A telecommunications success story, and a chance for Manchester

Neil McArthur sold potatoes door-to-door as a child in Salford. Then, with his engineering background and his own capital, he set up the business that would later become TalkTalk. In this episode of The Invested Investor, Neil revisits the deals, false starts, and market choices that led to his success in the telecommunications field. He still works for TalkTalk, but spends most of his time working to improve his home city's entrepreneurial ecosystem. In the second half of the podcast he explains how much Manchester has going on beneath the surface in technology and enterprise, and how the narrative needs to catch up to reality.

The secret art of early-stage investment

David Gill's meandering investment journey has taken him from law, to corporate finance, to running fund operations at HSBC, to managing the highly successful tech incubator St John’s Innovation Centre, in Cambridge. Along the way he learnt some important lessons about early-stage startups. In this podcast David shares these lessons: the hard decisions early-stage entrepreneurs have to make; about his three rules for smart investment; judging an entrepreneurship ecosystem; and when investors should trust their instincts.

Women in investment, investing without a background in finance, and the importance of due diligence

Bridget Connell went into investing four years ago without any financial background, and has completed five deals since. In this episode she explains her hands-on style of investing. She has previously worked in technology, so supports tech startups, and she mentors female investors and entrepreneurs through the syndicate Angel Academe. Bridget is a strong believer in doing your due diligence when working on a project; she stays close to each company she works with, and supports them by drawing other investors close as well. She talks here about her desire to see more diversity in the investment world.

Pivoting to success

William Makant and Yusuf Muhammad founded Plumis in 2008 to develop Automist, an innovative sprinkler system. A decade later Plumis has a £2 million turnover and Automist is installed in 5,000 homes - but everything about it is different, from the product itself to the people involved. The secret to their success? Being able to pivot, to change strategy by learning about a market's key drivers. In this podcast William and Yusuf describe their journey, and the how and the why of their dramatic course change. They outline the pros and cons of working with Angel Investors, and describe how raising more money at the start might have made the company less successful.

increasing the success of early stage start-ups by sharing entrepreneurial and investment war stories

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