S5 Ep16 - Amory Pouldon - Double Down Ventures

Pitch Deck is coming back! Some news from Nick about what is round the corner for the re-booted Pitch Deck. Pitch Deck is sponsored by trumpet

Jay is a serial entrepreneur and has founded 3 successful businesses worth over $500m: Yieldify, Reachdesk & Screenloop He now spends his time in 3 areas: (1) Building tech companies through his startup studio Blissgrowth (2) Co-hosting the podcast Happy Millionaire - which is in the top 10 in Apple and Spotify: It's 2 friends having fun and talking about startups, success and happiness stories  (3) Angel investing - he has done 40 deals so far. His passion is to bring more joy to work and loves talking about entrepreneurship, happiness whilst having fun. Episode Links: Sponsored by trumpet - turning better buyer journeys into more revenue Blissgrowth Reachdesk Screenloop Jay's Linkedin

Founding Partner of the multi award-winning Concept Ventures, largest dedicated pre-seed fund in the UK ($60m). Reece has invested in 80+ start-ups from idea to unicorns (6 in total) and been ranked as one of the Top Asian Tech Investors on numerous occasions by Diversity UK. Prior to founding Concept, Reece built and sold several start-ups in the software space, 1 of which was successfully exited, 1 a complete disaster and 1 is still going today. Passionate about giving back, Reece has created the Concept Venture Pledge where a percentage of Concept's exit profits are donated to a social cause of the founder’s choice. He has also been selected by the FT as one of the top 100 BAME leaders in tech for his consistent work in helping promote diversity in the UK tech sector. Episode Links: Sponsored by trumpet - Create buyer journeys that drive more revenue Reece's Linkedin Concept Ventures

Chris founded Divido in 2014, now the world’s largest white-label platform for Buy Now Pay Later. As founder/CEO Chris took the company to 10 countries and onboarded over 100 clients including Mastercard, HSBC and BMW. They have raised over $50m are recognised as the 83rd fastest-growing company in Europe by the Financial Times '21 and achieved 1250% revenue growth over three years until 2020. Chris is also an investor with Seedcamp, who have backed over 350 startups including the likes of Revolut and Transferwise, Entrepreneur in Residence at HSBC and Fellow at Primary Venture Partners - Early-stage investor in startups based in New York. Episode Links: Dividio Primary Venture Partners trumpet Chris on Linkedin

Amory started life out in investment banking before moving into the energy sector and VC moving to Shell Ventures as Venture Principal. Shell Ventures an arm of the oil company,  invests in early-stage companies that have reached proof-of-concept focused on fintech/insurtech/mobility and clean tech. He is now founder of his own $20m fund, D2 and looking to do 10 deals this year and a further 10 next year, focused on lean startups that don't need further funding to get to Series A and then the founder can decide whether they want to go down the VC route or grow from profitability - and has been an angel investor in the past D2 is a different type of venture fund. They provide early stage start-ups with equity capital and also offer debt as they scale. Their objective is to bring the right type of capital at the right time to help you own more of your business at exit. Episode Links D2 fund trumpet - Create buyer journeys that drive more revenue Amory on Linkedin

Novo was co-founder of Syft that was acquired by Indeed.com in a multi-million pound deal and is now known as Indeed Flex, the online marketplace for temporary staffing in the UK and US supplying workers to the hospitality, retail and logistics sectors. Since exiting Syft. Novo has also angel invested and has around 15+ companies in his portfolio including BYP (Black Young Professionals), Tinto (mothers community app) and Ufurnish (marketplace for buying furniture across  retailers) Show Links: Sponsored by trumpet Novo's Linkedin

Henry de Zoete is an alumnus of Y Combinator and in 2014 co-founded The Big Deal which uses tech to facilitate collective bargaining for consumers. In 2018, he went on to establish Look After My Bills, a tech start-up that became the largest auto-switching service in the UK, saving families money on their gas and electricity. After raising global investment and securing the best deal in the history of BBC’s Dragons’ Den, Look After My Bills was acquired by Go Compare in July 2019.  He is also a non-exec director for Hornby and the UK Cabinet Office and has been angel investing since 2019, and is now in over 50 companies. Episode Links: Hyper-personalise your sales cycle from cold outreach to onboarding, with trumpet. More demos, more revenue, quicker. Henry's Linkedin

Rupa is an entrepreneur, angel investor and senior advisor to corporates, government and private equity. She has started several businesses over the last decade across the property, media and technology industries. She is an active angel investor in under-represented founders with 24+ company investments and an LP in five venture capital funds run by diverse partners. She was recognised in 2021 as Top 20 Female Angel Investors in the U.K. by the Angel Business Association and is also a board advisor for several early-stage VCs, a board member of YPO, a founding member of the Guild of Entrepreneurs and a mentor on the Mayor of London's Business Growth Programme.

I'll be taking a quick summer break and will be back in September with some more great guests.

Eamonn Carey is a partner at Tera Ventures, where he focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments across multiple sectors. He's previously been a founder, an MD at Techstars in London and New York, and a partner at The Fund. He's invested in almost 100 companies across Europe, the US, Africa and Asia. There is nothing that Eamonn doesn't know in this space. Episode Links: Sponsored by trumpet Eamonn's Linkedin and Twitter Tera Ventures