Disappearing, angel investing, Frog Capital and what Shirin has learnt along the way

Shirin Dehghan is a hugely successful entrepreneur, having built Arieso and sold it to JDSU. In part 2 of her podcast, we hear how she decided to take a year out before getting bored and subsequently gravitating back to the start-up ecosystem. She has made a number of angel investments, including a lesson in letting her guard down as she invested in a team she knew well. Shirin is now a senior partner at Frog Capital, where she sits on four start-up boards. A tip to entrepreneurs, “Don’t turn up to a board meeting with a laundry list of problems without thinking of possible solutions. Your board will lose faith quickly”.

Tough lessons, planning for your exit and blowing up San Francisco's IT

Shirin Dehghan has a fascinating story about resilience, understanding when to make tough decisions and planning for her company’s sale. Shirin is a successful entrepreneur, having founded and sold Arieso. She is a seasoned angel investor and is a Senior Partner for Frog Capital. In Part 1 of her podcast you will hear how she learnt so much from the pitfall of a lost contract, and how much time and effort she spent to ensure the company was ready for a potential buy-out. This is a truly exciting entrepreneurial story, that includes a tough decision to ask her husband to step down as her CTO in order for the company to succeed in the States.

An exit to Amazon, some amazing investments and just going big

Dr Simon Murdoch follows his instincts. He set up Bookpages in the mid-90's because he saw an opportunity to emulate Amazon in the UK. He has invested in some the most iconic UK start-ups of the last twenty years. He has become a figurehead for invested investors in London. He loves what he does, particularly learning something new everyday. In this podcast Simon describes why he set up a competitor to Amazon, what it's to work for Jeff Bezos and how he transitioned into investing. Although he has experienced his share of failures, his eye for a successful start-up is remarkable.

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.

Collaboration, failure, and the universe of numbers

David 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.

Daring, entrepreneurial, transparency advocate, and leading investor news

Modwenna Rees-Mogg is a world leading investor news provider. In this podcast, she openly portrays her diverse entrepreneurial journey, starting from the idea of delivering food from supermarkets in vans at the age of fifteen to Angel News, an online investor news platform. Unfortunately she wasn't able to gain 'funding' for her delivery idea, but she has successfully made Angel News into a world leading investor news provider. Modwenna is a prominent supporter of transparency and accountability in the early stage investment ecosystem.

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

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