FUNDstars & FOUNDstars from NOTWICS

Jonny and James take 30 minutes, to introduce their awesome new London based VC, Volution VC and their unique approach to funding innovative Technology Scale-Ups.

They are both experienced practitioners of the Private Technology finance space and spotted a gap to fund founders in in the post Series A  / Series B space in Enterprise Software SaaS & Fintech space, with the creation of Volution VC.

Listen on here to find out more about -

Good, snappy little listen - so feel free to reach out to them direct - or contact us to connect you direct to the team - from Notwics.

Suranga Chandratillake, a General Partner at Balderton, in London, is a legend in the world of UK and European VC. So it was great to spend time with one of the biggest players in the world of late stage private Tech, as a record year of UK Tech exits and IPO's drew to a close.

Prior to Balderton, Suranga led  one of the UK Technology winners of the noughties, Blinkx. Like all great Technology players, it certainly had some ups and downs as both a private and then public Technology business. This experience was pretty formative in developing a number of the approaches Suranga applies in his role as a VC.

In this episode we discuss:

This is just a taster, so please listen and watch on, in this fascinating episode with a real leader in the world of UK late stage private Tech investing.

Enjoy and see you in 2022.

In a punchy, direct episode, we hear from Oli Hammond at Fuel Ventures, one of the fastest growing UK VC investors in the Seed space. Oli is a talented VC and has a super eye for spotting a lot of the latest Tech Gems, in the UK Early Stage space.

By means of background, Oli joined the fund from Syndicate Room, an interesting Cambridge based investor, whom Chris worked with at Bloomberg, when Oli and the SR attended a lot of the leading showcaser events Notwics delivered there.  Prior to this he cut his teeth in Corporate land, working for Svenska Handelsbanken, which determined life as a "suit" was not for him

In this episode of FUNDstars and FOUNDstars, Oli tells us about:

And many many more golden nuggets, which help explain why Fuel Ventures is becoming a winner amongst the ebullient Seed funding space in the UK.. listen and watch on ..

As it's Thanksgiving Weekend - we only thought it was right to showcase an American VC in this episode, so get ready for this episode with Maria Palma of Kindred Capital and Anthony Lyall, our in house, US team member taking centre stage.

Maria is a straight-talking, super-bright American based in London with the super edgy Kindred Capital. Kindred are a clever & successful fund, with a unique investment style and razor focus on Deep-Tech & Future Technologies.

Maria has had a varied and interesting career to date, encompassing roles @ GE, an MBA at Harvard University, a  Start-Up in Bangalore start-up and an AdTech scale-up in New York. After these roles, she turned to investing as a VC with RRE in NYC.

She's now landed at Kindred Capital at the start of the pandemic and lives in London.  She's a 100 MPH type of lady & in this 40-minute chat,  we cover a heck of a lot, including:

# Kindred Capital and their unique, successful investment style

And I'm not going to tell you everything ... so listen on for many many interesting tips for founders, views on VC, the investment future & more..

A cracking episode and Happy Thanksgiving to all our American listeners and watchers !!!

We talk today to Marc Young, a skilled artisan in the world of finance, who de-mystifies the arena of debt, an area that most founders look upon with fear, but at ADG Pref Cap, they have a perfectly sensible product and fund, specifically focused on B2B Software start-ups.

ADG itself is a diversified Asset Management company, which offers a lovely umbrella to the fund, business and regulation.  ADG are looking for:

Marc also sheds light on these areas in this 33 minute call:

Good fund - helping fill a growing niche in Europe for founders..

We really enjoyed filming this week's  FUNDstar Vod/Podcast, with the extremely affable, amusing and insightful Adam Niewinski, from leading Series B+ investor, OTB Ventures, in Warsaw.

Adam takes his time to provide context and background on how he decided venture capital was for him as it was an evolution:

Thus he created OTB Ventures in early 90's Poland, to focus on the massive changes in emergent technology opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe.

This has stood them well over the years and they hit the headlines recently, by leading one of the most successful Series B rounds in the UK, in 2021, with their investment in Fintech O/S.

When outlining the fund and how they operate - these are some of the key pearls of wisdom:

& its the best time ever to set up a Tech company in the CEE region..

George calls in from an office, well a dance studio in Manchester (his office for the day).  He's a good egg and straight-talking Northern man, originally from Sheffield who holds the keys for founders, interested in catching the eyes and ears of ACF investors. who were previously known as AngelCoFund, but re-branded in early 2021.

The fund has been a hugely successful Seed investor, adopting an approach where they co - invest alongside sector side angels that have domain knowledge of the business.

Not to give too much away from the Podcast/Vodcast, but their secret recipe has been hugely successful - with one of their investments, Gousto becoming a unicorn and clearly household name in the UK.

Other FUNDstar gems from the diamond that is George:

On the geographical angle -

On the new Technologies -

Plus several other excellent tips to help founders succeed ..

Bristol based, Spacebands is one of the few early stage Covid-19 / Tech businesses that Notwics have seen successfully navigate and grow commercially through the Pandemic,

This has been the result of their product helping Corporations successfully manage the problem of Social Distancing, through a relatively simple, hardware approach.

The Spacebands wrist device notifies users when they are too close to another user. Sounds simple, but it's very effective and as is often the case with Technology, simplicity sells.

Today, Spacebands co-founder Ronan Finnegan, takes time out of their somewhat 200 M.P.H days to tell us more about the business here, touching on:

# Life as a serial entrepreneur at a wise old age of 26 and Spacebands being the latest of many successful ventures, with exits for the others when the passion has fizzled

So in conclusion ..

We spotted RapTech many years ago as an early Seed Stage business, named BattleMe, in 2017, when they resided at the leading Telefonica backed accelerator, called Wayra.

Unusually the business was born by Alena and her brother, who through their childhood in Belarus grew a love of 80's and 90's US hip-hop which they then  combined with their technological expertise.

Consequently, the Technology and Rap Fame platform enables independent Hip-Hop and Rap artists to showcase their talents directly to the community, which, in turn has led to some artists actually getting recording contracts.

Additionally since we first met Alena, the business has scaled into becoming a major scale-up, with both a growing content and tech team of 20 people, resulting in being featured as APP of the day in 163 countries, by Apple.

Balancing this, during the chat, Alena also highlights the stresses of scaling a Technology during  the pandemic and how it's not been plain sailing:

Net/Net,

We hope the podcast provides some useful insight for other founders on how to navigate the UK an US tech ecosystem and globally grow a strong B2C brand and technology business, from the UK.....at the moment.

We love Jackie as a straight talking, go getting, no holds barred type of VC investor- a real tour de force  and this 40 minute pod shows you just why she is destined to become even more successful with her latest venture, Sandbox Studios.

Jackie provides great insight and wisdom, whilst explaining more about Sandbox and how they plan to invest globally, from the Los Angeles base.

Being in LA - Sandbox helps align Jackie's past in the world of sponsorship agencies (where she successfully exited her first business for £multi milion exit). They combine their agency expertise on one side of the business, by matching these celebrities with pre-seed, brand led VC investments.

So Jackie speaks with authority having been both a founder and investor on these areas...

1/ Current D2C Trends in brand and consumer preferences

We also skirted around her time in The Apprentice - but Jackie offered to talk about - where she was one of the greatest students of Sir Alan, not to be hired in our opinion.

However that hiring has fired her onto bigger things, including her latest book on leadership called Rule Breaker..

A super watch and listen...