Read before pitching

Our job at Illuminate is to find, invest in and support the best young companies who have built enterprise technology that can be used in financial services.

We are not going to be the right investor for every business that comes through our door, so before we meet please read the following to make our first conversation the best use of both of our time.

Our mandate — enterprise technology for financial services

You might be the hottest company on earth with a rock-star team, exploding growth, raving users and a large market opportunity — but if you aren’t planning to sell a technology solution into the financial services sector then we simply won’t be able to invest in your business.

We invest in two types of tech company: (i) businesses with horizontal technology solutions that solve for challenges in the financial sector (like data privacy engineering and enterprise data infrastructure), or (ii) point solutions that solve a critical problem for the financial industry (like collateral management and anti money laundering). The bottom line is that your business needs to be focused on a use case where financial services is one of your core markets. If this isn’t your target market, then we won’t be able to help your business in the way we want to, so aren’t the best investor for you.

Can we help your business?

The other key question we ask ourselves is “can we influence the outcome of your business by leveraging our network?” Tech sales cycles in financial services are notoriously drawn out and many companies with great products have failed because they underestimated how long it can take from initial conversation to having software in live production. We get the joke and systematically address these challenges head on with our industry engagement model:

1. We raised capital from the industry (IHS Markit and Deutsche Börse are two of our publicly announced LPs),

2. We have formal partnerships with both banks and market infrastructure providers to help them engage with enterprise ready companies,

3. We participate in multiple innovation groups (such as the Investment Association’s Velocity) often as the only venture member,

4. We have offices in London and New York, the two major financial services hubs, and

5. The members of the team have all worked in the industry giving us an even larger informal network.

While (unfortunately!) we can’t shorten procurement timelines or speed up an RFQ process, we can help put you in the right conversations earlier to speed up the sales cycle, or at least help you start the conversation many months earlier than you otherwise might be able. Equally as important, we can tell you when we think targets in your pipe aren’t going to convert in the near term, and how to finance through this. We aim to be the hardest working investor in your cap table, so tell us where you think we could help.

What is the problem you are solving?

This is one of the first questions we ask the entrepreneurs we meet. As we are first and foremost business solutions focused investors, we are more interested in the problems you are looking to solve and how. Please don’t start the meeting rattling off tech buzzwords you think we want to hear… blockchain, big data, distributed ledgers, AI, machine learning etc… instead focus on why there is a problem, how you are solving it and then why the technologies you are using are the best fit.

Can you demonstrate product-market-fit?

Another important point to emphasise is that we will not fund an idea, no matter how ground-breaking, if you are pre-product. For us to invest in your business, your product needs to be enterprise ready and we need to see evidence of market-fit. The clearest way to demonstrate this is through paying customers, a pipeline of leads and ARR. There are of course exceptions to every rule but at a minimum we need to see clear line of sight to revenue before we invest.

While this only scratches the surface of our full diligence process, if you come prepared to address each of these areas upfront in our initial meeting you will jump from the starting block — putting you in the best position to get a quick answer from us & saving valuable time that could be better spent running and building your business..