VIB : Very Important Business

The first thing Dan Bowyer tells most founders who come through his door? Don't raise from me.

Dan is a Partner and Co-Founder of SuperSeed, a £50 million UK VC fund backing technical founders - and a four-times exited entrepreneur who has sat on both sides of the table. He is uncomfortably honest about the model he runs. "VCs don't want to have that conversation," he says. "We will lie to your face."

Carl and Emily get into what VC actually gives founders beyond the cash, why the moat has shifted from tech to data and distribution (and why you still need the money to capture it), and what a 100X return founder actually looks like. Hint: Dan has a phrase for it. "Charming, disagreeable and determined."

They also get into the female founder funding gap - where Dan's take on the 2% stat is more nuanced, and more provocative, than you'd expect.

Plus: Dan takes on the "Which Is More Likely?" risk challenge - testing whether a seasoned VC can read statistical odds as well as the job title suggests. He gets one spectacularly wrong.

And Founder Diaries, listener stories, and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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Links from this episode

www.superseed.com

Related Keywords

business podcast, founders, entrepreneurship, startup, UK business, CEO, investor, entrepreneur interviews, leadership, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement, Technology, venture capital, VC, startup funding, fundraising, seed funding, physical AI, SuperSeed, female founders, bootstrapping

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How do you find investors for your business, then pitch, raise and ultimately close a round of capital? What should go in your deck? What are the key mistakes to avoid?

Every founder knows the fundraise is brutal. Forty no's in a row. Decks rewritten on request. And the VCs want a chart going straight up and to the right - while claiming that chart means nothing.

Carl and Emily are joined by Nick Katz - exited founder and fundraising advisor who runs RAISE, a consultancy helping founders close their rounds - for practical tips on the full arc from first outreach to closed deal.

They dig into Nick's "three layers of yes" - a cold LinkedIn strategy for getting angels interested before you've even asked for a meeting. Why warm intros waste more time than most founders realise. And how to use DocSend analytics to see exactly which slide is killing your pitch - then fix it.

Plus: what do you actually do about the flywheel problem - when nobody wants to commit until someone else does first? Nick shares the "always be half committed" approach, and how to make your round feel further along without crossing any lines.

Also: Nick accidentally sends a cold outreach sequence to a close investor friend. It doesn't go well.

Can Nick spot the real pitch deck lines from the ones we completely made up in Pitchin' or Fiction? WeWork's actual mission statement is in there. Plus Founder Diaries, your listener pitch disasters, and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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Links from this episode

https://nickkatz.com

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What does a genuinely strong company culture look like - and how do you know if yours is working?

Carl and Emily are joined by Brett Putter - founder of CultureGene and author of Culture Decks Decoded, to get into the culture challenge every growing company faces.

They dig into what Uber's "toe-stepping" value reveals about how a startup culture can become its own undoing when it fails to adapt. Why Brian Armstrong paid 20% of Coinbase's staff to walk away voluntarily. And why most founders haven't thought about company culture for their AI agents - but probably should. And the whole thing was recorded live at a founder retreat in rural Turkey, complete with an uninvited cockerel.

Is there such a thing as a good or bad culture? Brett says no - only strong or weak. We put it to the test with a round of Good Culture or Bad Culture: real office scenarios, real verdicts, and the final ruling on swearing in meetings.

Plus: Carl shares the story of explaining a founder retreat to his wife with the word "seminar" - while his holiday photos synced quietly to the family iPad.

Your listener stories, and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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KEYWORDS

business podcast, founders, entrepreneurship, startup, UK business, CEO, investor, entrepreneur interviews, leadership, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement, Technology, company culture, culture building, hiring, team management, company values, remote work culture

Links from this episode

https://www.culturegene.ai

Sound effects used in this episode:

Ambience nature Australia 05 by busabx -- https://freesound.org/s/715252/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

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"Hey, let's 'circle back' on this." You already know what that really means - and the chances of you ever discussing it again, let alone 'circling back' are pretty slim.

Carl and Emily are joined by Scarlett McCabe - CEO of Debate Mate Training, a UK company teaching people to speak well, think on their feet and, crucially, disagree better - to get into the communication crisis every founder can see but few know how to fix.

They dig into: why post-merger teams fall apart before they've even started working together, why conflict avoidance is more expensive than the difficult conversation it's avoiding, and how to tell an employee they have a body odour problem - without it being the last conversation you ever have with them.

Plus: Carl and Emily put Scarlett to the test as they play "What do you mean?" - can they get a communication expert to say, on air, what the phrases your team uses every day actually mean?

Plus: Emily on how to run a productive board meeting (and make sure your board members actually read the pack first), Carl on finding fractional work without accidentally becoming the product. Linda Du's "One Thing" on AI and your headcount assumptions. Your listener war stories from the communications trenches. And the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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What does a genuinely agentic marketing operation look like in practice - and can a founder actually build one that runs itself?

Linda Du, Founder and CEO of Moola, has built it. A full content and distribution pipeline - blog posts written, creatives built, posts scheduled across every channel, ad spend tracked and attribution mapped - running on a weekly loop, almost entirely without her having to step in. And it works.

Carl and Emily are joined by Linda to find out exactly how the pipeline is architected, what it took to get there, and whether any of it is replicable for the rest of us.

They dig into: why their TikTok agent is now generating AI videos of a Nicki Minaj GIF telling people to sort their pensions out (and why the engagement is real), the question of whether AI is actually coming for salespeople - Linda has a clear view on where the line is - and what happens when Reddit's human moderators start hunting your AI-generated posts. Hint: apparently X gave up that fight entirely.

And we play 'Machine-made or human'? Carl has also made an advert for Moola. He wants to know if Linda - AI marketing expert - can spot whether it's human or machine-made. She can. And her reason is not flattering.

Plus your listener stories and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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At some point, every founder gets the question: have you thought about getting a coach? But is coaching the same as therapy? And what happens when you go into it as a client - and come out so transformed that you retrain as one yourself?

Carl and Emily are joined by Richard Titus - serial entrepreneur and certified executive coach, now CEO of Kimono, an AI identity platform - to get into the coaching question every founder eventually faces.

Richard shares what it felt like to be told he was a "terrible coach" by a (very drunk) former Samsung colleague - and why that single piece of feedback sent him to the Hudson Institute, where he trained and spent nearly a decade coaching founders. They dig into the coaching-versus-therapy spectrum, whether AI can ever replace a human coach ("a sycophantic sociopath," he says), and the surprisingly common coaching outcome: the answer that wasn't what anyone expected.

Plus we put Richard to the test with our "Inspiration or Imagination" quiz. Listener stories, Founder Diaries from Carl and Emily - including Carl's gut-punch first customer exit. And the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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Keywords: business podcast, founders, entrepreneurship, startup, UK business, CEO, entrepreneur interviews, leadership, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement, Technology, coaching, executive coaching, founder coaching, therapy, AI coaching, personal development

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Nineteen banks said no. Sahar Hashemi's perseverance answered every one of them - and Coffee Republic opened anyway. Then came 108 stores, a London Stock Exchange listing, and an OBE.

Carl and Emily are joined by Sahar Hashemi OBE - serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Coffee Republic and founder of Buy Women Built - to get into what actually separates the founders who keep going from the ones who preemptively stop.

Sahar's rejections didn't break her - they fed her. She also reveals the moment she eventually stopped on a different business entirely, and what made that call feel different.

Plus the Rejection Counting Quiz: did J.K. Rowling, Brian Chesky and the founder of Canva collect more knockbacks than Sahar - or fewer? One of those answers will surprise you.

Your listener stories: Ian, who got a meeting at a property company by emailing every employee about a conference he'd never attended. And Lara, who sent a kitchen sink in the post with the note "I've tried everything except this."

Emily on Bluebella's Fully Remote August in Founder Diaries - and whether trusting a team to work from anywhere is brave leadership or just hoping nobody's Zooming from a sunlounger. Carl on the big stones in the jar, and his battle with his love of the next shiny thing. Plus the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

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We uncover a breathtaking example of bootstrapping: can a two-person team - no investors, no wider team - build a real enterprise business? What happens when you turn down every VC cold call?

Carl and Emily are joined by Daniel van Binsbergen - co-founder of Draftpilot, an AI-powered contract review tool built for law firms - to find out how far a lean founding team can go in the age of AI.

They dig into why Daniel turned down every VC meeting in year one, how his bootstrapped business now out-earns his previous Series A-backed company, and how to out-market competitors with $50 million budgets.

Back in the studio, Emily reveals what happened the week both her main advertising platforms went dark at once - and what she learned about organic traffic from being forced off them. And Carl shares his post-summer Founder Diary: the ultimate e-ink tech nerd project.

And also... we put Daniel through "How Tight Are You?" - a series of bootstrapper dilemmas from laptop upgrades to flights via Iceland. And Founder Fails: former guest Mark McDermott admits how he said ‘no’ to buying shares in a tech company that proved to be a costly mistake…

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By the time you hear this, Carl and Emily are (hopefully) on a beach somewhere with a cocktail in hand. But are they actually switched off?

In this second holiday break episode, they get honest about the reality of taking time off as a founder — and whether a true disconnect is even possible. Emily talks about needing a festival with no phone signal to actually stop checking in. Carl explores the three-week neuro pattern theory: apparently, your brain never fully shifts into a different frequency unless you take a proper break — which, as a founder, you probably never do.

There are also some brilliant rules from the founders in their lives: the friend who insists any call must first go through his wife; and the infamous welcome-to-the-team message from someone who once worked for Simon Cowell, who helpfully reminded new starters that his time is worth approximately £100k per minute.

All of that, plus a tease of what is coming in the next few eps: Daniel Van Binsbergen on bootstrapping a thriving business from limited resources, Sahar Hashemi OBE on perseverance and entrepreneurial tenacity, and Nick Katz with lessons on how to fundraise. We are back from September 1st.

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Carl and Emily are heading off for the summer - no guest interviews this week - but there's just enough time for Founder Diaries before they go.

Carl managed to embarrass himself on a sales call - by asking a series of confident questions about a very interesting book he'd spotted in their video call background. There was just one problem with the book..

Emily spent two to three days locked in a room reviewing Bluebella collections and loved getting back to the creative core of the business. But it raised an interesting discussion around context-switching as a founder.

Plus - a first listen at what's coming in September: bootstrapping legend Daniel van Binsbergen, AI agent burnout, and the context-switching epidemic nobody is talking about yet.

All delivered with the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.

Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show

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