reason you know and that's often obviously harder to get across as to why why it doesn't exist but why should it exist um and and then you know i'm jumping around and putting more than three things in here but no this is really how are you gonna do that you know realistically you know right we're gonna get into these retailers we're gonna move into food service we're gonna move into whatever we're gonna to do collaborations with brands and start doing branded lunchboxes we're going to do you know we're going to do all sorts of different things we're going to work with this celebrity who's got an amazing audience in this space we're going to go into these other countries so a kind of you know often it's sort of a finger in the air because this might be what you're going to do over the next five years and it's going to rely on a lot of capital coming in and it's it's you know early days to be talking about this but have a compelling plan as to how you were going to take it from here to there and what what comes in between and how quickly do you you know like long and I bring it back to dating but you know when you're going to I don't know how many dates you've been on but I'm assuming you've done some um and you know relatively quickly don't you you sit there and I think within like the first honestly probably like 90 seconds I'm like this is me or it's not me yeah is it similar when you open a deck are you pretty like i know very quickly if this is going to be a yay or nay i think so yeah i think it is because i mean often again just going back to the high level of like good deck versus bad deck sometimes decks where i'm i'm five or six slides in and i still don't know what it is i still i'm still like i don't get it you know you haven't explained what the product is you only explain why i should be interested in it So sometimes, yeah, you're just turned off completely.

31:40Other times, very quickly, you know, I'm just not the customer. And look, there are businesses I've invested in where I'm not the target customer. But I can see that there is a target customer and they've, you know, impressed upon me that that audience is there. It might be designed for someone half my age, you know, of a different gender. It might be, you know, obviously, I'm happy to invest in something that's not just directed at me. but sometimes I'm just like I'm not convinced that this is a thing I'm not convinced this is needed so yeah I think pretty quickly both the sense of like personal taste just how it's delivered and just do I get it do I do I understand what what even the problem you're trying to solve is pretty quickly so yeah I think the dating analogy is pretty apt is that you you get a pretty good sense pretty quickly you you know you're you're not sitting in a pub with someone so it's easier to extricate yourself from things but look the vast majority of decks I get sent I say thanks but no thanks best of luck and you know it's not it's not for me um and that's always going to be the way with everything um but but yeah but occasionally and it's funny because obviously in the world of food and drink which is you know so much of what I do and so much of what you do seeing it on a page is one thing you've then got to got to try the product so obviously you know then it's a question of going out and finding it or messaging the founder and saying you know would you mind sending me some samples or whatever had a lovely delivery of of kimchi arrive on my doorstep this morning um so so looking forward to that but yeah you've got to got to try the product got to see it in real life you know touch and feel the packaging etc so yeah but a good deck can do a lot of the heavy lifting and get you pretty excited about it Yeah, I think actually it's something that, you know, I have a couple of decks for getting to grow.

33:35And I know that Elliot behind the screen here is we're doing it as we speak. And I am that is not my bag. Like, I am so good at like put me in front of a customer. Oh, my gosh. I would like that is where I shine. I am so customer like facing the day to day, like behind the numbers making a deck like all the admin like. literally like i can't stand it i am all for the whole like just let me sell just let me get in front of the customer like that is where i like just i get like that gets me out of bed like i love a customer meeting and it's funny because i think like there but there is so much value in having a good deck and like having all the information that you can bring with it and like my decks when i look at like when i sell are so top line like sometimes there's no literally no words on a deck it might actually be a gif yeah and i will talk and there's this man and i always end some of my decks were quite funny and there's like this one gif and it's a guy and he's just like this big like he's quite a large gentleman and he's got this like bottle of moet moet sorry my my brother's girlfriend works for um lvmh and she's like it's moet i know but then you sound like exactly then you've got to explain yourself exactly and then like so yeah moet and um he's there with this like money yeah and now that's how i like close some of my sales it's quite funny but there is so much value in having like a really good deck behind you and i've done i do quite a lot of like mentoring with some like younger sales um ladies and i look at their deck and i'm just like firstly like way too many words i don't really even know that i'm completely confused can you just talk to me like before you even get your laptop out yeah obviously if you don't have the like privilege of that and I have to send it to you I'd still keep it really top line like sometimes even a picture and like four words about me is like more relevant than like this is my life story yeah well exactly I'm like to that point I made about sometimes not knowing what the product is you get these incredibly dense sort of essentially like this word doc just like 500 words on a page and I'm like just show me a picture of the product so I understand what it is I'm not I'm not diving into all that so yeah absolutely like imagery you know keep it clear keep the yeah keep slides nice and clean yeah just key messages i think the elephant in the room here is that obviously what does best is the actual voiceover from the founder so obviously what you want to do is convert that person to allowing you to talk them through it so you know you say here's my deck would love the opportunity to talk you through it you know the deck does an okay job but you know i can really give you the kind of inside scoop i have seen people use i don't know if you come of course loom and various things where you can record yourself and so they can be looking at the deck while you're kind of talking away in their ear so that's like the next best thing i guess to that actual kind of live read through so a few different options but yeah ultimately you know as is the case in any form of sales you're trying to get in front of them you're trying to get in there and i've i know founders who their conversion rate of like pitching in person to an investor and getting into it is incredible yeah but they just they just need to get in the room with those people and you are competing with a lot of other people to get that time and get that kind of mental headspace so it is quite um you know that's the challenge can you make your debt good enough to get you in the room and then you do you do the rest i would rather honestly nobody like i just yeah the pre-read thing like i'm yay and a nay and again i'm yes i'm like for and against a pre-read because like I don't want anyone to kind of know anything before they've met me and then they meet me and they're like right okay I get it like sometimes you need to just like have a chat with me and then we can do the whole thing yeah I think if there's a pre-read it has a massive benefit like obviously for board slides and stuff so we have to do pre-reads it's like a non-negotiable but sometimes I wish I could tell them first or like yeah they see it first with me um but yeah i think in the investing world that is hard because i i do get sent a lot of messages you know cold messages on linkedin or whatever saying i just want 15 minutes of time and i go happy to look at a deck and you know then maybe you set something up and they go no no no i just really i promise you and i just i'm not to be honest probably gonna set up a 15 minute call unless you know it's it's a warm intro from someone i really rate who said yeah this guy's got the best thing ever and and you know they don't want to spoil it by sending something but yeah almost always I ask to see something ahead of time yeah but I get what you mean yeah yeah and um speak like I want to just ask a question about like the money side of it and the initial kind of stages because obviously as a as an as an angel investor um you need to have a pot to start with right how did you initially make that pot was it through like savings when you were head of sales at Deliveroo like you're putting a bit aside or was it through I don't know side hustle stuff yeah I mean look combination because yeah initially as I say really really small investments just things that I liked I guess when you say really small investments like what are we talking in terms of value like a couple of thousand okay um and so I guess that was you know in place of putting that money away in a savings account or putting it into an ISA or doing something arguably more sensible just for me my thing was squirreling some money away and putting it into the next cool business I saw with a view to you know thinking it would it would do really well and I'd make a really good good return on it and as I say you know some of those it's worked some of those it hasn't but yeah initially I didn't have a pot of capital to deploy it was just like savings from from salary and then as I say I started doing this essentially this side hustle which would generate me the money.

39:26And then I would just always reinvest those fees straight back into the business. So I could have kept all that money. I've raised a lot of money for a lot of companies and the fees from doing that could have basically given me a really amazing salary over the last however many years. I've been doing this for nearly 10 years now, but instead I chose to take the risk and put that money back into all these businesses. So yeah, a combination of, I guess, almost like sweat equity. So like getting equity in the business in return for doing them, doing them, you know, a service and then also just small amounts of money from from savings.

40:02The difficult thing and the thing to address, I guess, is that a lot of companies have a minimum check size. So, you know, even if they're not raising a huge amount, you know, let's say they're raising three or four hundred thousand. and a lot of founders go, oh, we want our minimum check size to be£25 ,000 or, you know, realistically, like a very large sum of money for the vast majority of people. And so it is quite hard, obviously, to get into angel investing if that's the case. So what I started doing and, you know, what I guess I'm encouraging other people to do is say, look, that's great.

40:34And that's obviously how you are going to raise the big amounts by dealing with people who can put£25,£50,£100k into something. but let me in for a couple of grand five grand because I'm going to be much more valuable than that person I'm going to make lots of great introductions for you I'm going to help you out in all sorts of different ways so I always tell founders to take them the case by case basis absolutely set your minimum so you don't have loads of time wasters and loads of people that you know are going to put you through yeah weeks of due diligence and then go I'm going to put in five grand if you're a quick and easy you know decision and you say and by the way i can introduce you to a couple of big retailers i can introduce you to an amazing you know talent agency i can introduce you to whoever if there are people that can bring you value be open to letting them onto the cap's table with some amounts of money that's really interesting and the other thing is those people sometimes do really well and maybe they're a founder themselves and then their business might you know blow up and then they might go from putting in five thousand in one round to putting in a hundred thousand the next round you never you never know what that's going to be like so um so yeah I just sort of forced founders basically to take my small amounts of money by being helpful and being persistent and just being like you know I know you want to raise more money than this but you know let me in and let me be helpful and then yeah so now the way I work is it's it's built into my contract that I I can invest however much money I want to invest in in the business you know whether it's a large amount or whether it's a really tiny amount so I just say from the get-go you know it might be a lot or it might be a couple grand but you have you have to take whatever amount I end up you know being in a position to invest in the business so I don't have to go through those kind of negotiations but that I've been through a lot of that in the in the early days yeah I think that's really interesting because it's all it is fantastic having someone that's like here's half a million quid brilliant but ultimately like if they're based in my bangkok and they're not very helpful or whatever it might be yeah you know actually someone that's going to give you five grand but like knows the industry inside it has all the connections can really put you on the map for certain people can give you warm leads is london based yeah that's so valuable that is so valuable absolutely yeah and i think i think you know probably not quite as simplistic as this but there's probably a kind of inverse correlation in terms of ticket size and helpfulness you get the people that can put in huge amounts of money can do so because either they're at the very end of their career and they're sort of pretty checked out or because they are doing this all over the place and they have the ability to write these kind of checks so do they have much time for you whereas you might find an amazing person knows the industry inside out they can only put in five grand but they might be you know your best mentor your best sequel weapon so finding those people and being flexible in terms of the amount that those people invest is is important and you know you've invested in in a lot of businesses obviously what makes a founders like we've spoken about the deck but when you get to the pitch level what makes a pitch like really really stand out i think it's just being like clear and compelling in terms of you know the things we alluded to earlier of like why why this person or why this team why this product like getting across not just what it is and why it's sort of you know but yeah why is it better than the competition why is it actually going to be the one that we that defines the category that is the go-to you know product in that space so yeah it's just obviously being able to be quite dynamic and nimble and deal with hard questions and you know everyone has obviously things like dragon's den in their mind it's not like that um but you know being able to be challenged on stuff and think on your feet but also just get across like what the mission is and why you know why you're going to be the one to crack this category and what does the fundraising process actually look like yeah I mean good good question I mean it's there's no there's no sort of easy answer to that because sometimes you know it all depends on a load of different factors how much demand there is in the funding round how quickly that business is growing sometimes funding rounds can be done and dusted in a couple of weeks sometimes they can take a year i mean you know there really is a huge range but essentially it's go out to the market you know get the conversations going fill the top of your funnel um you know and again i'm using lots of these sort of sales references because that's ultimately what it is it's a sales process you are getting it in front of lots of people and then you're you know having an initial conversation with them getting through to a stage where maybe they say great send us your financials we're going to go and do a bit of due diligence let's meet up in person you know week after next so it's sort of trying to move everyone through these stages roughly at the same time what you don't want to do you know what is different to a sales process is if you're selling to a whole bunch of different clients doesn't matter if you close one client way before another in this case you sort of have to bring everyone together at the same time you know a round has to actually crystallize and sort of coalesce at the same time so it is quite that is quite a sort of a nuanced detail around fundraising is that you might have someone who two weeks into the process is like great i'm in i want to put in 100k and that's great but you're not actually ready to take that money because you need to get 500k in so then you have to keep that person warm keep checking in with them keep giving them good news while you get everyone else to the same stage as them so that that's a sort of nuanced thing but ultimately yeah it's like getting the conversations going you know cutting cutting you know ties with the ones who it's not going anywhere you know they might tell you that you might get a sense that they're just sort of wasting your time it's quite like dating yeah you know you're bringing it back to like you've got cut the ties and I was like wasting your time like my head my bread shit like it is so true when you think like yeah you got to keep some warm but am I gonna find better like yeah absolutely and you're playing the game of it And what gets these things across the line is a lot of like FOMA, a bit of competition.

46:48You know, an investor hears that someone else is going to do it and either they want to do it with them or they want to, you know, they want, oh, no, don't go with them, go with me. So, yeah, there's a lot of that kind of, you know, human psychology to it. And the other thing that's, I guess, most similar to that is I always tell founders, sometimes I see founders kind of always trying to convince themselves they should take money from someone. and i'm like but you clearly aren't getting on with them and you've already found them really annoying through this process yeah and obviously sometimes money is money you just need the money in and you just think and one one reality is that actually a lot of investors talk a huge amount about the value add and how involved they're going to be and then you never hear from them again so like the reality is that you're not going to be spending a huge amount of time i think founders get hung up on that but you are going to be spending some time with them and you are they are going to have a little bit of a hold on you they are going to own a small part of your your baby your business so don't go into business with someone you really don't get on with and you think i'm going to clash with this person down the line because you are setting yourself up to have a relationship of sorts with this person for potentially 10 years maybe more so like do not think oh they're not too bad like reference them as well but ask other founders they've invested in because I sometimes you know see scenarios where I see a you know an investor being really really difficult and then I'll come across a founder he'll be like god yeah like they invested in my business five years ago and they've been an absolute nightmare and they've been you know so negative for the business and the wrong investor can be really bad for your business like that's another thing that we should cover is that you know people can be quite blasey oh like you know they're a bit annoying or whatever some investors can cause real problems and can you know go behind your back and you know end up investing in competitors or they can you know go to your board and say we should we should get rid of this founder and you know there are all sorts of really bad stories out there too so yeah not all investors are created equal you know there are some people you do not want on your cap table out there both individuals and funds and everything in between so absolutely kind of switch the story and actually and this is quite a good psychological thing but oh you know before we go ahead I want to ask you some questions you know what value will you bring to this can I speak to some other companies some other founders that you've invested in uh and I think that's quite a good way of sort of you know making that person oh god I really do want to invest in this business because I'm being sort of you know I'm on show and I've got to prove my worth to it so yeah there's a whole whole story there with the psychological elements to to fundraising yeah for sure I can imagine actually and how much money do you have out in the world with your 100 businesses at the moment a lot I mean you know yeah I've invested in in over 100 I mean everything from a few thousand to my my biggest ever investment was was around 35 ,000 I think and I've followed on into some of these businesses as well so yeah a lot of money that is tied up yeah you know it's not like investing in stocks and shares and you can't just press a button and sell sell them you know you are it's a completely illiquid it is there until either there's an exit you know either there's a future funding round where i'm in a position where i can sell my shares to a new investor coming in or a company a large company buys one of these companies and I get I get paid out or the company goes goes public and in all of these scenarios that can often be many many years after investing so you are it's like buying a house that you are then unable to touch and unable to sell until you know until five to ten years down the line so yeah it's um it's an interesting asset class it's an interesting place to put all of your investments i do have you know a pension and isa and all the sort of normal stuff but the vast majority of my of my money i've earned over the last 15 years is all tied up in these completely illiquid startups so yeah fingers crossed you know i get some exits from them but it's um yeah it's a most people with a lot of money to invest allocate a pretty small percentage of that that capsule to this type of asset because it is because you know there's a lot of upside but there's also a lot of downside and you've got that complete lack of liquidity you know most people would put x percentage into into property and into stocks and into bonds and then be like oh i've got my fund money which i'm going to put into the the risky early stage startups i've just inverted that and put the vast majority into the into the wacky startups and a very small amount into the kind of safe steady you know thing that's gonna see me through my old age but yeah but risk is like you know my dad's an entrepreneur and he's always he's earned all his money by being risky yeah absolutely and you know you have to have that as well but and what has been your most successful um return on investment in terms of like brand or financial um i've had a few i've heard a few good ones i mean actually so yeah back to things like Suri toothbrushes and Surreal cereal and a few others so I mean Suri is a great example I got into that business when it was valued at two million pounds and now it's doing tens and tens of millions of pounds of revenue and really it's doing that much yeah yeah yeah and and you know if the US goes well you know each listing will probably you know be more than the whole of the uk market is worth to them now so look touch wood you know mark mark can talk more about it but hopefully that business is going to get bought for hundreds of millions like a while by someone exactly a wild or you know potentially even even bigger so you know that would be an amazing return from getting in at two to getting out at you know several hundred so touch wood um and i've had a few and you wouldn't pay tax on that wouldn't pay any tax on that no whoa i need to get engaged yeah so that would be that would be good i mean again they're not all like that but you know i've got loads of ones doing really well i mean some more recent ones in like the fmb space i got in very early in mother root which is doing yeah best coming on again great yeah she's wonderful uh stocked is doing very well space is doing very well um juxt is doing very well uh over like fertility supplements doing incredibly well so loads and loads of them i mean like i think i've got some really good ones i've got a good a good eye for it a lot of them are doing very well um yeah let's let's see a surreal cereal wearing my surreal surreal socks um it's really killing it and they yeah they have been kit and jack have done a great job and they've been very they've been very conservative they haven't actually raised that much money they haven't brought lots of big funds but they've marketed it so well they've grown really nicely they've got a huge dc business and then more recently waitrose and sainsbury's and etc has done really well they they could grow the business even faster than they are like i think they get a lot of interest from sort of overseas and big retailers but they've just you know they really know exactly what they want to do they've grown it really really well at some point that's gonna that's gonna blow up you know really big investors gonna come in or a really big company's gonna gonna buy them so that's a great a great example um and yeah so loads um so yeah fingers crossed you know the big the big acquirers of this world ultimately i'm kind of very dependent on whether it's unilever or mars or pepsi or whoever being like you know what we've been we've been watching these guys for a while you know they're doing they're doing really well we are not good at that we're not very good at innovation we're not very good at capturing this younger demographic it we're not very good at health or we're not very good at whatever let's let's snap them up so you know hopefully over the next few years you know kellogg's by buys by surreal and diageo buys moth and all this kind of stuff happens i love rob at moth what a cool like i've had i've had him on as well nice yeah yeah i'm sure if we went through my my roster you probably had all of them pen time other roots in soil all been all done yeah i mean it's it's kind of fun actually when you sit here and you think about it but all the founders I've had on it's it's quite cool and actually if you're an investor and we need to I've got my brain thinking about something so yeah cut to my dears but valuations so valuations I think can be like an emotional topic I think obviously loads of businesses want to say that they're valued at probably slightly more than they think they might be how should founders think about valuation in the early stages and how do you value a business?

55:47Yeah well look the reality is that at a later stage in the business's life there are very set ways in which you value a business you know it's in different industries it differs but you might be acquired for three times revenue or seven times EBITDA you know they're very easy ways in which a banker or a big company acquiring your business can say right you know zoe's lunchbox business is doing a million pounds of evit dar the in this sector businesses trade for between between three and five times evit dar we're going to buy it for four million you know that that is super simple when you're really early stage and you haven't got profit you know how do you value this business in most cases it's just a negotiation a founder sets out with a number in mind and if it's way off and the market just just sort of says no you just end up you're basically saying i i want to give you this percentage of the business and the investors say no i want more than that for that amount of money and you end up somewhere in between and realistically the way it's always worked out is most early stage funding rounds you end up giving away roughly 20 of your business between between 10 and 20 of your business you need 500k to do what you want to do to hire the people you want to hire to buy the stock to you know support the marketing and so you go right i want 500k i'm prepared to give away 15 % of my business there's a bit of back and forth you end up giving away 18 % of your business and that's what the valuation is so you sometimes get founders who've got an amazing track record they sold their last business for for a huge amount of money and they are able to basically demand a higher valuation it's not always a good thing some i've seen examples of founders who you know they're really bullish they're in a really interesting sector or they've got a really good track record they go in really hard at the start they get a really big valuation then you've got to justify that then they end up raising money again in a year's time and revenue is still quite low and people just look at it and go sorry you're doing 200k of revenue and you're trying to value the business at eight million pounds like that that doesn't add up so it's not always the best thing you actually you know sometimes founders are better off being more conservative because you want to sort of grow grow with it but um yeah sorry long one long with an answer of saying you know realistically you come with an argument as to why you need the amount of money you're trying to raise and i found that you know you've got no reason to raise more money than you you need and essentially it's that percentage of business that you're willing to give away and we sort of i guess all know this from dragon's den yeah but that is you know those are not the numbers that you are doing you know the classic thing in dragon's den of just being like i'll give you the money but for 80 percent of you know the silly numbers get put out there if that happened you'd be screwing yourself you'd be screwing that investor like it's it's a good investor realizes they want the founder to keep a really good chunk of the business why because you want that founder to work their ass off and produce an amazing result yeah if you get to a point and this happens quite frequently where a founder has gone through multiple funding rounds maybe there are two or three founders and actually they're quite disincentivized they end up with a very small percentage of their own company who's that good for like why does the founder the founder doesn't want a good exit at that point um yeah it's not that beneficial so a good investor gets that you know they want to do well out of it but the founders also got to be kept kept hungry and kept incentivized and have something really big to play for so so yeah there are a lot of different things going on you you do just you know when times are good and there's lots of money flying around valuations do sort of creep up and then they kind of correct and come back down again but yeah roughly speaking you know there are there are pretty you also if you go out and say want to raise 500 grand at a 10 million pound valuation you're going to get investors coming back to you and go a company in a similar space doing the same numbers as you is valuing themselves a third of that so why would we touch you so you're ultimately just making yourself uninvestable so it's just a question of you know it's like it's like how do you price a product like how do you how do you put a price on a on a you know tub of yogurt you look at the market and you say well we're better than them our products better than them yeah better packaging better products so we're gonna be a bit more it's the same same rationale yeah and investor kind of red flags what would make you walk away from a deal what would make me as an investor walk away um i think just finding a founder hard to work with you know if a founder suddenly you know got a bit ahead of themselves and suddenly said you know what we're about to close around but actually i think the valuation should be way higher and suddenly kind of moving the goalposts and and vice versa you know if an investor tries to do that probably more common an investor goes oh great we're going to do the deal actually i'm going to give you you know less money and i want more of the you know more of the business so any kind of not sticking to an agreement you know being a bit being a bit slippery um what other investor red flags are there i think i think i would be it's not a question of like having taking stuff on board and like you know again not that many investors do bring genuine value and i think often founders should sort of back themselves and be like well i i know how to run this business best but if they if there's any instance of sort of trying to give some constructive advice or trying to trying to help them and you just see right they're really not taking on any external you know input and it's just going to be my way or the highway it depends that that goes either way either you think ah fair enough like we'll see if it works for them you know you do need to be quite driven and and sort of single-minded but you might think god this person's going to be a nightmare i can see this crashing and burning and then just they might just go too far but yeah again any anything anything that you would see is a red flag in any other area of their life as we sort of alluded to you're not necessarily looking for just like a great person that you really want to hang out with so the red flags can sometimes be part of what makes them good but there are obviously red flags where you think god that person's gonna be really toxic to work for or you think that person's gonna you know gonna rub investors up the wrong way ultimately someone could be super smart and have an amazing idea and the product could be great and if you just think no one wants to work for that guy then that's going to be really hard so yeah no no decade policy is always good yeah in any aspect of life um but yeah i think i think that's overlooked sometimes that are they gonna recruit and retain a group of people they're not gonna be able to do this on their own especially in consumer if it's something like tech sometimes you know one person can do a huge amount or can be quite sort of removed from the day-to-day of the company in something like consumer you know you are all in the trenches together quite a lot of the time and it's you know there's a lot of interaction between even the most senior people in the company and the most juniors so like you've got to recognize someone who's not going to be great at that um and yeah they've got to be they've got to be investable so any any sort of hint of of kind of yeah financial uh impropriety whatever is going to be it's going to be a bit of a red flag as well yeah fair enough and um your angel obviously portfolio as we mentioned contains like over 100 companies and is there kind of one similarity across all the companies that you could say is like a trend good question i mean there are lots of sort of categories within there whether it's sort of better for you in the sort of f &b world or whatever but not really i mean i've got a real range in there from you know paddle clubs to fintech to you know to gut friendly soft drinks i mean you know it's it's um it's a lot of different things can i draw a line between all of them no i think it's just ideas that i like categories that i think could be disrupted and founders that i think can do that disrupting and um you know once you have become an investor that relationship as we've mentioned could last a really long time it can last years you know you said all your money sort of out there waiting for it to kind of return or or hopefully sorry hopefully returns or obviously could could not what makes a really good founder investor relationship and what makes a really bad one good that's a very good question i mean it's funny because some founders are brilliant at the updates and the communication with investors and you feel like you know you feel like you know exactly what's happening and you know you you feel the winds and you get a message every time they get a new listing or you know there's any anything going on so some companies where i genuinely feel like i'm in the office with them i know what's going on others never hear from and And there was one funny instance recently, actually, with a business where I'd introduced a few investors to them back in the day.

1:05:10This was probably back in 2020, 2021. And I'd invested and a few other people invested with me. And something related to this company had come up in the news, which, you know, we were like, God, the company should be doing really well. You know, things that that whole that whole space is like really blowing up. But we hadn't heard from this around at all. and I had a few people, this is not what I do, I don't sit as the middleman and kind of relay information but they were like, have you heard from him? Obviously they thought I was sort of closer to that founder and I was like, no, I haven't heard from that founder in years and we all sort of simultaneously WhatsApp this founder it turns out because he messed me back and was like, why have my entire cap table like WhatsApp me today?

1:05:51It's because they'd all come to it through me and yeah, the update was incredible. The update was, sorry, I've just been heads down and we've just massively expanded and we're working with so and so and so and so. And it was great, but I was just like, why didn't you tell us? Yeah, we would have been super excited. And I think the, you know, maybe LTS, he didn't need to and he didn't need our help with anything and he was just cracking on and doing a great job. And fair enough, if all the ones that went silent, I eventually hear back from and they're like, you know, we've 50X the business and I'll take that all day.

1:06:24But yeah, I think a lot of founders are really considered and not only are they giving updates but they're also giving asks and they're saying by the way we're hiring a head of brand has anyone come across a great one and if you're like me and you're across loads of different businesses you know you do have a decent network for talent or you do know who's a really great agency to work with a lot of you know the asks that i get and a lot of asks that investors get in general is around obviously further funding you know like to all my angel investors thank you so much for investing last year we're now got to a point where we need to raise a lot more money and we want introductions to funds.

1:07:00Like maybe we're expanding into the U S is anyone got, you know, a way of introducing me to, you know, imaginary ventures or whoever it might be in the States. So, so yeah, you know, you should treat your, your angel investor, you know, your cap table is an amazing resource. They might have incredible connections for a whole, a whole range of things. So I think it's a real missed opportunity if you don't leverage it. Sometimes founders just like, look, I'm too busy. And sometimes, you know, know they feel rightly or wrongly that their investor base can't help with whatever they're going through or you know they're not they're not well positioned um which is why it's amazing if you can find kind of industry experts to be on your cap table and then you can always go to them for help and advice and connections um but yeah i think again there are there are founders that do monthly updates their founders that do quarterly updates and their founders that do zero updates And yeah, it's a shame to not keep up to speed.

1:07:56You know, there's no, a lot of funds when they invest have what's called information rights. And they actually contractually put in there, you need to tell us, you know, X, Y, Z at these periods. So you are actually obliged to put together reporting. And angel investors obviously don't have that. But it's a bit of a missed opportunity to not keep them up to speed. Yeah, I think you're right. I think so many people probably don't share because maybe they think like, oh, I don't maybe have anything that relevant to share right now, or I don't want to share because actually that might open up more questions.

1:08:27You know, you can go into yourself a bit with it. Whereas actually if you constantly keep the communication flow, it's actually so much easier to keep the ball rolling. And like, then they can hear the highs and the winds. Because I think when you have, if you've put money in me, I'd always assume you want good news. Yeah. Yeah. I'd always assume you don't want to hear the shit days. You don't want to be like, oh crap, my money's at risk. Like that's what I'd be nervous about. yeah so i would be like oh i'm not telling that i'll only tell him when i've got a good bit of good news but then ultimately that's not life like i can't always just like it's like instagram it's always the highlight reel but like you're not showing me when you've had a really shit day that's not normal every business has ebbs and flows absolutely so i think i think a good like structure is you know wins highs losses lows whatever and then you know random random sort what has happened yeah like we've made a hire or like sometimes you know it's quite nice to make you feel part of the culture like we had a company away day or we had a you know celebration here's here's a picture and you're oh right you know yeah that company's now got 25 employees yeah didn't know that um and then and then yeah and then us like you know can any of my investors introduce me to an amazing fractional cfo whatever it might be like a very specific ask and and you know often you need to follow up on that and then maybe you'll get a whatsapp from that founder being like i don't know if you saw the update but we're looking for this fractional cfo you know do do other thing let me know if you know anyone but um but yeah as i say hugely varies some are incredible you feel completely up to speed with everything that's happening and it's funny because then if i'm in a position where i'm speaking to a vc fund or i'm speaking on a podcast and someone goes how is that company doing i can be like oh well they just won car for in france yeah they just you know they're about to launch into costco in the us or whatever and if you fill people in they can fill other people in and you get the word out there so it's a free it's a free tool of you know getting getting good news out there if you want to use it but you know not everyone does and what was your fastest investment so from like meat to put cash in the business and what was your longest investment from me to put cash in the business um good question fastest I mean there have been ones that that legal tech one I mentioned at the start I was a customer so I sort of asked to be there they didn't have to pitch to me at all I'd already used it there there have been a few um you know product ones which again I've just really loved the product and I've just wanted to do it straight away longest ones I'm trying to think have there been people who've sort of chipped away at me over the course of years and and eventually i've invested i can't think of one to be honest with my head um i'm sure there are i'm sure there's probably a founder kind of beating the table at the moment being like i've been i've messaged you for five years before you eventually yeah met me and it's wanted but yeah i'm i'm usually because i like to get in early i usually don't have these you know scenarios where i say oh come back to me when you're doing whatever i I usually try and like say yes or no pretty quickly.

1:11:34Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you can change your mind and come back to it. But yeah, I'll have a thing. I'll get back to you on that one. And looking back at all the founders that you've backed, what advice do you wish every founder raising money could hear before they start the process? Oh, I think the one thing, and I was talking to a founder this morning about this, is just that, you know, do your prep and do it in a very kind of concerted right i'm going into fundraising mode i'm going into a fundraising period you know do it properly don't think oh we'll just start the fundraise we'll reach out to some of our existing investors in a few more weeks we'll reach out to some new investors and then maybe in a month's time we'll ask people oh do you have any suggestions we speak to do it all at once because i you know we talked about it earlier you want things to all be moving at the same speed if you get into a piecemeal situation where you're trying to keep some conversations warm you haven't even started reaching out to other people you know different people at different places yeah that's just messy get your house in order you know get the materials ready get the data room ready all the you know what you're going to be asked you know so get that in a good place you know a slightly different angle to this is think about when am I going to be raising where over the next few months I can take some time away from the day-to-day business because I'm gonna have to I'm gonna be doing investor calls all day and so not only is the business gonna be you know not requiring so much of my time but also potentially I've got some good news coming you know we're gonna win a listing with Tesco yeah two months I think because that is what gets funding rounds across the line is that during the course of the months you're speaking to these people revenue goes up by 20 or you get an amazing listing or you know you launch a new product or something happens if it's just business as usual and four months after your first conversation with them you're like yeah we're doing pretty much the same and no we haven't really had time to speak to new retailers because we've been focused on the fundraise and look that's it's such a genuine response and I'm what I'm saying is not easy you know it's like run your business grow your business and have loads of fundraising conversation at the time it's why being a founder is really tough like not gonna you know beat around the bush this is doing a lot of difficult things at the same time yeah well but yeah be ready start at all at the same time try and get things together leverage your network say to your existing investors do you have a contact here can you help me with this like get as many conversations going at the same time you know play them off against each other mention to to someone oh we've been speaking to this fund and you know you've got to get you've got to give them a reason to invest you've got to give them a reason to move faster and it's just you know it is herding cats but it is lots and lots of conversations getting things moving following up giving them the updates you know there are some people who will go quiet for a bit but keep chipping away keep being like oh by the way we've had another couple hundred thousand committed from so and so and by the way since we last spoke we just got this listing or we just got whatever yeah but yeah it's a lot of conversation so you know have your spreadsheet your crm whatever and just think right that week we are kicking off we are going to reach out to those hundred people we are going to block out you know those days and that week to just do back to back to back to back yeah so yeah it's a really it's a big thing it's like launching a big new product or well it's exactly like selling sometimes I'll have weeks where I'll be like right hotels is my target this week I'm only going to do Monday to Friday I'm only going to speak to hotels nothing else is going to come into my zone next week it might but this week it's purely a hotel week yeah and then at the end of that I'm like oh brilliant I've got actually 20 calls because I've outreached a thousand people because listen you've got to reach out to probably 2 ,000 to get sometimes one bloody call it's the same with fundraising it's a numbers game to some extent like absolutely the most nailed on perfect fit investor might just not be investing at that point yeah it might just in a similar deal they might be waiting for another business to close a few of their existing companies might be doing really badly and they've got to support them and put more capital in you cannot just be like well we know the perfect five people we're just going to reach out to them that that will not work in the vast majority of cases yeah and the number of founders i've had literally in the last week who've said we thought you know business is growing really well so we thought we could just do a couple of emails and the funding round would be all wrapped up you know i'm surprised founders have said that because surely if they're a founder they know how hard the slog is to get your product in front of like retailers and customers so the fact they think it would be easier with investors is quite weird in my opinion in these cases it's actually been not sort of first round it's been second rounds where they it's almost like you know it's like going through childbirth something you know a lot of people say that you you know it's so tough and traumatic but then your body actually makes you forget it and you go oh that wasn't so bad so a lot of founders go through go through fundraising it's really really tough but then they're like but i did it i did it and now and they're like now my business is way better we're doing five times the revenue it should be easy and they forget oh god no it's not they whatever revenue they're doing you're doing the investor always wants more or they always want whatever so you actually still even though you're nailing it even though the business is growing really well even though that founder even though sorry that investor said come back to us when you're doing those numbers and you are doing those numbers you still need to reach out to loads of them you still need to have your shit together yeah it's um it's hard it really is a huge part of being a founder and being a good founder and it's not necessarily what people sign up to do it's not like what they love some some founders love it some founders have you know just love selling so whether they're selling their product or they're selling their their business um but it's yeah it's it's tough and you need to sadly sadly you need to give it a lot of time and attention otherwise it's just not gonna it's not gonna work um we're just gonna end with a quick fire round so first things that kind of come to mind yeah one thing founders worry about that doesn't matter oh good question um oh this is not quick fire not not nothing's coming to the top of mind one thing that founders worry about that doesn't matter

1:18:00um okay this is a bit it's probably gonna be controversial but i often think founders put together loads and loads of financial forecasting and they go really into detail and there's a really early stage company this is more relevant for late stage companies and they go we've built a eight-year model you know with xyz and i think that most investors at the early stage just kind of want to know what your next two years are gonna look like also like you can't really forecast eight years out like i've been at coconut cloud for nine years and sorry seven eight years and you know when i do my forecast every year i'm like honestly look if i win another airline this would this would trump this or if i lose an airline it would also be hugely yeah but yeah I can put in like a conservative so it's really hard even in a year so how companies have an eight yeah I mean yeah you can do like a you know a compounding growth year-on-year we're going to grow by 20 % year-on-year but like and it's usually ending up at some silly number which is more than the entire market so that is actually another not quite the question but another thing that's a massive turnoff for investors is when you get often very very like green young founders send your message saying we are going to sell the business in year three for this money giving you a 7.8 times return on your money and you're like what bullshit is that like why are you even saying that like how how naive do you think I am that I'm like oh wow is that really gonna happen that way so yeah being being like incredibly prescriptive and like you know they think they're probably projecting lots of confidence and they've shown you know real kind of forward thinking but actually that kind of lack of awareness that you do all the right things and you just see what happens it is uh is a bit worrying so yeah being too too sort of cocksure about like we're gonna sell for exactly this number exactly that that year like no one who's ever worked in a business speaks like that no absolutely um best fundraising deck you've ever seen oh good question um what is a good one the one weirdly it's coming into my mind just because it was a very short deck and it was very nice design and very clear and just like this is what the market opportunity is this is what our product is done was the mother root mother root had a very good deck i just remember it's come into my head it was just like really nice imagery just explain the shift to non-alc it's delicious as well it's so good i have it every day explained like the interest in all of their ingredients and the health benefits and whatever it just it just laid it out really nicely and then was just like back we answer all these questions if you were drinking less concerned about health but they don't want to you know have apple cider vinegar and they don't want you know and we just put it all into one you know this is the moment you have it it was just yeah it was good worst deck you've ever seen i obviously don't need to name names but you can allude to us i've seen loads of awful ones loads and loads and loads i mean sometimes they are 50 slides long sometimes they're just one pages which are just you know size six font of just you know dense text i i've seen i've seen the work so they say the one thing that always comes around is i've gone through decks where i just have no idea what the product is or what it looks like or whatever and they've just forgotten to actually explain what they do um so so yeah there are some really bad decks out there but i yeah i won't yeah of course of course and one piece of advice is someone about to start their first round yeah back to that yeah get get your self ready get your deck ready get your get your sort of you know your target list ready and just approach it in a very kind of strategic um focused way and just think right as you said you know when you're targeting your hotels this is the week we're kicking it off i'm going to reach out to this many people you know my deck's ready my you know everything is is ready to go i've got samples ready to send you know for something like that like yeah obviously it's just get organized it's a small thing but like sometimes you speak to a founder and they go oh we'll get some samples out to you and then a week later they go oh sorry i never got your address let me send that to you and you know on some level you sort of think oh well maybe the investor should be responsible or for just buying the product, whereas sometimes you can't, you know, sometimes it's not for sale somewhere, but just be super proactive.

1:22:34And it's a small thing, but like pinging that out for like next day delivery and just following up and keeping the momentum. It has a lot to say for it though, because if you think about it, like, yeah, the small things do really make a big difference. Like the little bits of communication, you know, simple things where like they can really make an impact, like getting the samples out really quickly and not delaying it. And, you know, they are really, yeah. it's funny though because I've definitely been in a situation before where I've I've wanted to follow up but like you know last week I was stuck in Dubai in the middle of a war and I was really trying to get home and I had emails in my inbox that I was like I literally don't have the bandwidth but it looks really bad on me right now because I haven't got back to them in a while but like I can't physically and then I've always sent them email being like look I'm so sorry it's been like a really so sometimes there are situations that you literally can't control yeah um but yeah like Another small thing is, yeah, it's the one time in your life, probably out of everything else, where your diary management is going to be so important.

1:23:32Yeah. And I do think, you know, I see some people who just say, oh, here's my Calendly link. And I guess that works to some extent. But I would just be like. I don't like that. Be incredibly like, pick one of these times and just like follow up straight away, offer them time soon. Like, you know, get them in the diary as quickly as possible. Of course, they might cancel, reschedule, or they might say, oh, no, I'm free in two weeks. But again, coming back to this point, like you want things to all move at the same pace and things to move quickly. Do not let someone fob you off with like, oh, I'm about to go on holiday next week.

1:24:07Let's do it after that. Be like, no, let's let's do something before that. Yeah. Make the time. So I think like being incredibly proactive about getting that call in the diary or getting that meeting. Be like, you know what? I can I can come to you. Yeah. Let's let's meet where you are. Again, you will know this inside out. It's anything to do with sales. It's just like you obviously just don't take no for an answer. Absolutely not. You get that in the diary and you go and pitch them. For sure. Thank you so much for coming on Getting to Grow. It's been a really interesting talk, I think, from seeing it from like an investor point of view.

1:24:38Like I have so many founders sit where you sit that speak about raising and actually really getting under the skin of like, you know, the kind of raising journey and being an investor has been really interesting. So thank you. Cool. Thanks for having me. Thank you.