Space Tech, wine club, and an array of investing

Nathan Hill has been on the board of UK Business Angels Association and is an serial entrepreneur. He started his career at Oxford becoming a physicist, which incidentally he was “rubbish at”. However, this set back did identify his gift as a salesman. The start of Nathan’s entrepreneurial career saw him launch Qi3. It is heavily involved in everything to do with space, but he saw that smaller businesses were unable to afford his services. Nathan offered it to them for equity and so launched his Angel career. Over the following years, Nathan has made 15 investments with 25x and 37x exits as well as some failures.…you can hear more by listening to his podcast.

Invested Investor Thoughts: When is a pivot not a pivot?

Most in our industry have heard the term “pivot”, but what does it mean?
I am an engineer by training and a pivot point is a fulcrum about which an object rotates, which can be by a few degrees, but more often by full rotations.

How does that apply to a startup? How can a startup rotate and avoid becoming dizzy?

Learning from failure and coming back stronger

Jelena Aleksic came to Cambridge to do a PhD in genetics but soon realised she had an entrepreneurial spirit. She started two businesses on the side during her study, but it wasn’t until she obtained funding for Gene Adviser did she work full time on a startup. Jelena was successfully funded 350K from investors, including Peter Cowley. Unfortunately, the business failed, but Jelena learnt some vital lessons which she shares in this podcast.

Don’t chase the idea of a small return or getting your money back

Start-up spotlight with Simon King.

In partnership with Angel News, The Invested Investor is delighted to publish this interview focusing on Simon King who is a Principal at Octopus Ventures, a London and New York based venture capital firm.

Multi-billion pound funding for innovation and what the UK Government is looking to invest in

Nigel Walker is Head of Innovation Lending at Innovate UK, and is constantly helping new and creative ideas flourish. Nigel is responsible for Access to Finance, where he continuously comes across cutting edge businesses in a variety of sectors. Because of this, he has played a role in many businesses that have been featured on Invested Investor, and guided them and many more to success. In this podcast Nigel talks about how he helps businesses of all scales, how to obtain funding, and the four sectors the Government is keen to invest in.

Innovating new value chains, coaching global corporates and the five P’s

Andrew Gaule has a reputation for innovating within corporate’s. In this podcast we hear how it started during the dotcom boom when he was studying at Henley Business School and saw the potential for selling online. He wrote an MBA paper on the topic, which rewarded him with his worst mark. Andrew wasn’t shaken however and using his entrepreneurial spirit started Henley Incubator in 2000, and the rest is history. Since then Andrew has gone onto help corporate’s by introducing them to open innovation and its benefits, as well as being heavily involved in venture capital.

Invested Investor Thoughts: Lost & Found(er) - Lessons learnt when losing a founder

This article is a short insight in to Peter Cowley's thoughts on losing a founder from the point of view of an investor and entrepreneur. He explores the resignation or removal of founders and that there is no formula or rule book that can be consulted. We hope his experience will help anyone having to go through the process.

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.

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

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