YouSaid · the spoken record

Matthew Bradley

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30
first
2015-12-16
most recent
2015-12-16
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “It's in a super early stage company called Live Better with, which is an aggregator for mostly non-medical products that help people unsurprisingly live better with chronic diseases. The name is work in progress. It might change. It might not, but it's got super utility, the opportunity for great content and genuinely looking to improve people's lives. And aside from the rationale, which is a top quality founder, great person and a very hard negotiator.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I don't think it's got the potential to replace FC, but as a part of the funding landscape, I think it will be around and can endure certain.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Probably Peter Teal, actually, even though he's been bashing the lean methodology recently, that investment in Facebook and the stories of his ongoing involvement there are pretty inspirational.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's another great one. And it's fortunate that there are so many good ones around. I think it's important that you read a lot and you change your mind a little bit often. That's very important to sort of make good investment decisions.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I read a lot maybe about one and a half, two hours a day. So Mattermark Dalies, Dan Primax term sheet, Nick, my boss's blog, don't tell him. Tom Fengertz, Mahesh Valanki, oh gosh. Okay, so for early stage startups, I'd have to say that the first round review as a weekly is probably the best one. And yeah, Nick's blog, the equity kicker, is probably the best daily. But again, don't tell him.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Let me explain there's more money and more smart money at every stage. There are more startups. There are an increasing number of second and third time founders. And I see founders in BCs coming over from the valley and other successful hubs. So evolving and developing quickly. Yeah.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “One of the things which we're all in it for. I also delved into a support the other day on the 50 next unicorns and in that report they were overweight in on-demand commerce and consumer services and underweight in health, finance and education. And I would have thought that being underweight in that kind of report is probably a leading indicator for opportunities and this matches well with what we've been talking about in finance and healthcare.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Great. Well, I should be sure to be tuning into that one. That analysis, as well as looking at the new intake, there's a significant increase in startups in the finance sector which are getting funded, as well as the product, commerce ones. There's growth in education and health, stable level of demanding and on-demand startups, and a decreasing amount into gaming and social media, which is not really surprising. And this is broadly similar to where we see opportunities here, where we and certainly I are pretty hot on consumer-facing financial services opportunities at the moment, and we're also big believers in healthcare. We have big health and hello and a couple of others in our portfolio already. But it's a gigantic market and there are massive opportunities for tech not only to disrupt existing businesses, but to add huge amounts of value to other people's lives, which is clearly.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, well, YC's recent intake is very interesting. Tom Tungus did a great blog post analyzing some of the most recent intakes.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Question, I suppose I'm just thinking in terms of the US and the UK here, and there's a big difference between there being a huge or much more venture money available in America, but conversely here in the UK we're more government money and tax breaks here as well as in Europe in terms of advice for founders. I would just advise them to have a look at where you want to build your startup and make a reasoned choice based on who your potential customers are, what the market dynamic looks like, as to which geography you should launch in. But that being said, if you're looking at going down the accelerated, getting the gold standard of a top tier operation like YC is rarely a poor choice.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “In the average American's daily life, and they have a bigger appetite for consumer credit, so it lends itself more to certain kinds of finance startups. So it's really about appreciating the kind of differences between Release Fra, so consumer-facing e-commerce, the differences between the market structures and what works here and what the effective market sizes are and what the key dynamics are.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, so it's a good question, quite a complicated one, actually. So it almost seems, for example, when a new YC class gets announced, it almost seems as though there's like a spate of UK clones, like a UK pill pack or a UK willing. I've seen some direct match, the bond trading one be cloned here as well. And that's not a bad thing, of course. And we have a big enough markets here in the UK to generate venture scale exits, admittedly not in every market. I mean, the market dynamics are different depending on the sector. So in sectors like healthcare where the payer landscape is so different between the two geographies, the startups need to think differently about the problems and whether the economic stack up here relative to America or indeed vice versa. For consumers, I think capital markets probably pay a little bit more of a role.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Mostly the response is no absolutely not. Can I leave? But occasionally yes, because sometimes either through nerves or just because we don't have the time, people might not may well not have mentioned something which could be important. The investment decision and that just gives them an opportunity at the end to tell me about it.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “We meet entrepreneurs probably three or four times before we might make an investment. And so, and it's not just me, it will be other guys from the team as well. So hopefully we will have teased out a lot of the assumptions and asked a lot of the questions which we all need answers to, whether it's with regards to market size or how they see their business in one year's time or what their target or their initial target customer is. But I have to say I'm a big fan of asking open-ended questions to see how people react. One of my favourites is asking people at the end of meetings. Is there anything which I should have asked which I haven't asked? Just as I said, just get smoked and ended feedback.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Fundamentally, it's really risky. It's even more risky at the earliest stages than it is at the later stages, given that I don't think there's really any substitute for hard work in research and deal research, asking really pressing questions, stretching founders.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Again, it depends because it's more about different sectors, I suppose. So Google Ventures, for example, just took on, lost my name, which is one of ours. And they were looking for a transatlantic investor because they want to sort of move into other markets, perhaps. So it's more about those kind of sector specific or goal-driven aspects where founders should be going out and looking for the right investors.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “That you want to work with. I mean, I'd encourage founders to obviously look to choose the best ones for them. So if an investor has a particular partner, principal or associates who are experts in a certain area which is relevant to your company, definitely you should target them and make them your priority.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “All of them, Harry. So a good Series A, I mean there's more money at Series A now than perhaps there ever has been. There are a lot of new funds popping up and as a result the round sizes are getting bigger and so perhaps more startups are spending longer in the seed stage having to raise an early seed or a late seed, certainly in terms of value raised, looking a little bit like Series A did maybe three, four years ago. Clearly only the best companies can move quickly from idea through seed to Series A. Otherwise we're sort of looking at the crowdfunding perhaps or Angel Rounds or indeed more money from us. In terms of series A investors that”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Good question. I mean, I suppose it depends a lot on the kind of business. But one of the great things I should have mentioned that we're an e-commerce fund and one of the great things about e-commerce is that you can test relatively cheaply and get immediate feedback from customers. So I would always encourage that approach rather than building and doing big launches.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Maybe you're sort of expanding the product itself, adding more services perhaps, and you're building your team. And then the final stage which you need to get ready for Series A is developing that valuable business. So scalable economics, or at least the way to convergence, really growth, which is ramping up and perhaps even plugging even more gaps in your team because you don't want to go out there to Series A investors without co-founders, without technical talent and investable people either.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Sure. So that's definitely something which we concentrate on a great deal because we take founders both Idea and Seed Stage and clearly we want them to be going out and raising good series A's as soon as possible really. So aside from the business that I was talking about with what a great idea is and what an investable idea is, we're developing an operator framework called the Path Forward and we see it as a process of developing firstly a valid idea insofar as that's the case you need to proven need for your product, your prototype and for that prototype to be resonant with your first hundred and then 1,000 customers and then you need to go and work on your product and you'll know when you're going in the right product direction when you've got some passionate advocates”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, exactly, exactly. And depending on the deal, it might be structured in a different way. So it might be staged on a founder, depending on the idea, and when indeed a business might well need extra slug cash.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Sure. So in fact, a lot of the time we get called something similar to an incubator because we offer the office space and things along those lines. And that's definitely not what we are. We're offering much, much larger checks, so around 250,000. Exactly even at that idea stage, which very much sets us apart from many accelerator or incubator.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, sure. Well, because you're operating at such an early stage, it's extremely risky. So we're not looking to take on lots more risk than we absolutely need to. So insofar as a founder of a founding team are concerned, you need to be credible. It helps if you're doing a legal startup to be a lawyer, for example, and to understand a lot of the content and have a deep understanding of the market in which you're operating in. And furthermore, we'll be able to assess the quality of people's work, whether they've come up with a great product idea, whether they've sort of analyzed the competitive environment properly, whether they've got a vision, whether it's a product vision for future profitability, thought about what their sort of long... Term competitive advantages might be”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Sure. So it was interesting, there is a kind of proliferation of money at seed in Series A, particularly here in London at the moment, as well as Series B and Beyond, actually. But forward partners operates at an even earlier stage, at a stage which we call the idea stage. And it's perfectly possible for solo founders to come in with admittedly a well-substantiated idea and if they're credible, we might well invest in them. And the reason why we can go so early is that we have a team of full stack multi-language developers, front-end developers, digital marketers, graphic designers, a recruiter and product people to give the startups that we invest in the greatest chances of success. And for the earlier stage ones, we offer space in our warehouse here in Austria, which is clearly quite a big cost saving for them.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “But being a VC as a sort of be-all and end-all, thinking that you want to be there from sort of age 18, I think is perhaps not necessarily the right way to go about it.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think it's funny about people looking to enter the industry. I mean, wanting to be a VC is no bad thing, of course. But definitely I think some kind of expertise and working with or starting your own small business is really helpful to understand the sort of mechanics, the challenges, the important variables going on challenging small businesses and small teams and solo founders and things like that are definitely sort of equips you well for a step into venture capital. But then again there's no real substitute for financial skills. They're clearly requisite for this kind of job. The one thing which I would say is I wouldn't treat as a straight line if you end up as a venture capitalist that's great.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Internship at FOR Partners, and I've been here since. So not quite the straight line, which a lot of young folk getting into VC now follow, but it's been a good journey.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Exactly, exactly. And I thought, you know, what on earth am I doing? So I packed up almost immediately, did an MBA, I did a couple of startups, mostly catastrophic failures. I also invested the last bit of saved money I had in a couple of other startups which isn't an investment strategy that I would advise anyone follow. But a couple of, well, one of them has done quite well. They're out raising a serious beer at the moment. And as part of the series A around private equity company invested and got a Harvard NBA in to run the show. And I thought my work here is done. What should I do? I like finance stuff. I really like small businesses. I like investing in small businesses. So I looked at venture capital. And I actually took what was effectively an unpaid.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, sure. At undergraduate university, I was much like many other people just kind of wondering what I wanted to do. And more or less I followed my father into investment banking. But not mudges and acquisitions. I joined sales and trading because I liked all the sort of technical equipment, the fast pace, all that kind of stuff. And then I think in kind of 2006, when I got into it, it was still kind of a legit career. I think things or the goal place have changed a little bit since then. But one day, I think I had an epiphany when I was structuring a long dated interest rate derivative for a mid-market UK pension fund.”

    2015-12-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 097: Betting Big on Consumer Fintech with Matthew Bradley, Investor @ Forward Partners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source