YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Britton

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25
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2015-03-30
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2015-03-30
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1
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  1. “And I want to do this through crowdfunding. And I don't want to do it through rewards crowdfunding because it's like you give me all this money and I just give you a t-shirt or a ticket or whatever it is. I want people who invest to directly profit if the movie makes money from their investment. And I thought it was great. He's this guy who could probably tap up a studio in Hollywood and get money from them and he's kind of not shunned that. But he's wanted to try and explore this new model of raising finance. And I think that's great. You know, we like the people who are innovators because we like to think of ourselves as innovators as well. And he's definitely trying to innovate within that industry.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Okay, well, we recently raised for a movie, right? It was a Hollywood movie. Simon West is the director. And I'm picking this one because I'm a huge con air fan. And Simon West directed Con Air and Tomb Raider and a bunch of other things. And his reasons for crowdfunding, for equity crowdfunding and doing it in the UK were great. He was tired of the traditional model of raising finance in Hollywood and everyone getting a cut and everyone getting a say. And he just said, look, I don't want to do that.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “In the sense of they can drop a line of code onto any BNB's website and give them an e-commerce platform. A lot of these BNBs lose money because they have to pay to list on all of these different platforms. And what these guys have worked out is that actually if we turn your own site into your own e-commerce platform, then we can do that and you save money versus listing elsewhere. And I thought that was pretty cool. The third one is they'll have to pick a third. They're all great.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Alert hand. Yeah. So the first one that comes to mind is ego airplanes, which was kind of one of the first raises that we did. I think it was second or third. And when I was younger, I wanted to be a pilot. And they make these ultra-lightweight aircraft, single-seat airplanes, and because of kind of deregulation in the aviation industry, I think last year, the year before, they can now create these planes that cost like 60 grand. And while that's still a lot of money for me and most people, it's kind of like, actually, maybe I could be a pilot. So there's ego. Yeah, kind of a funny one. But then, so we recently closed around for a company called Instyle. And what I like about them is that they're trying to help BNBs by not being kind of air.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And I think I should probably preface this with in no way does this mean that those were better investments than any of the others.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “But we're ambitious, so it's always like, well, we should be the biggest by now. And it's like, well, we've only been around live for 18 months. So is that really a fair expectation to have? Well, you know, my co founder writes for Forbes. So that's a start. We're not on the cover yet.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Wow. That one's a tricky question, I guess For any entrepreneur, it's that first kind of six to 12 months where things are moving slowly. Everyone's got this vision of, we're going to be amazing. And second we get it out there, there's going to be a million people on our website and everyone's going to be investing. But given that our industry is so young and us within the industry are even younger, it's been I don't want to say it's slow growth because we have grown quickly, but the expectations and these visions that you get in your head of, yeah, and next year I'm going to be on Forbes, on the cover of Forbes as a thought leader. You kind of have to bring that all into perspective and be realistic about it. And I will say that we've done a lot. We've knocked all of our KPIs out of the park. We keep readjusting things so we're growing and we're on a tremendous back.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Absolutely. I mean, our whole model is based on syndication, right? And we've been working with business angels and funds already on co-investing. And I definitely think that there's benefit to having that lead investor on board, but then also a crowd or a wider audience of investors on board beyond just kind of market presence and getting potential consumers to invest in you.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, so we've got kind of peer-to-peer loans. Type of rays or type of asset class or within the same asset class but at a different level.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Let's be honest, last year there was 84 million done through equity crowdfunding. CrowdCube were the first, the largest now. They've been kind of blazing the trail. But there's enough market share out there for all of us, for at least the big three. You talk about angel investment being at about a billion pounds a year in the UK. You look at kind of the early stage funds. Maybe that's another billion or so. There's plenty of room for all of us to grow. Right now we're kind of just a drop in the ocean.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “They do when they think that their advice is valuable. So we have a lot of kind of business angels and ex- kind of academics as a part of our network. They're all there to support the community. It's not a requirement and not everybody does it, but the guys who are putting in a bit more cash generally want to give the advice that they can to the companies. I mean, you look at the companies that we've been funding recently. Like I said earlier, we have a lot who are very, very IP heavy. We funded things, a lot of things in life sciences, med tech, health, biology, ed tech, and kind of science-based. And that's partially because we were based in Cambridge, but we also have a lot of investors who are based in Cambridge as well, who are PhDs and this and that. And, you know, it's good to be able to connect them when you can.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “With our model, we have minimum investment level of £1,000, right? So when someone comes to us, they know that their cap table's not going to have hundreds of people. And I'll admit that may or may not be a problem, depending upon who you ask and who the VC is that may come in later. But it's nice to know that the people that are coming in are serious investors who like everybody want to see the business invest, but also are able to kind of follow on in later rounds with additional kind of larger amounts of funds.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “We've done it before. It's not the business that we're in, but it's actually working with all of the Angel networks who tend to be the lead investors and knowing what it is that they're interested in and what they tend to invest in. If we get something that really stands out and doesn't have a lead investor, then we're happy to send it on to one of the lead groups, whether it be an Angel Network or a Fund. We can't make any promises, though, that that fund will then say, yeah, we want to invest, but we're here to help the ecosystem as a whole. So it's not like we're going to turn everyone away and just say, go help yourself.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “There are a lot of things that people don't read that is readily available on the website and we have to just rule them out because of that.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I'm going to get the numbers wrong and apologies as to note. But if you look at it this way, most of the companies that are out there come to us and they don't have a lead investor yet. So by rule, they're ruled out. Then we start to get into the fact of, okay, now these companies are looking for a couple of million. Do we think we can raise that? Yes or no? So there's this tick box. And I would say maybe one in 50 would be a best guess. We're able to actually list on the platform, if not more. But that's just because people have an awareness of, oh, it's equity crowdfunding, so we'll just send them our pitch deck and hopefully they'll want to work with us, not taking into account all of the other things that we tell them. Like, look, you have to have lead investors. You have to offer preemption, drag along, tag along rights. All of your investors have to invest on the same terms.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “And by success, you're referring to funding around. Well, to be honest, on Syndicate Room, we filter out a lot of companies. And actually, we have a pretty good stat for success. It's about 80%. But we do a good job of understanding kind of what our audience are looking for and the capacity of our audience to fund around.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I personally feel that the biggest problem facing crowdfunding is awareness. And it's awareness of the industry and the fact that people can invest in these young companies. But it's also awareness of that risk. So the more people that you reach, you have to be sure that they understand what they're getting into. And that's kind of a challenge. It's quite easy to... To look at something and want to invest, it's another thing to fully understand everything about that investment. And I hate to cite that Nestor report again, but they recommend that Angel should really look at something for about 20 hours before investing. And you need to convey that message to everybody. You'll really do your due diligence.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I don't think it's fundamentally different, but you should view it more as plugging a gap. A lot of people talk about the equity gap and some people tell you it's anywhere from half a million up to about two or three million. What we're seeing is that VCs aren't coming in into a round until it reaches a certain size and that size is getting larger and larger. So what a VC would have done a few years ago, five or ten even playing in a $2 million. Now they won't touch anything below say So, really, crowdfunding kind of fills that void that's been vacated by these BCs.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Well, you could call everything marketing, right? A newsletter is marketing. We aim to put out press releases about the companies that are raising finance, but we're very focused on the company more than ourselves. And we're also focused on kind of the industry that that company is in. Because we know that the types of companies that we get tend to be quite mature, a lot of them are IP heavy. And we know that there's a select audience that are going to understand that type of investment. So we go after journals that might be in the field that the company is operating or other papers that are in that field. We haven't really done a massive, more general blitz of marketing. It's very targeted. And with the rise of crowdfunding,”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “It's about half. The numbers, you should think about it more per round. So our minimum is 25% of the deal must be funded by the lead investors. But we've also had deals that have come to us where only 10% of it is still available. So there's a big range depending upon the round size. And what's your average?”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I'd like to think so, yes. Let's be honest, it's quite a risky asset class for people to hold. It's a risky investment wherever you go. But you'd like to think, and if you go back to that Nestra report, the lead investors and the business angels who have experience in what they're doing in this type of investment are more likely to have good returns. Now, the industry is so young that we can't really prove it, but I'd like to think in a few years' time when we start to look at exits and consistency of exits that will hopefully be ahead of where the events are at.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, of course. We operate what we call an investor-led equity crowdfunding model. And what that means is that before any opportunity comes to us and is open to our wider network of investors, there has to be an established lead investor involved who's kicked the tires of the business, done their due diligence, and decided to commit to invest in the company. So it's not just an entrepreneur coming with an idea and pitching to the audience. They have to have that anchor investor, whatever you want to call it, involved before we'll even take a look at it.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I was setting my MBA at Cambridge, and by chance at this alumni night, I ran into Gonzalo, who's the co-founder at Syndicate Room. And we got to chatting, and he was telling me about this crazy concept, which was crowdfunding and how it was going to revolutionize investment into early stage businesses. At first, I kind of thought, yeah, yeah, okay, that's kind of cool. the more we started talking and the more he kind of explained how it works and his vision for it, I really bought into it, if you will. And instead of going off and either doing my own thing or becoming a consultant after business or a lot of people do, I just decided, you know what, I'm going to give this a go. And since then, we've been working on syndicate room.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, and when I got, when I decided to retire at the rifle the age of 25, I got offered kind of a promotion at the train line to look at their product development. And in product development, I was responsible for kind of IT teams and marketing and really focusing on their mobile application development. So through kind of pure luck and just hard work, I moved from having studied economics to being a quasi-professional footballer into IT and software development. At that point in time, I was doing these apps and I kind of realized that I was making a lot of money for a company and thought, why don't I try and do this for myself, but not having experience in other parts of business, I realized that I needed to go back to school. So I went back to school.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, well, it's kind of a funny story. I grew up in the States, but my dad's British, so I was always a football fan growing up. And when I finished my undergraduate degree, I decided to move to the UK and try playing professional football. So I moved over. I was playing kind of in the Scottish 2nd and 3rd Division, doing all right, but realizing that I wasn't going to make it to the top. And you have to understand when you're with these kind of lowly clubs, you're not making a lot of money. So I had this part-time job being a project manager for the company called the Trainline, the Trainline.com.”

    2015-03-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 023: The Recipe for a successful Crowdfunding campaign with Tom Britton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source