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.
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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.
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This article is a short insight in to Peter Cowley's thoughts on co-investing from an investor and entrepreneur point of view. He talks through the importance of spreading risk across a variety of knowledgeable and experienced investors. Furthermore, understand the possible difficulties that come with family, friends and ‘fools’ investment.
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Jessica Dick spends most of her time helping early-stage entrepreneurs navigating the fundraising process. As co-founder of consultancy Five Years Time, she ushers entrepreneurs from technical backgrounds into the world of business. As investment manager at Synergy Growth, she has worked with around thirty different start-ups. What better guest could there be for the Invested Investor? In this episode, Jessica breaks down the issues with the ways many novice entrepreneurs ask for help, and outlines her five minimum requirements for being ready to seek investment.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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