Blog Archives

Startup essentials: Why you need a robust shareholder and founder agreement

In our latest Startup essentials article, we discuss the importance of having a robust shareholder and founder agreement in place. With founder fall outs all too common, Helen Goldberg, COO at our partner Legal Edge gives you the lowdown on what needs to be covered in this essential agreement.

You’re busy building and growing a business, so shareholder and founder agreements are often deprioritised, forgotten or overlooked while you’re deep in product development or GTM strategy. While you may opt for a verbal agreement and trust in long-term commitment, it is essential to have formal agreements in place when working with co-founders and investors. read more

Startup Essentials: Understanding Your Buyer Persona: A Startup’s Secret Weapon in the Digital Age

AIN recently collaborated with our partner HubSpot for Startups to deliver a webinar focusing on Understanding Your Buyer Persona. As part of our Startup Essentials series, we give you the lowdown.

In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape, startups face a constant struggle: cutting through the noise and reaching the right customers. In this world buyer personas are a powerful tool. But what exactly are they, and why are they so crucial for a startup’s success?

Buyer Personas: Demystifying Your Ideal Customer read more

Dragon Slayer: how to get funded faster with less time-wasting and pain

A recent Angel Investment Network webinar heard from investment experts Dan Kirby from Founders Are Mental and Tom Moore from Tucker Capital on how to get funded faster with less time-wasting and pain.

One of the key take outs was that investors aren’t just looking for a promising product or service – they’re looking for the right leader. Your “unfair advantage” is that unique combination of skills, experience, or background that makes you the perfect person to spearhead your startup’s mission. read more

Startup essentials: How to structure your cap table

Over the next few months, with the assistance of our expert partners, we will explore the essential factors that all startups seeking funding need to consider. This will include organising your finances, conducting due diligence, and implementing growth hacking strategies.

First up, Guy Kaufman, Startup Lead at Vestd. He gives us the lowdown on understanding cap tables, a visual representation of your company’s ownership that becomes more crucial and complicated as your startup grows.

New businesses pop up every day, many with their eyes on the prize of a lucrative exit. Even in uncertain economic times, we’ve seen companies like Loom, Uber, and Airbnb rise to the top. read more

Founder mental health: Interview with Dan Kirby

In the latest article in our Founder Mental Health series, AIN sits down with seasoned entrepreneur Dan Kirby, the exited founder of renowned digital agency The Tech Dept, and host of the widely acclaimed business podcast, “Honey I Blew Up the Business.”

Dan is the founder of the new wellness program ‘Founders Are Mental’ and in this revealing and honest interview he talks to AIN about the intricacies of his entrepreneurial path — from immense success to burnout to now finding new balance and prioritising mental health. read more

An Introduction to Litigation Funding

Out investment series continues with an exploration of litigation funding, with a guest post from Sophie Liu at Axia Funding:

AxiaFunder is an online litigation funding platform that connects investors with pre-vetted commercial litigation opportunities that we believe have the potential to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns. We are specifically targeting cases on the lower end of the legal market which, in our view, has been underserved by existing funders. read more

Emerging from the pandemic – Startup sentiment in the UK and USA

Angel Investment Network, the world’s largest angel investment platform, surveyed the views of startups in the USA and UK to see how they have responded more than a year and a half after the pandemic first hit. This involved interviews with 1,205 startups in the USA and 667 in the UK. The key findings in the overall report we have published are:

1) Confidence returning
Similar numbers in both territories are now positive about the next 12 months. In the USA 76% of respondents are now confident about the next year, with 72% confident in the UK. However more US startups are very optimistic about the future, 52% against 42% in the UK. This could of course be down to a naturally more upbeat mindset but the research also reveals some particular challenges in the UK – for example the impact of Brexit. Meanwhile 70% of respondents in the USA are confident about the country retaining its status as a ‘startup hub’, versus 65% in the UK. read more

#BehindTheRaise with Euclideon Holographics

Derek Van Tonder shares the story of Euclideon Holographics and the key learnings from taking it through multiple rounds of funding, including the importance of benchmarking your company for investors and building meaningful relationships:

Tell us about what got you into start ups:

Euclideon Holographics was founded because we tried out traditional Virtual Reality helmets and we really didn’t like them – we hated the cord, the screens in front of our eyes were awful because we couldn’t see anything, and most importantly, they gave us motion sickness. So we decided to solve that problem by removing the screens in front of your eyes and moving them onto the walls around you to solve all these problems with VR, and Euclideon Holographics was born. read more

Majority of US startups very optimistic about the next 12 months

A majority of US startups (52%) are now ‘very optimistic’ about the next 12 months, despite 62% seeing business growth negatively impacted by the pandemic. This was a key finding of a new study of US startup sentiment 18 months after the start of the pandemic, by Angel Investment Network (AIN). The study of 1,205 US based startups found 76% expressed optimism overall with 19% quite optimistic and 52% very optimistic, versus just 24% who were pessimistic. It followed on from a similar survey we conducted of UK startup sentiment last month. read more

Behind the Raise with eleXsys Energy

Richard Romanowski is co-founder and Executive Director of eleXsys Energy. eleXsys has developed a unique, international award-winning, enabling technology that will drive the transition of global energy grids to a clean energy future.

Tell us about eleXsys and how you came up with the idea?
My co-founder, Dr. Bevan Holcombe, was a senior engineer at an Australian distribution utility with 30 years’ experience and was working on how to decarbonise the local suburban grid. I was a cleantech angel investor, looking for fabulous ideas. read more

Matching Diverse Talent With Fast Growing Startups

At Angel Investment Network, we strive to partner with pioneering organisations that support startups in ecosystems around the world, Silicon Roundabout have a mission to help get more young people into work at exciting startups, whilst helping unblocking some of the challenges in hiring that startups incur.

Franceso Perticariari, Managing Partner of Silicon Partner Ventures explains more in the guest blog post below:

At Silicon Roundabout we are working with the UK Government to help youngsters from all backgrounds and who are eager to break into the startup industry to get their feet off the ground and venture into their dream career. read more

#SixtySecond StartUp with Telbee

Nicholas Phair shares why he thinks online voice messaging is the future in this month’s #SixtySecondStartUp.

What does your company do?

Online voice messaging. We help businesses build trust with their audiences using the most powerful tool they have… their voices. Our online voice recorders can be added to websites, workflows, social media and more, and used in online and offline campaigns to hear from customers, followers and fans and engage in two way asynchronous voice conversations.

Why did you set up this company?

To go back to basics. Voice has always communicated far more than typed text alone – emotion, emphasis, connection – and we saw an opportunity to bring the same ease and utility of voice messaging found in consumer apps such as WhatsApp and FB Messenger to help businesses better engage with their own customers.

How did you get your first customer?

By asking them to pay! It seems like an obvious point but it’s a lot harder than you think. Believing in your product means putting a price tag on it, and asking people to pay. Thankfully our first customer, a prominent podcaster in the US, saw the value immediately. read more

FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY

The US Government recently made a headline-grabbing commitment to a 50% reduction in carbon emissions, while the UK committed to an even steeper 78% carbon reduction by 2035. So the question on everyones’ lips is how to achieve this while ensuring economic growth continues? The solution to marrying a low carbon future with answering our continuing energy needs lies in innovation and the ideas of many brilliant startups now seeking funding.

For our latest in depth focus article, Olivia Sibony, CEO of SeedTribe takes a look at sustainability and the development of startups that have the power to help save the planet. Olivia has recently been recruited by the Government to advise on the impact-focused startups we should be encouraging to set up in the UK. read more

Research & Development Relief: An Overview for Startups

In this guest blog, James Taylor, Director at Dragon Argent, shares his top tips of how start ups can claim R&D tax credits, a useful relief or rebate from HMRC. Here are the key things that you need to know:

Many new businesses spend the first season of their existence researching and developing a concept or a prototype. They then prove their product market fit, secure their first customers and start generating revenue. What some founders don’t realise however, is that any project which advances the fields of science or technology are eligible for tax relief, through its annual corporation tax return. read more

Start-up Buzz

If there is one positive from the pandemic, it has been the sheer volume of innovation and exciting businesses that are forming and growing as a result, as markets shift and new trends emerge.

Each month we’ll select a few start-ups that we see as particularly exciting and worth a further look. Here are some of the current highlights:

Zero Carbon Farms

Farming needs to evolve. Urbanization, population growth and climate change demand it.

Food supply challenges are well documented – Covid-19 has seen empty supermarket shelves and highlighted the need for secure supply chains, awareness of the damage of pesticides and GMO crops is growing, and extreme weather events are making food production more unreliable. read more

Coffee on Purpose with Liv Sibony

Liv Sibony, CEO of SeedTribe and Head of Impact at Angel Investment, recently spoke on the Coffees on Purpose podcast about how start-ups can marry profit with purpose, what we need to do to support the next generation of start-ups to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and why female entrepreneurs are still underrepresented in this area.

From sharing with us some of the most exciting start-ups in the space, like Pinpoint, who are using big data and hundreds of thousands of blood samples to help detect early signs of cancer, to deconstructing some of the structural imbalances in the current investment space, Liv gives a comprehensive overview of the impact space, and what’s on the horizon. read more

Sector Focus: EdTech market

“COVID has pulled the transition to digital learning forward by at least 5 years.” These were the words of David Sherwood, CEO and co-founder of EdTech startup BibliU, commenting on the remarkable development of the EdTech market. In our recent look at the data from the platform, it was revealed to be one of the fastest growing sectors for investor interest. Up 56% since the start of the pandemic. AIN’s Sam Louis takes a closer look at the EdTech sector and why it is getting top marks from investors. read more

#Behindtheraise with aisle 3

We spoke to aisle 3 co-founder and CEO Thomas J. Vosper about his business revolutionising the online shopping experience. He talks to us about bouncing back from redundancy, what he learnt from pitching to investors and his passion for ensuring we have #nomoretabs.

Tell us about aisle 3?
Like most people I find it super easy to find a car insurance provider, book a hotel in seconds or find availability on a flight based on what matters to me. So why is it so hard to find out all of my buying options for a set of wireless headphones? I am not alone in having to open endless tabs across multiple retailers and marketplaces when I shop online. read more

Sector focus: Medtech market

This is the first of our new series focusing on sectors gaining interest and investment from angel investors. You can see my review here to get more details. This month we take a look at the rapidly growing medtech market. This is a sector that has been thrust into the spotlight this year due to COVID and a worldwide focus on healthcare. More startups than ever are winning investment and developing solutions to mankind’s most serious problems. In fact it has seen the fastest growth in keyword searches from our investor database. AIN’s Ed Stephens takes a deeper look. read more

Agile Funding can help you raise fast

We are delighted to welcome back Adam Blair, CCO at SeedLegals, for his second guest blog as part of our legal mini-series for start ups:

When funding goes Agile

In our first article we discussed some of the different fundraising methods available to you as a founder, and the impact and benefits of the SEIS / EIS schemes. See How to close your funding round before the end of 2020 if you missed it or need a reminder…

This month we delve deeper into the world of agile fundraising and share some practical advice that can help you raise money for your business before the end of the year. read more