FounderTech Decoded

Adam French | Partner @ Houghton Street Ventures | What If Your First Round Is Your Final Round?

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

Judy Leung | Founder of @ Sweqlink | Using Sweat Equity To Incentivise Fractional Talent

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/

Marcus Exall | Early Stage Angel Investor & Co-Founder of Up And To The Right | Practising The Art of the Antithesis

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/ 

Joe Lewin | CEO @ Foundy.com | Emerging To Your Point Of Acquisition

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!

FounderTech Decoded | The FounderTech Collective - Live 15th May 2023

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

Tom Lawrence | Founder @ MVPR | Unlocking The Potential and Possibilities of Content Intelligence

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

Gareth Hawkins | FounderTech Investor Currently Launching @ AngelSyndicate.uk | Why Coordinating Liquidity In The Angel Community Is Now Key To Its Ongoing Evolution

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/

Mary Lin @ Co-Founder of Odin | Agile Investing As A Vote In Creating The Future You Wish To Inhabit

In this episode of the FounderTech Decoded podcast we talk to Mary Lin, Co-Founder and CEO of pioneering alternative investment platform Odin. We discuss:
Referrals vs. Warm Intros:Why referrals will always be a key source of deal flow for investors and how technology can alleviate some of the issues related to that.
Gender, Diversity and Impact in tech.As a founder who typically steers clear of terms like “diversity” and “impact”, Mary shares her views however on how she thinks about and frames them, particularly around gender differences and improving participation in the venture ecosystem
 
Lowering the BarriersFinally, we talk about how companies like Odin are lowering the barriers to entry for both founders and investors to build and invest in companies. Mary shares why she thinks this is crucial if we are to create a future that is aligned with society's needs.
 
Connect with Mary
> www.joinodin.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-yizhi-lin/ 
> https://blog.joinodin.com/p/progress

Serkan Ferah | Founder @ PitchSpace | The Increasing Role of Narrative Design in Pitch Dynamics

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

Hattie Willis | Co-Founder @ IfWeRaise, Host @ Not My First Guess podcast, Founder @ GuessWorks | How To Challenge The Odds When They’re Stacked Against You

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