FUNDstars & FOUNDstars from NOTWICS

Martina takes time out of her busy, command control centre in the Suffolk countryside to tell us about life at Featurespace, a leading UK Cybersecurity player, who recently was ranked as the 8th most important AI company in the UK, by Beauhurst.

Kjartan calls in from his Summerhouse in the wilds of Denmark, where we caught up with him on a Friday afternoon in late January. Naturally, Kjartan, or the “the white-haired wizard” of VC, was full of new year optimism, emphasising clearly on this Vodcast, that now more than ever is the best time to take the plunge and build a Tech company.

Speaking about 2021, Kjartan identifies and opens up on many key trends, ambitions and opportunities that exist in the real world for digitalisation.

We chat to the wonderful Prask, by his fire, in his very cold, 800 years old, horsehair house in the wilds of the Sussex countryside, where Prask has hunkered down in with his lovely family, but continued to lead and grow his super Scale-Up, Wi5 during the pandemic.

Prask is an excellent founder, growing his business to become a significant Scale-Up in the mobile payments “order and pay” space in the last 4 years, snagging great SME clients like Pizza Pilgrims, the ETM group and many more, in this growth. 2021 represents a year of further opportunities in the US and Europe too !

Prask also talks to us about how you have to have a brutal focus, especially when providing solutions to the SME space (like the dog and duck!). On the side of the tips, he talks about leadership, culture, managing a team remotely, all caveated around growing a data-focused business where the pandemic has revolutionised and accelerated acceptance of the Wi5 offering.

It very much is a UK Tech name to watch and tipped by NOTWICS to be on the pathway to significant success in the next 3 years !

Apologies in advance - for the commercial clang for Cubitt’s Spectacles – even-though they are my favourite bins or rims!

Richard is one of NOTWICS most revered and favourite founders, a classic entrepreneur and leading businessman, which has seen SafeToNet power into the top 20 AI Scale-Ups in the UK. Richard clearly shows his passion and energy about setting up SafeToNet and the strong social purpose he feels about protecting Children-on-line.

One of the world’s biggest problems is wanting to be liked online and ascertaining as many likes as possible! Parental Controls are not the solution but a more holistic approach, provided by the behavioural analytics / Deep-Tech contextualised approach that SafeToNet offers, is. Hear more about how they do this in this fascinating overview !!

We also discuss how the Pandemic has accelerated the need for their application’s agnostic offering & the strong adoption and successes, of one of the leading AI Scale-Ups in the UK.

Richard also distils a few gems on raising money and the need not to do investment rounds, taking every meeting, managing exuberance, managing Alexa and the Connected Home, digging holes and refilling them, Chelsea Football Club and finally his new found love of facial hair.

A really great deep-dive!!

Kathy talks about Bloomberg, her time at Microsoft, and her employer Downing Ventures, where she is fast becoming one of the up and coming stars of the UK VC scene.

# How does Downing work / Invest / interact with Founders / verticals and current focus.. it’s a big cahoona 76 investments and 140 people fund, looking at 5 companies a day.

She’s a good egg who loves her Job and hangs out with VC’s on Saturdays, but is a keen Long boarder

Note: With apologies for the product placement for Nike, Haribo, Bloomberg and Instagram. Where you can follow us at clowe52 rather than clowe55 !

Chris Lowe of NOTWICS and Anthony Lyall of Lyall Ventures bring you the FUNDstar and FOUNDstar podcast. In this quick episode, we explain a little bit about ourselves, and what you can expect from the podcast.