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Scott Taylor

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23
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2015-05-28
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2015-05-28
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1
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  1. “Can't say the name of it. It's still on stealth, but it's a company that operates in the same space as Just Eat. And again, I invested it because of the team and actually the unit economics of food takeaway and delivery startups are pretty compelling.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think if you start a company with the sole goal of selling it, it's not really a great place to be. I think if you come up with a pretty simple problem that you want to solve and just execute on that ruthlessly and do pretty well and attract smart people, I think people will come in. There's a load of things that you have to take into consideration. Is it a strategic? Do you just want to sell it to go and sit in the beach? Do you want to sell it to grow it from strength to strength? Is your back against the wall? So yeah, there's a ton of things you need to take into consideration.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Going to cheat and say too. I think previously you guys have talked about the hard thing about hard things by Ban, which is great. Especially for CEOs and young CEOs, it's just great advice. Then my sort of second one is into the woods, how to tell stories and why we tell them by John York. I think one of the things that became clear to me as I started to find and sell and sell companies is being able to tell stories. Obviously, you have to craft a story to investors to get them to trust you with their cash and investment. You have to tell a story to consumers to tell them what product you're selling and what the USPs are and why they should trust you. So yeah, I think storytelling is a hugely important skill for a finder and it's something that I'm still working on.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, it's again going from strength to strength. I think I read over the weekend that Apple's revenues are now greater in China than the US. Yeah, that pretty much speaks for itself.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, we've got, it's crazy. I've got a figure in my email signature, which has our number. And you know you're doing pretty well if you have to come back every week and adjust it. So I think we're 90,000 plus at the minute, anyone time in the UK. There's 750,000 people learning to drive.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It's automotive and logistics is a pretty widespanning industry. So that includes in-cartelmatics, that includes logistics. So if you look at the startups that are in that space, there's Uber, there's Lyft, there's Tesla, there's Zen Drive. So there's a lot of tech within automotive at the minute. And I think it's only getting started. It's going to go from strength to strength, just having in-car telematics, for example, just being able to better risk profile people, being able to have richer data going through to the insurers, meaning lower insurance premiums. There's a ton of things that's going to happen in automotive. And if you look maybe 10, 20 years out, then autonomous cars or all of that stuff is pretty exciting.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, sure. Well, first port of goal is sort of rich auntie and uncles. Second is Angel List, all of these sort of crowdfunding websites. Third, just networking, getting out there, identifying young founders or finders that have done pretty well. Maybe it's an exit that's mentioned in TechCrunch, maybe trying to find their email address. And again, just being very succinct in your email comms to them just to say, or just trying to reach out to them. So yeah, there's plenty of avenues to try and find angel invest in. But I think Angel List and sort of like CrowdCube would probably be the favorites.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, it's an interesting one. It's difficult because if you look at the core maths of startups, the majority will fail. And if you're sort of raising 10, 20k from friends and family, it's always that bit more difficult if you're going to lose their money. But then on the flip side of that, it's great that friends and family are there to support you and let you try and strive to take your dreams. So yeah, it's sort of a two-sided coin. It depends. Again, you just have to stress to the friends and family or only tech funds from those people that are prepared to take it as a complete write-off. So yeah, it's sort of a mixed balance.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, definitely. If you look at the maths of it, if you're doing sort of a 50, 100K ticket size, the sort of tax advantages and stuff from it are great for high net worth individuals.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, No, I think both sort of have their place. I think the explosion in angel investment is great, as great as an ecosystem. It means that I'm very sort of metrics driven and hypothesis driven. It just means that we get to prove more hypotheses. It means that there's more businesses starting up and more data being collected as to what's resonating with the market. So yeah, I know I definitely agree that having a strong angel sort of ecosystem is very good for London and also globally. I think that's something that Silicon Valley had an upper hand in us over the past few years because of sort of all of the early employees of Google, Yahoo, all of those guys who cashed out, they went back and gave back Angel investments and it's something we haven't had that many huge exits over here in the UK, but thankfully now with EIS, SEIS, all of those things, we're definitely seeing this market become more buoyant.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “No, no, it can be for sure it can be pre product. And interestingly, I think I was just living through some stats this morning. I think like 22% of the applicants are within the manufacturing and retail space. So it's not specifically just online and tech. It's anybody that wants to start up a small business.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “An insight into the numbers. In 2014, there was 10,000 applications and about 3% of those will successfully get loans dispersed. And then you do your submission. And if you get accepted, then there's the post-loan support where the mentors kick in, which is where I would start to talk through. And you're matched with a mentor and it's really that relationship for the life of your company. So I meet up with Anthony probably twice a month and I plan to do that for the next sort of 11 12 months. So it's a real core relationship. It's not just one or two meetings and good luck with your journey.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, so I've been a mentor virgin, I think, now for about five or six months. I've got my first mentee, who's Anthony from Festival Friends app. The process of virgin, it's pretty standard. There's an application. You go through the application where you pull together your sort of business case, you start to decide how much of a loan. Virgin startup is sort of a delivery partner for the startup loans company, which is a government initiative, which has been going from strength to strength. So yeah, you do your application, then you go into Virgin Startup, and this is before you get paired up with a mentor or receive any cash. They'll go through your application and give you a bit of coaching and advice on how to pull together a basic cash flow or a basic financial model, basic analysis of your business. Then you submit your case, then the virgin sort of startup committee will approve it or disapprove it. And just to sort of give you...”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, if I've got my Angel investor hat on, I don't know, exits of 1 million plus for venture capital and EC1 capital and series A people, if you do the maths, you need some fairly high profile exits to be able to get a positive return on investment”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I think first and foremost, does the idea and vision resonate with me? There's just sort of some areas that I find a bit boring or I don't have the sort of necessary experience that don't really excite me. So yeah, first and foremost is the idea and the vision. Is it big enough? Would this change the world and put a dent in the universe? Or then also the finder in their background? It's usually a pretty good sign if somebody, for instance, is starting up a medical startup and they've been a doctor or brain surgeon for the past five years. That's always quite exciting. And then the team's probably more applicable to later stage, sort of series A startups was the”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, sure. So just for those that don't know, ECMO Capital is sort of a leading London-based web and mobile investment firm. We typically do, or Julian and the investment team typically do between 50k seed rounds to 2 million Series A or Bridge rounds. My role, I think I've been working alongside or advising EC1 for a year and a half or so now, and I'm simply just an advisor. So any startups that are related to SaaS or B2C startups, then I will look at your decks, give my two cents to Julian and the team and say, yay or nay. And then also secondly, advising their portfolio of companies. So any of their startups that are SaaS startups or B2C again, they're more than welcome to email me with what problems they've got and I'll again give my sort of my two cents and my experience as to what I've encountered.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, sure. It depends really what stage of your career you're at and also sort of what you can deal with economically. So if you want to work alongside somebody that's been pretty successful and obviously knows the market that you want to work in quite well, then you could offer to intern for free and just sort of live and learn with them for a few weeks. Other than that just building up relationships, getting introductions, going to meetups, finding people, just sort of being in the right places at the right time. And again, it all comes back to being relentlessly resourceful if you want to have a phone call or if you want to get advice from sort of an industry leading figurehead, there will be a way to do that. I remember I emailed, I think, Reed Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and it's not that hard to find their email addresses and you can mostly usually get. And as long as they're short, succinct and to the point and you're asking.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think having a strong mentor. I'm a big advocate of having mentors, people that have been there and done that, people like you can sort of act as assigned board, people that aren't attached to your company, so not using sort of your board as anyone on your board as a mentor, using somebody that can take a very impartial view and an honest truth and you can sort of deep dive into your own psychology. Other than that, I think having a strong work-life balance, whenever I was finding those companies age 14, 15, it was quite a lonely endeavor because I was solo founder for the majority of them. I was sort of solo finder until recently until sort of live drive and my drive and all of those ones. So yeah, just being able to find a work-life balance, being able and just making sure that you don't burn out.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You're really going to have to use your friendship network and build up networks and be able to tell a good story and all of that will take an eagerness to learn and humility.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, good question. I think sort of being relentlessly resourceful, especially back in the day when there wasn't so much support or so much infrastructure for young finders, I think just being able to not be afraid to pick up the phone to a Fortune 500 CEO or just sort of finding innovative ways of one upping the market and getting stuff that goes in your sort of way. So yeah, determination, being relentlessly resourceful, I guess, having a real dissatisfaction with the status quo. So you really want to change the world or you really want to impact your industry or your sort of vertical couple that with imagination and creativity. You do have to think outside the box and you really do want to make customers or people's lives better using your product. So that takes an incredible amount of creativity and vision. And then finally eagerness to learn and humiliate.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, it was pretty difficult. I think Nydares, it's amazing with Treehouse, all of the sort of learning resources to really handhold you through. I can't count how many of those huge big PHP in MySQL books I've bought. And it was pretty daunting whenever you're sort of 14, 15 trying to learn about object-orientated programming just through this huge book. And there was a bit of resource online to help you. But yeah, I built my first website. It was basically just using WordPress and a couple of plugins and PayPal. And then thankfully that one did pretty well. So I was able to sell it for a good bit. And then from there on out, I sort of hired developers.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “When that one dying, but yeah, that was sort of my first company. And throughout the whole of my sort of teenage years, started and sold a bunch of smaller startups sort of like small projects of at one point there was a Maldives travel agency. So yeah, I think it was maybe 10 or 12 online startups that had started and sold between the age of 15 and sort of 21.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Sure. I think I've always sort of had an entrepreneurial trade. This was sort of going back right the way back to primary school in Northern Ireland whenever I was cooking and selling toffee to my friends. And I think I started my first online startup when I was sort of age 15. So it wasn't too long after that. What was that? That was the property hut, which was basically an early sort of gum tree, or maybe Gumtree existed at the time. It was just sort of, we wanted to take a state agent out of the property market. We wanted people to sell their properties themselves for a flat fee. And yeah, it grew from strength to strength. But then I moved to Australia with my parents. So me being young, thinking that we could take over the world quickly expanded it to be UK and Australia. But then one thing led to another and we sort of bit off more than we could chew and ended up.”

    2015-05-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 040: The Required Qualities To Be A Great Founder, with Scott Taylor, CEO @ miDrive · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source