Female Founder Office Hours Edition IV: Meet the Investors Part II (ft. Balderton Capital, Round Hill Ventures, Talis Capital & Force Over Mass)
Edition VI of our Female Founder Office Hours is well underway, with 60 investors signed up and over 100 founder application forms.
On the 5th and 12th November, we aim to bring investors and founders together with four key pillars in mind:
- Access. No warm intros needed.
- Remote. Geography is not a barrier.
- Collaboration. All investors, groups and initiatives working together.
- Founder-driven. Ask for advice, feedback, funding, or introductions.
After the success of the first three events, we are more focused than ever on ensuring that this initiative leads to meaningful relationships and more pounds being invested in women led businesses. As a result, each participating investor is committing to mentor at least one founder from the event on an ongoing basis!
In preparation of this event, we want founders to know who they will be meeting and what to expect. Therefore, we have created a public Notion page collating useful information for this event and for those approaching their fundraising journey overall.
Additionally, we published our team’s tips and advice when we first launched and are releasing weekly ‘Meet the Investors’ series, where we have been interviewing investors. This week, it’s our second blog in the series with a group of investors attending in November, at Balderton Capital, Round Hill Ventures, Talis Capital & Force Over Mass.
Read on for insights into their investment strategy, what they enjoy discussing with founders and their top tips for office hours below:
1. What is unique about your fund?
Sebastiaan Debrouwere, Balderton Capital
Balderton is a leading European early-stage capital investor, focussed exclusively on European funded technology companies. Most of our investment team are ex-founders, early employees and operators. We believe that the next European giant will be a tech company, and we enjoy working shoulder to shoulder with the entrepreneurs in our portfolio as they scale.
Yasmina Darveniza, Round Hill Ventures
Round Hill Ventures is a PropTech VC investing in ambitious founders who shape our world through technology.
We spun out of a $6 billion AUM global real estate investment, development and asset management firm called Round Hill Capital with 14 offices worldwide, so we can provide more than just capital. Our institutional real estate LPs have an extensive global portfolio of real estate assets, giving us the ability to help support our portfolio companies and scale across different geographies and verticals.
Beatrice Aliprandi, Talis Capital
Talis Capital is a London-based VC investing globally, backed by >35 ultra-high net worth entrepreneurs and business people. We are entrepreneurial at our core and portfolio companies can tap into our network as well as that of our LPs. We are focused on backing emerging technologies across a number of industry verticals. Investing since 2009, we’re now deploying more than $100m per year across an annual vintage and through co-investment vehicles.
Sri Ayangar, Force Over Mass
Force Over Mass Capital is an early-stage VC fund that invests in primarily B2B or B2B2C start-ups based in the UK and Europe. Our main sector focus comes down to Fintech, AI and Industry 4.0 but for the past 4 years since our incorporation, we have invested in wide-ranging sectors - from Adtech down to things like 3D Printing. We have two separate funds focusing on Seed and Growth stage investments which mean that we can easily follow on our investments/lead investments from Seed to Series B!
2. What investments do you enjoy looking at?
Sebastiaan Debrouwere, Balderton Capital
Personally I love looking at front and back-end tools related to the future of work; mobility; D2C consumer brands and tools that help modern businesses scale more quickly.
Yasmina Darveniza, Round Hill Ventures
As a PropTech investor, I love startups that shake up traditional industries ripe for disruption through deep and defensible tech. Real-life examples of portfolio companies applying AI to undigitized industries include: Spacemaker AI, changing the game of property development, and Casafari, building the cleanest and most complete real estate database.
I also love listening to founders’ journeys, their path to how they got to where they are now, and the mistakes they’ve learned along the way. As an investor who also spent a few years founding a startup back in the day, I appreciate that it’s a tough journey and that everyone makes mistakes; it’s about what you learn and how you grow from them.
Beatrice Aliprandi, Talis Capital
- B2B technology companies that disrupt the underlying infrastructure of traditional markets.
- Integrated marketplaces that can provide a smooth experience to companies and individuals, and manage to create that customer stickiness that greatly improves retention.
- Innovative consumer offerings that create brands that customers love and identify with.
Sri Ayangar, Force Over Mass
Any start-up that is trying to change the status-quo of an industry! We are looking for founders who have the grit to overcome big pain points in an industry and have found an innovative solution for their pain point. We strongly believe the great founders are obsessed with solving a problem and these are the type of founders we often like to back. Overall, considering our focus on B2B or B2B2C, I am personally excited to look at start-ups in the DevOps, Payments, Cybersecurity, and the Gaming sector!
3. Which part of a business do you most enjoy discussing with a founder?
Sebastiaan Debrouwere, Balderton Capital
Vision, vision and vision. I love understanding the scale and breadth of how you and your team want to change the world for the better.
Yasmina Darveniza, Round Hill Ventures
I’m all about the USP — I want to know what real problem you’re solving and why your solution is unique. If you’ve built a great product that’s better than anything on the market, take me through a demo and explain why no one else can do what you’ve done.
Beatrice Aliprandi, Talis Capital
First of all, I like discussing culture, team roles and hiring plans. You get a pretty good sense of founder’s self-awareness and where she thinks she needs to complement her skills. No self-awareness equals straight start-up failure in my mind. I also really like to dig deep into financials and unit economics.
Sri Ayangar, Force Over Mass
Product! As someone who comes from a technical background, I will always appreciate the technical discussion surrounding a start-up’s product and how this can solve a pain problem for their clients. I am also heavily interested in hearing the founder’s journey and what led them to create a start-up.
4. What are your top 3 tips on how to make the most of office hours?
Sebastiaan Debrouwere, Balderton Capital
- It’s a blind date. Don’t make it one-way, also ask the investor for questions (e.g. what metrics would you like to see for us at seed/series A/etc.).
2. Know your investor in terms of stage and investment focus.
3. Ask for help. Investors are generally well-connected and passionate about startups. Ask them how they can help you with building your business, raising money, etc.
Yasmina Darveniza, Round Hill Ventures
- Do your research on who we are and what we invest in: Please do not pitch us something that has nothing to do with the built environment, and pretty please do not pitch me a real estate business that isn’t centred around technology and scalability!
- Know your business inside out: As they say — if you can’t explain your business simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Know your relevant metrics (MRR, CAC, LTV, churn, etc) and be upfront about explaining any dips in performance or mistakes you’ve made and what you’ve done to address them.
- Try to enjoy the meeting (this isn’t Dragons’ Den): I’m not here to grill you; I’m here to help you if I can, or direct you to someone who may be better suited to helping you.
Beatrice Aliprandi, Talis Capital
- Come prepared with a list of questions.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for specific help or introductions. And be specific about who you’d like to be introduced to, don’t say “if you could think of anyone…” — you should think about it in advance.
- Do your research on who you’re speaking to in advance, so you don’t waste precious time on long introductions.
Sri Ayangar, Force Over Mass
- Always remember that these are a two-way meeting. You should be keen to learn more about the VCs as much as the VCs are keen to learn about you.
- Be concise on your explanation and don’t go off tangent in the meeting. A lot of meetings can easily overrun especially when time is limited so make sure to present an explanation in order.
- Be transparent. An investor would always want to hear the negatives and positive since they would be keen to give you advice or help you out to improve your start-up.
5. What advice are you giving to startups on how to navigate Covid-19? Are you giving the same advice to scale-ups (post-series B)?
Sebastiaan Debrouwere, Balderton Capital
- Think about how Covid-19 affects your customers in the immediate term (e.g. their propensity to buy), but also in the long term (e.g. does this become an integral part of their workflow in the future).
- Runway — we may see a tougher investment environment if the economic slump we’re seeing persists. Make sure you have enough money in the bank, and simulate scenarios (25% reduction/50%/75% etc.). On basis of this, prioritise your roadmap and GTM.
Yasmina Darveniza, Round Hill Ventures
- Address problems head-on: Talk investors through your Covid-19 bumps in the road and the steps you’ve taken to overcome them (e.g. venture debt, renegotiations, staff cuts, furloughs). This shows your agility as a leader and capacity to adapt to your environment.
- Cash is king (cliché but still true): Prioritise runway, create further contingency plans, and remodel your financial projections based on real, recent data (i.e. no more hockey stick graphs).
- Solidify unit economics: Gone are the days where investors will throw money at startups to grow at all costs. Work on your unit economics, prioritise your current customers, and make sure you’re building a sustainable and resilient business.
- Be aggressive if you can: If you are a leader in your space right now with funding to be aggressive, use it as an opportunity. As Winston Churchill famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.
Beatrice Aliprandi, Talis Capital
If your business is negatively impacted, take this opportunity to turn inward and fix those processes that you couldn’t quite find the time for when you were executing pre-Covid. If your business is positively impacted, go all in and fundraise on top of your good traction! The advice applies to all stages, even post-Series B companies.
Sri Ayangar, Force Over Mass
- Start-ups: Make sure you have enough cash runway for more than 18+ months. Focus on your existing client accounts and think of opportunities to either preserve the value of these accounts or try to grow them.
- Scaleups: Covid-19 may be a blessing in disguise for you to experiment with a new product line or feature. This might be a good time to try this out with your existing or new clients. Focus more on maintaining your client accounts and try to expand your leads in your sales pipeline, either in new sectors or geographies.
If you either are or know a female founder who would like to join us for Edition IV, please register here.
You can follow the Playfair team on LinkedIn, Twitter, Forbes, Vimeo and here on Medium. If you’re a male founder and would still like to pitch us, please submit your application on our open-to-anyone pitch page.
You can follow Tech Nation on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’re a founder, you can register for the free Founders’ Network programme.
