Craig Dearden-Philips MBE, social entrepreneur and angel investor, joins us this week. He is the founder of Stepping Out, Voice Ability and Social Club, as well as a writer and academic. Craig tells his inspirational journey from voluntary work to his present-day social investment portfolio and social leadership publications. To hear more, listen to his podcast…
Read MorePriya Lakhani is an entrepreneurial adrenaline junkie. She has founded two successful companies, won numerous business awards, and acted as an advisor to the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills. Oh, and is an OBE. Her life's aim is to change the world for the better, and to that end she has funded meals in India, vaccinations in Africa, and her current project improves education for thousands of UK children. Remarkably, she has achieved all this despite a constant barrage of people telling her to "quit and go home". In this podcast Priya takes us through her astonishing career, from unloading boxes of sauce outside Victoria Street Station, to writing a book for preschoolers. She ends by summarising the entrepreneurial tips that have helped her come this far.
Read MoreNeil 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.
Read MoreDavid 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.
Read MoreBridget 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.
Read MoreWilliam 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.
Read MoreDavid Gammon a rare thing - an investor in technology with no technological background. Through his work as an Invested Investor and as CEO of Rockspring, he has supported entrepreneurs through some extraordinary successes. In this podcast, David describes his unconventional career path and how he sees the world. He talks about how crucial collaboration is for investors, and how he works with his family to make investment decisions. He has had his share of failures as well, and here explains how dealing with failure can make you a better entrepreneur.
Read MoreIn our first themed podcast, Dr Anne Dobree, of Cambridge Enterprise, outlines the importance of mentoring start-ups that have spun out of universities and that it is paramount to back the business rather than max the investment.
Anne has worked in University technology commercialisation since 1999. Anne first joined the technology transfer team at the University of Cambridge in 2001, and has held a number of roles with Cambridge Enterprise and its predecessors including Head of Technology Transfer and Interim Director.
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