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Doug Scott

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2015-06-11
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2015-06-11
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  1. “And when they actually got to an interesting point, They just literally went and talked to everybody they knew. And it literally was that fast. It was unbelievable. It was 48 hours from almost start to finish. Race was closed.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “But again, choose numbers are astronomic. Will and Ben who run it again are very talented, very nice people, they raised around probably in about 48 hours. They did what I said was perfect. They did all arounds for people for about six months as they were doing it. They got to know everybody. They weren't nasty about it. They weren't pitching. They were just going and having beer and explaining and talking. Just as another human being would be.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “which Which is a tough market in everybody hit. But coming back to what do I like, Radder's a nice guy, he's very smart, the team's very smart, and they have a growth curve that has been going nonstop now for probably five months. And the other one that's going is, I think quite a few people have seen this in the UK, is chew.tv, which is ironically Twitch for DJs.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Who's exciting? I think I've, well, there's one going to go through probably today, which is Lifebox. Lifebox.moby, which will be in... An interesting space because Radu's Romanian living in Newcastle who is very smart and can hustle like no one, he's unfortunately in a horrible, horrible business sector and he's building a photo sharing app.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That space, I think, is going to become interesting because especially if you come from a finance background. You're not deploying, you want a board seat, you want control of some of the board, but you've never ran a company. So you don't know what it's like. And I think there was a quote from Bladfeld or Sanop and the other day. Actually Kovath, one of the West Coast VCs, of saying that most times VCs on the board just wanted to speak because they want to be there. And I wouldn't say this is everywhere. But my worry is as a lot of times that happens. So you have a founder who has a great idea, is completely running with his company, knows where he's going, knows everything about the sector. And you have a finance person who's raised a fund of 30 million sitting on the board telling them how to run the company.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The VC world is, I split it in my head into two parts. There's the big end, the Bolderton Z indexer Axcel. I think you can't replace that because they have so much capital to deploy that there needs to be someone in that space. I know a lot of people. And it's a fairly safe bet where you're deploying 100 million looking for three, four X return. And there'll be a space for that all the time. I know they need to have a board seat and I know they need to help with an IPO. I prefer that they didn't be involved in how the operations of a company run as. moving down the smaller VCs, which there is a plethora now. Probably I'm probably guessing there's 30 to 50 of them in London now.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “In general, I love them all. They're all lovely, lovely people. Is that what you meant me to say, or did you say as a venture capital investing on?”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “UK focus is simple there I live here From my past life in the affiliate world, I have lots of friends and acquaintances and lots of spaces. So outside of the Angel Tech bubble, I know lots of people in lots of things. The UK is massively tax incentivised for SEIS to do it here, and the valuations are nowhere near how the US and especially the West Coast is, where I'm invested in. Four companies, I believe, now who are in the valley. Oh, in San Francisco, who actually all started here. So there's a definite even an arbitrage by country by location.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So, there's a lot of money flooding into the system the negative that means unfortunately there's a lot of rubbish we'll get funded that probably should be dead But then that's the nature of anything.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “God loves Germany. I think there's, well, there's a lot of money going on in London. I said to Sherman in private and in public that I think the reason his fell apart was he had to go back to San Francisco. I don't think he realized how hard it was to raise. And it's something I, every one of the startups I've invested in. I said, you have to control the deal. You think the money's committed, but it's not. When they've given you the used noting that's in your hand is the only time count on it being And Sherman had to go back for a variety of reasons ended up going back to San Francisco just at a crucial point But London as a whole, I think there was over a billion pound of transactions last year. I haven't seen the latest SEIS numbers alone just in the UK, but I know the first years was over 82 million just in SEIS investments.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think we've positioned it as being the lunatics. So the lunatics naturally gravitate to us now. And also there's enough people, you know, I think I made 20 investments in 24 months. And I invested in the ad measures of the world and the gins of the world. And that words out there. And also I'm fairly active. I'm an investor in entrepreneurs first, tech stars, and ignite in Newcastle. And as we've talked before, is Ignite has a similar mantra. Ignite's mantra is find smart people doing something vaguely interesting. You find them really, really early. and then try and help them and hope some work. And Jim, I'd ludio or came out Newcastle. Jin has come out of Newcastle. Match chats come out of Newcastle, which none of these companies were investable when they turned up.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, and my numbers are like that. As you know, you're aware of some of the deals out there. So Admito was raised at a considerable round. I invested with Nick, who's the founder on that, on a piece of paper in a coffee shop in Lichfield.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I think spray is the wrong word. I think spray is the mentality People. I don't think it's spraying on sectors. I think it's spraying on intelligent people who can hustle, but also making the valuation that you come in. You come in so early with those teams. That even if they only return 1x. If they return, if they sell a business for 5 million, which is not a big exit. If you've come in under SEIS round and you've come in at a million valuation and you've got your, let's say, 50 or 64% tax relief, if you put a thousand pound in, you've really put £300 in. You then get a 5x on the thousand, you've now got a 5,000, you're now 16 times up, you know, 16.67 up. On an exit that happened in 5 million.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You're an expert, that's it, in food, food and food systems and logistics, I've got a couple. Or that somewhere looking at building infrastructures at the minute, and we've got some people involved who, again, are real experts in that space. So effectively, we're just leveraging the syndicate onto the back of their very smart knowledge. And it's one of the”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So anyone who naturally seems how to do that, so I just did FitGus on the Angelus Syndicate, those guys who'd managed to grow to 100 trainers on their platform and a thousand users, having never been shown what to do. So they had an inbuilt ability to know how to get traffic and users. So they're the ones that we can help really, obviously. So you can get the money, great, but we can just show you in a day some interesting tricks and techniques. The other part, because again, it's covering a spread, so you need to be, you know, just, you know, if I was only doing B2C sector-specific stuff, then you don't get the spread of having enough investment. So what we're doing at the minute is looking at people we know really well and respect and saying, okay, you're going to do an angel round on this. Can we come in with you with a syndicate?”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “What I've started doing is I basically model from the syndicate. My view is you need to make a lot of bets. So as a syndicate, there's a thing in maths of Monte Carlo modelling and it works in finance as well. To hit something interesting, you have to hit a lot of bets because there's so few. But in high risk investing, the ones you hit that are interesting can make more return than everything else you touch, i.e. an Uber or Google, they're complete extremes. So if you follow that rationale, You then, if you invest really early and you take all the tax benefits, so S-A-I-S or EIS, in a really interesting team who are doing something vaguely interesting, the chances are you'll hit one of those. Now, because of my background, which is a lot of in the network. Businesses like that are obvious to me.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “This is a B, let's call it B, the C for the simplistic. I won't go into it at the minute because we're still trying to work out if there's a deal to be done.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You've sold it four times. I don't need, you know, now it's an efficiencies business. Now you just need to do mass analytics on how to make the floor better.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I based my syndicate from quite simply the goal is to invest very, very early. So what we've been looking at is million pound, roundabout million pound valuations, give or take. SEI If I go the other way, if I start from the startups, I think the startups are something doing something interesting, something that's a hustle. It's a million pound valuation. They probably never had arrears before and they've probably got some traction somewhere. Now that traction numbers can be very, very small. I'm talking to someone at the minute. They have four sales on their ledger. of mere four.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yes, I think between myself, Tim Jackson, I would say Gil Dibner are probably the three, I don't know if you know, Tim's another angel investor.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “The model of what we look for. So it's not you're not a good team, but if we put ask you a set of questions, we can direct you to what do we do with you. Because I get approached a lot of times by people who want to raise it. Maybe you want to raise a million pound at a 5, 10 million valuation. And we don't see anywhere in that space. By that time, I expect you have a product and you know exactly what you're doing Now, there's people I know who may be interested in that, but if you send that as an email blank to me, I just reply and go, you're too late. I'm not interested.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, the easiest now is doing it through our site, like potential.co.uk. We put a form up because what was happening is me, all my staff were getting bombarded on LinkedIn. We get bombarded. You know, I absolutely get bombarded on the Angel list, especially since that syndicate. And like my emails and my blog have just meant there's so many ways to touch us, so we're now just directing everybody back to that site because what we're building, the next part is, and this is following the conversation I know you'll understand, is we're building a system of”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, so I'm quite happy to wait till you finish university, but if you want to do this now, then I don't want you to have that dilemma that your servers go down and that you're in the middle of your final exams.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I had a symbol discussion with Taddy that they're in San Francisco now. They're doing some very interesting stuff. But he wanted me to be investor advisor and help him raise the money. And I said, okay, so I'm giving up a lot and you're giving up nothing.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I've got, let's see if I'm looking. think if they're in the UK they generally now have some form of education you know like degree level I have got, if you look at Glee Post, I told the founders I would only invest if they quit university.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Born, born. I think they're born hustlers or they're born battlers. Think that plays into it. I don't think you can be someone who can turn up a name and you have to be your CD, obsessive. Actually, you've just, I call it, I look for people who are obsessive. And they have, I suppose, a chip from their shoulder actually. Have a reason to prove. So I have numerous founders I've invested in who are every ethnic background going. I have them from different religions I have got two women I have people who've come from nothing at all, literally complete out of poverty.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think there should continually be jumping around to give you the example. We launched 40 businesses last year internally, 40 products. We probably have We have two that are very, very interesting. We had two that are borderline interesting. And out of one of the two that was borderline, something else really interesting has appeared. So I'm very agnostic. If the data keeps telling you it's stupid and you keep pivoting and you keep saying it, you know, you keep jumping around and the data keeps telling you it's stupid, then probably it's wise to step back. And I say it to the founder, step back, take a week off, go away, look at the world again. And it might even be something you should do. And I've said to numerous teams along the way, just quit, go and get a job.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I think you need that trade. There's a part where you need to accept it's maybe a stupid idea. about it and his argument was he knew better and he had certain things that hadn't been completed and I will bow down to his wisdom Because I believe he's done some transformational things in that business.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Let's play them out. So Kash Carew is now the biggest cashback site in India and I would Swati and Rohan can't write any code. Dorton is a single founder doing meals. Who has done lots and lots of pivots in that business is really interesting. But I think Daunton is quite exceptional. I call him a cockroach. It's quite open. I've told him quite a few times over the past three years that he should just have closed the business down and he's always vehemently disagreed with me.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “I'm getting more and more that people should be able to do it themselves. Internally, we had a big team in the Ukraine and Poland, and we've almost killed most of our external dev, mainly because of speed of development. And I think that we start up the same. If you're having to wait for external developers, you can't move fast. So it depends on the team. In my ideal scenario, you should have a team of three. And if it's a very techn-based project, they should all be techies. And if it's a text of business, then they should be maybe one or two techies and the other business depends on how it goes. But that saying that I have invested in people and companies who are now techies and are single founders.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I say hi Tack. He's meant to be coming to my office. I'm still waiting Generally, I invest very, very, very early. I have a little bit of a mantra, which is a joke, but things that most people hate. I look for founders I like. I want them to be smart enough to be able to do something, smart enough to be able to adapt, but they have to be stupid enough to believe that they can actually do what is something that I think is really hard, but they think is really easy. I like hustlers. I like people who just kick doors in and continually kick doors in.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “The Angel investing came out by accident because I was invited to oxygen's original demo day in Birmingham via a friend. I knew nothing about it. I turned up and I sat in the front roar and didn't realize that you weren't meant to not ask questions. So I kept asking questions about everyone who did a pitch. And obviously with my background of knowing the numbers and the amount of traffic levels, I was, I suppose, loved and hated. But at the end of it, a pile of people came up and asked what I really did, explained it ultimately ending up that John Bradford and me talked and we spent a bit of time and John asked me to help out the springboard prior to TechSars. I became a mentor, started advising them on how to do traffic. And then I became an investor into springboard and in Tech Stars.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “doing maybe doing half a million to a million visitors a day currently across the portfolio there's somewhere in the region of one to two million people a day touch properties we now own and run”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Then we spun that into numerous comparator sites. We did some affiliate stuff, notably with Expedia, probably did quarter of a billion pounds worth of affiliated transactions with them. And the specialization became internet traffic. So it didn't matter whether it was Google, it was SEO, it was PPC, it was Facebook, Twitter, Outbrain, Tabula display, anywhere we could get it, we would basically run tests. the traffic through and see if we could find somewhere to make more money than it cost us to do. Out of that has come Commentoster.uk, discount vouchers.co.uk. We run numerous big shopping sites. The new one we've just launched is one called Time to Break, which effectively is a buzz feed type site.”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Okay, this group in Newcastle, I had a reasonably normal upbringing, not particularly affluent, but nice. And I spent a chunk of time messing about, condensing it all. I became bum and bummed around the world for numerous years, spent about eight years living in a variety of places, spent a lot of time in Australia, in Sydney. Late nights began doing some SEO stuff as I was importing furniture from Indonesia. So I thought I'd put it online. I had no idea about how to code. I still really don't. and started looking at Google and how did their algorithms work which wasn't very complicated out of the back of that car rentals was created which is done in its carrentals.co.uk has done over about a million rentals now we still own it it's run out of West Wales I don't really get involved anymore other than as an investor”

    2015-06-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 044: Dominating AngelList Syndicates with Doug Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source