Peter Cowley founded Camdata, an electronic engineering, product design and turnkey development company, in 1984. To date, Camdata has delivered over 17,000 products and revenue of more than £16 million. Now a tech entrepreneur, angel investor and speaker…
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In part two we continue William Tunstall-Pedoe’s journey. William discusses his exit from Amazon, his involvement with Toronto based incubator, Creative Destructive Lab and what drove him to be a successful invested investor with over 50 investments with Cambridge Angels and Octopus Investments. He offers us an insight into his passion for big impact, deep tech. You can hear more by listening to his podcast …
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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”.
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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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Rajat Malhotra is a seasoned Invested Investor, which was recognised by the UK Business Angels Association in 2013 as he won their prestigious Angel of the Year award. In this podcast with The Invested Investor, Rajat expressed to Peter Cowley about the thrill of learning from the bottom up, the phenomenal people he meets and the marvellous ideas that stem from start-ups. His experience has taught him so many lessons including predicting positives not negatives and investing in where your expertise is.
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Peter is passionate about increasing the success rate for early investors and entrepreneurs by sharing the success and war stories from those who have done it before. The Invested Investor Project was set up to achieve this aim.
For more information listen him explaining all about the project here.
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We are delighted to be able to bring you the first Start-up Spotlight article. Simon Thorpe kicks off this exciting collaboration with Business Weekly.
Simon was UKBAA Angel Investor of the Year 2016/17. He has an investment portfolio of close to 30 early stage tech companies and has achieved 5 exits including Swiftkey, CMOS Sensors, VocalIQ and CentraStage.
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Excitingly, Invested Investor Andy Phillipps joined Peter Cowley for a two part podcast. In part one, Andy explains how he established the hotel booking company, Active Hotels, alongside his co-founder and cousin Adrian Critchlow. Active Hotels grew rapidly, bought by Priceline and merged with Bookings BV to become Booking.com. Andy's business model transformed the UK online hotel market and continues to lead global trends. Having successfully exited to Priceline, Andy describes how he approached the topic of aquisition, and then how he apporached the acquirers. Part two follows his transition into Angel Investing, what he learnt and his top tips for those looking to become Invested Investors.
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