Insights.
What 150+ funding rounds, £130M raised alongside founders and sixteen years of building businesses have taught Jamie about raising money, pitching investors and running a business under pressure.
Fundraising.
9 articles
Why raising pre-seed funding is harder than everPre-seed used to be about selling a vision. Now investors want proof, not promises. What has changed and how founders can adapt to win the round.→An angel investor outreach cheat sheet, with an AI promptTen questions to answer about your business, then an AI prompt that turns the answers into investor connection requests, cold emails and messages.→Is SEIS working? Why I'd give founders a basic income insteadSEIS mainly helps founders who already have networks and money. Why I think a £30,000 basic income for first-year founders would do more for UK startups.→Why startup fundraising is broken for early stage foundersFees, slow raises, bias and friends and family left with the bill: twelve reasons early stage fundraising is broken, from 150+ rounds of experience.→Why your investor outreach isn't workingA real exchange from an investor inbox shows why so many investors are stuck in 'no mode', and why an idea is not a startup you can raise for.→Fundraising momentum: what it is and how to build itMomentum makes or breaks a fundraising round. How to build it from two things: the mass of your startup and the velocity of its progress.→How to value your startup: pre-money valuation made simpleHow do I value my company fairly? Pre-money valuation explained, two simple ways to calculate it, and why a high valuation can come back to bite you.→The odds of raising investment, and why it's a numbers gameVCs see 5,000+ deals a year and invest in 8 to 10. The real odds of raising seed funding in the UK, and why you must own your fundraising process.→Own your truth: the best fundraising advice I can giveInvestors look for reasons not to invest. Why hiding £0 revenue or missed targets backfires, and how losing a VC-funded business taught me honesty.→Pitch decks.
4 articles
Five questions to ask before you send your pitch deckPitch decks are easy if you focus on the simple things. Five questions to test your branding, story, stage, ask and use of funds before investors see it.→How to build a pitch deck investors actually readLessons from decks that raised over £60,000,000: context, design, the team slide, length, jargon and owning your numbers, in 10 to 12 pages.→How to build a pitch deck: answer the how, not the whyMy pitch decks have raised over £20M. Most decks obsess over why and forget how. Here is what investors actually look for in a pitch deck.→Pitch deck tips: the slides every investor expects to seeLessons from decks that raised over £20,000,000 in 12 months: design, layout, length, the team slide, jargon, honesty and why PDF still wins.→Investors.
6 articles
Angel investors aren't what they used to be: what changedFewer big exits means fewer super angels. What smaller tickets, VC competition and spammed angels mean for founders raising pre-seed in the UK.→The shelf life of an angel investor is getting shorterAngels now make a couple of bets and quit. Six reasons why, and seven ways founders should change who they target and how much they raise.→What I learnt reaching out to over 1,000 VCsCold, warm or mate's intro, the answer is the same. What contacting 1,000+ VCs taught me about deal flow, email copy and who VCs really back.→Founder mental health: what investors need to stop doingRaising capital is the most sensitive time for a founder. Seven things investors do that hurt founders, from ghosting to suddenly pulling out.→Fundraising scams: how to spot fake investors and fake fundsFake funds and fake family office representatives target founders raising money. How the scams work and three simple rules to keep yourself safe.→How venture capital funds work, and why pre-seed loses outAn oversimplified look at how a £10m VC fund invests, what GPs and LPs need, and why the maths leaves a funding gap for pre-seed founders.→Founder lessons.
9 articles
How I lost everything by never giving upForcing a VC deal, hiring before the money landed and fighting to save a dying business: three mistakes where giving up would have saved me.→Why my VC deal was so bad: lessons from losing my companyLosing a company is death by a thousand papercuts. The bad VC deal, bad advice and gaps in my own knowledge that sank my business, and what I learned.→Losing my VC-funded business and rebuilding in SpainAfter losing a VC-funded business I arrived in Spain with nothing. How two years of hard work and grit rebuilt my confidence and my career.→The lonely reality of being a founder: 50 hard lessonsFifty blunt lessons on the lonely reality of being a founder: money, failure, ghosting, bootstrapping, reputation, health and getting back on the horse.→Launch lean: how I turned £12,500 into £500,000 revenueIn 2013 I opened a healthy fast food takeaway on a £12,500 investment and grew it to around £500,000 revenue. How I launched lean using my own skills.→From 5 GCSEs to £100m raised: the founder journey I nearly quitFive GCSEs, a call centre, Ninety Nine, a car business that went bust, then crowdfunding and £100m+ raised for clients. Progress is never a straight line.→Five startup lies that almost cost me everythingNever give up, embrace failure, raise as much as you can: five start-up myths I believed while running a VC-funded business, and why they are wrong.→Five steps to turn around a struggling startupReset to zero, map your network, set a 14-day target, build a quick-to-buy product and start outreach: five steps to turn a failing startup around.→Five pieces of popular startup advice that are wrongNever give up, embrace failure, raise as much as you can, build it and they will come, hustle 24/7. Why I think all five are wrong, and dangerous.→Hospitality.
2 articles
Fundraising timing: what to do when you're too earlyIn 2013 my healthy fast food store was too early for local angel investors. Now meal prep is a £1.4bn UK industry. What that taught me about timing.→“Stick to flipping burgers”: lessons from my first takeawayHow I opened Newcastle's first healthy fast food takeaway on £13,000 at 23, served 600,000 meals in year one, and the put-down I still remember.→
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