Angel Insights | Your guide to angel investing

Most startups don’t fail because the product is bad. They fail because nobody can sell it.

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Emma Maslen, CEO of sales consultancy inspir’em and an angel investor with Angel Academe. After a career selling for IBM, SAP and Concur, Emma now works with everyone from early-stage startups to Snowflake and Salesforce. She explains how she tests a startup’s ability to sell before she invests.

We cover why founders must stop acting as the company’s best salesperson, the “Book a demo” trap and why buyers are liars, the two questions that reveal whether a founder has humility, why stalled growth usually means customer meetings have fallen off a cliff, and why replacing junior sales roles with AI could break the sales talent ladder. Emma also tackles whether male and female founders get asked the same questions, and names the one number every founder should be able to quote cold.

Emma is a member of the Angel Academe network. SyndicateRoom works with Angel Academe on its EIS funds.

If you enjoyed the episode, please like, subscribe and leave a comment: what number would you ask a founder to quote cold?

In this episode:

Tom Britton

Emma Maslen
New to early-stage investing? Learn how the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme works.

Here's a fact we didn't expect: that coffee you're holding cuts blood flow to your brain by around 30%. Today's guest has built technology that can see it happening, and the bigger prize is using it to show whether the new wave of Alzheimer's drugs is working for each patient.

On today's episode, we're joined by Thomas Kirk, co-founder and CEO of Quantified Imaging. Thomas went from building ventilators with Oxford and Smith & Nephew at the start of COVID, to a free vaccination-planning tool used by around half of UK GPs, to founding a company around ASL MRI: a scan that measures blood flow in the brain and costs a fraction of a PET scan. We get into why dementia drugs that only slow decline by 30% on average need a better way of tracking who's responding, why data rather than regulation is the biggest barrier to growth, the role of the University of Nottingham, and where the technology goes next, from GLP-1 obesity drugs to psychiatry.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment.

To learn more about what we're doing at SyndicateRoom, head to syndicateroom.com or follow Tom Britton on LinkedIn.

Could the first wave of AI turn out to be a capital destruction event? On today's episode we're joined by Oli Hammond, Partner at Fuel Ventures, where he leads seed rounds of £1–2 million into B2B companies — and, full disclosure, a SyndicateRoom alumnus who started his career with us before going on to bigger things.

Oli believes AI will create enormous value — for a very small number of firms — while most startups in the application layer get swallowed by the very platforms they're built on. We dig into why he thinks 99% of the money chasing AI will lose, why regulated markets may be the last place software can still build a moat, and why founder–market fit misses the thing that matters most: whether a founder can deliver bad news early. Plus how a lead investor sells his money to the best founders, what Fuel's 1,800-strong investor network does for a portfolio company, and the top rule on Oli's list of eight — "mediocre people with unique ideas don't work."

Enjoy the episode? Please like, subscribe and tell your friends, and leave a comment or question; we'll do our best to reply.

Follow Oli on LinkedIn, find Fuel Ventures at fuel.ventures, and see what we're doing at SyndicateRoom at syndicateroom.com

Learn about the Enterprise Investment Scheme.

The UK is set to spend ~£15bn upgrading 5 million homes by 2030 — but much of the insulation we've already paid for is failing, and the way we survey buildings hasn't really changed in 30 years.

Lucy Lyons is fixing that. Her company, Kestrix, flies thermal imaging drones over buildings to map exactly where heat is escaping — and has already covered around 12,000 homes.

In this episode, Tom and Lucy get into:

• Why finding the right co-founder matters more than the idea
• What's actually broken about EPCs — and what replaces them
• How £15bn of government retrofit money could be spent far better
• Why Kestrix's thermal dataset is a moat that compounds in the age of AI
• The vision: becoming the building-surveying company of the future

A must-listen for anyone interested in climate tech, the built environment, and early-stage EIS investing.

Follow Lucy on LinkedIn

Follow Tom on LinkedInTo see more about the Google of heat loss, visit the Kestrix website

To explore early-stage investing, visit SyndicateRoom.

How does someone go from Pig Farmer, to Actuary, to successfully exited Entrepreneur, and now top 1% Angel Investor?

I sat down with Alister Esam to find out and to unpack the hard-won investing framework behind his success and the portfolio companies he backs.

Tune in as Alister explains why he ignores the hype, which metrics matter at the seed stage, and how he's now opening his deal flow to co-investors through his new venture, Angel6. Whether you're writing your first angel cheque or your fiftieth, this conversation is packed with actionable signals.

In This Episode We Cover:

Why Alister refuses to back pre-revenue startups — and the failed first investment that taught him that lesson

The exact metrics sweet spot he targets: £100–400K ARR, sub-£7M valuation, and explosive growth

How bootstrapping eShare to a 50% EBITDA margin shaped his empathy (and bluntness) as an investor

The "head in the sand" problem founders face — and what a good shake actually looks like

Why a billion-pound TAM can be a red flag, not a green light

Defensibility beyond IP: domain knowledge moats and niche advantages

How Angel6 lets everyday investors co-invest alongside a proven angel at zero cost

About Alister Esam

Alister Esam grew up on a pig farm in the UK, where he learned the value of hard work and iterative process improvement — themes he later explored in his book The Dirty Word. After a career as an actuary, he co-founded eShare, a SaaS governance portal he bootstrapped to profitability and ran for 14 years before exiting in 2018. He has since built a portfolio of 30+ angel investments and is now ranked in the top 1% of UK angel investors. His latest venture, Angel6, allows other investors to co-invest alongside him at no cost.

While the last decade of FinTech made accessing credit as easy as a single swipe, the technology behind repaying that debt remained stuck in the dark ages of rigid direct debits and impersonal collections. With UK unsecured consumer debt hitting a staggering £237 billion—averaging £4,400 per adult—the "repayment gap" represents one of the largest untapped opportunities in financial services.

In this episode, Tom Britton sits down with Hannah Baynham, CEO and Co-founder of HaBO Money. A veteran of the early "Starling Bank" revolution, Hannah is now applying that same obsessive focus on UX and digital innovation to the debt sector.

We dive into why "bad debt" is often a failure of design rather than affordability, and how HaBO’s "save-as-you-repay" model aligns perfectly with the FCA’s rigorous new Consumer Duty standards.

Key insights from this episode:

• The Design Failure: Why 60% of people seeking debt support are actually employed and have positive budgets, but lack the digital tools to manage fluctuating income.

• The Business Case for Empathy: How HaBO creates a win-win by charging lenders for successful repayments while building borrower resilience.

• Regulatory Tailwinds: Why the shift toward Consumer Duty is making HaBO’s infrastructure a "must-have" for modern lenders.

• The Million-Person Mission: Hannah’s five-year vision to move a million people from debt into sustainable savings.

Featured Quote:

"All of this effort has gone into making the access to credit so easy, digital, and on your phone, but the repayment experience has been totally neglected. It's still the same as it was 10 years ago. We are changing that." — Hannah Baynham

About the Guest:Hannah Baynham is the CEO of haboo money. Her career spans the forefront of the UK FinTech revolution at Starling Bank to management consulting for global financial institutions. She is now focused on building the infrastructure for a more resilient financial future.

Connect with Angel Insights:

• Learn more about the SyndicateRoom portfolio: syndicateroom.com

• Follow Tom Britton on LinkedIn: Tom Britton

• Explore HaBO Money: haboomoney.com

In this episode, SyndicateRoom Co-founder Tom Britton sits down with Colin Van Ostern, the incoming Head of UK and EMEA for Alumni Ventures, to discuss the fundamental shift toward a multi-polar venture capital landscape.

While much of the media narrative has focused on a "funding winter," the ground-level reality tells a different story. As one of the world’s most active venture firms with over 1,400 portfolio companies, Alumni Ventures is doubling down on the UK as a global "centre of gravity" for innovation.

Listen as we cover:

• The Multi-Polar Shift: Why the next generation of category-defining companies is increasingly emerging outside of Silicon Valley.

• Jobs-to-Be-Done in VC: Applying disruptive innovation theory to the venture model itself.

• The 2026 Outlook: Why liquidity is returning to the market through strategic M&A and a revitalised IPO pipeline.

• Network-Powered Investing: How a community of 600,000 supporters creates a superior "bridge" for sophisticated investors.

Helpful Links:

• Build a Diversified Portfolio: Learn how our data-driven engine co-invests with the UK's top-performing angels at syndicateroom.com/access-eis

• Investor Guides: Read our latest analysis on the "Power Law" and startup returns at syndicateroom.com/learn

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.

“We are looking for one thing: people who want to start a business in climate, and want to start it now.”

In this episode of Angel Insights, host Tom Britton sits down with Michael Langguth, Founding Partner of Carbon 13, the venture builder for the climate emergency.

While much of the climate conversation focuses on consumer habits, Michael and his team are focused on the "hard stuff": the industrial transformation required to mitigate 400 million tonnes of CO2e of global emissions.

Michael shares his journey from a £20m exit in mobile commerce to building a venture engine in Cambridge and Berlin that has already launched over 300 companies. We dive into why the average age of a Carbon 13 founder is 37, the death of the "green premium", and how the UK’s tax ecosystem provides a global edge for deep-tech innovation.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The "green discount": Why the most investable climate plays today are cheaper and more efficient than fossil-fuel incumbents.

• The venture builder model: How Carbon 13 vets 2,000 applicants a year to find the postdocs and serial entrepreneurs capable of engineering a gigaton-scale future.

• Strategic geography: How Carbon 13 bridges the gap between the UK’s early-stage capital and Germany’s industrial Mittelstand.

• The role of tax incentives: Why schemes like the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) make the UK the world’s best laboratory for high-risk, high-impact deep tech.

Find out more:

• Explore the Carbon 13 investment opportunity on SyndicateRoom.

• Follow Michael Langguth on LinkedIn for insights into the European climate-tech ecosystem.

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.

For more insights into the world of angel investing, subscribe to Angel Insights on Spotify and visit www.syndicateroom.com.

Join Tom Britton and Jessi Baker, MBE (Founder & Chair of Provenance), as they break down the brutal choices founders must make to build a resilient, market-leading B2B SaaS company.

In this episode, Jessi discusses:

• Strategic Flexibility: Why she made the critical decision to cut profitable consulting services to focus solely on scalable SaaS and the lessons learned from being an early blockchain pioneer on Ethereum.

  
  

• The VC Shift: Her perspective on why the current investment climate prioritizes profitability and proven revenue models over the "growth at all costs" mentality.

  
  

• The AI Moat: How Provenance is using AI to eradicate greenwashing and establish itself as the canonical, trustworthy data source for sustainability claims, a crucial layer for the future of LLMs.

  
  

• The Power of Diversity: The importance of building a diverse cap table and her experience with the Angel Academy network.

  
  

This episode is essential listening for high net worth and sophisticated investors looking for insight into strategic scaling and market-defying pivots.

Interested in backing the next generation of UK innovators? Learn more about Angel Investing and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS)

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. ⁠Take 2 mins to learn more⁠.

Heating and cooling drive 40% of all energy-related CO2 emissions, yet 60% of that energy is wasted by bad insulation. Is there a better way?

We got the chance to speak with Theresa Hoffmann, founder of Nanoplume, a UK startup that has developed a revolutionary bio-aerogel 3x more insulating and 60% thinner than traditional materials. The technology is so non-toxic that she famously eats it during presentations.

Listen to learn how this deep-tech solution, based on NASA tech but 75% cheaper than existing aerogels, is targeting the $34 billion cold chain market before disrupting building insulation, and why it represents a massive opportunity for early-stage investors.

Learn more about ⁠SEIS tax reliefs⁠.

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. ⁠Take 2 mins to learn more⁠.