Charlie Casey

We’ve raised €1.5Bn across our studio ventures 🎉 I realised: Funding is a function of future clarity. When we work with founders, we ask them to go 5-10 years into the future. Get concrete. Not just a vision, but a plan you can walk through, step by step. - What’s your CPA? And over time? - What channels are driving your growth? - What needs to be true in the market for this to work? - What does the team look like now, in 6 months, 2 years etc? - What will you do if something big changes? (New tech, new rules, new rivals?) The more detail, the easier it is for investors to see what you see. When you pitch with this level of clarity, you don’t sound like someone asking for money. You sound like the CEO of a unicorn, inviting people to join your story before the world catches up. You start to embody that future leader. Investors feel it. They respond to it. Founders, if you’re pitching, ask yourself: Can you describe your business in 2030 in extreme detail?

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Our data shows a clear pattern: Founders outside of financial hubs give away more of their company, right from the start. A founder in Wales raising £500k might be diluted 22%+ But a founder in London raising the same amount would be closer to 13% And that single round can set your company on a certain trajectory: Less equity for the founder, less upside for early employees, and even less room for future investors. The downstream effects are massive and long-lasting. It isn’t to do with the quality of talent or ideas. It comes down to the limited number of fundraising options available in those areas. Being further from financial hubs means there are fewer angels, VCs, and corporates at your disposal. And it’s why regional founders often face tougher fundraising journeys, even when they’re building equally strong businesses. In 2025, geography shouldn’t be a factor when it comes to dilution (especially in a country as small as the UK) but the numbers tell a different story. My advice for founders outside of financial hubs is this: Don’t spray-and-pray. Do your research, identify and target the most relevant investors in your space (regardless of their location, especially if you can demonstrate traction in the geographies where their fund is based), and avoid over-reliance on a handful of local players. Otherwise, you risk giving away too much, too soon. At shipshape.vc, we’re committed to levelling that playing field - helping founders anywhere, not just in London or New York, raise smarter and protect more of the companies they’re working so hard to build. #Fundraising #Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #RegionalFounders #Equity #ShipshapeVC

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Nearly half of ALL retail spend in the UK is ALREADY circular. According to new research from Amazon and CEBR: 🛍️ Circular purchases now make up 34 to 45% of UK retail spend 💷 Brits spent £5.6 billion buying 200 million second-hand products in 2024 🔮 And 59% say they’ll buy more second-hand in 2025 I’ve long seen this future coming. Now I’ve got the data to prove it. Consumers aren’t buying to own anymore. They’re buying to use, then reselling when they’re done. Ownership has become a stopgap for access. This is product-as-a-service in disguise. The problem...when your customers resell peer-to-peer on Vinted, eBay or Facebook? Every P2P resale is lost revenue and lost insight to the brand. Merchants capturing circular directly on their P&L is the how we all win, Amazon’s “Second Chance” resale channel just passed €2 billion in sales across Europe. They get it. Circular commerce including resale, rental, trade-in and usage-based access will account for 40%+ of ALL retail. If you’re not building circular models into your core stack, you’re giving up margin and control by default. That’s why we built Supercycle. Giving merchants the tooling to own every cycle, turning usage into revenue, returns into resale and customers into subscribers.

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“The UK has the best talent in the world, but we sometimes lack ambition”   Grateful for Neil Buchanan @ Lodestar Space (‘bodyguards for satellites’) inspiring and educating our emerging founders spinning out from UK Atomic Energy Authority (thank you) > If you’re pre-idea and pre-cofounder you’ll benefit from doing the Entrepreneurs First programme (if you can get on). The speed of learning and environment truly accelerate founders > Unlocking early adopter demand: LinkedIn outreach, speak to people with common interests, build networks, keep the cadence of outreach, running a customer discovery process (‘mom test’ - Rob Fitzpatrick ) > Sizing the opportunity: top down look for $10BNs to $100BNs market problems and then look bottom up with an eye to the future. Bottom up is always the sobering one and should be your north star - never lie to your team, investors and worst of all: yourself.  > Engaging VCs often: reduce the risk as much as possible (team, market, tech) show how you’re hiring to fit a few key gaps can be fine > Founders need to be confident to be selective with the investors they partner with. Being mindful if you’re taking investment from a key player in an industry (is it for their ultimate M&A activity, is it going to impact your sales). Ideally you’re ambitious and don’t want an early exit but also investment from a defence prime if you’re dual use can unlock channels > Building for dual use or defence? Prioritise USA GTM in the short term. > Finding non-dilutive sources of cash: run a process to identify relevant organisations, keep an open mind / keep it wide to keep options open. Keeping burn low you can achieve a lot prior to dilutive capital > Don’t get distracted by the shiny numbers of a big raise - it's needed for strong talent acquisition & credibility boosting but the best talent will resonate with the high impact mission & tech dev to get there - the rest of your time for focus on where it needs to be: customers and sales > Geopolitics impacting decisions on which markets to target, hiring decisions, who to have on the cap table ▪️If you’re an investor / founder and you’d like to do a lunchtime Q&A to educate and inspire our emerging founders please DM

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10 fundraising errors that kill deals before they start I had the pleasure of collaborating with Marc Penkala (altitude) and Alexander Estner (MRR Unlocked) on a Blueprint for Securing Early-Stage Funding in 2025. 🚀 We’ll be sharing the full guide later this week and tried to break down everything about startup fundraising, e.g. the most common mistakes we have been seeing over the last years: ❌ Mistake #1: Pitching too early Lack of proof points = Lack of credibility ✅ Wait until you have real proof points ❌ Mistake #2: Too many iterations Pivoting during fundraising screams "we don't know what we're doing" ✅ Lock in your narrative before going to market ❌ Mistake #3: Founding team changes during the process Team changes = instant red flag ✅ Resolve team issues before raising ❌ Mistake #4: Overpromising projections If you don't follow through, it kills your credibility. ✅ Be realistic with forecasts ❌ Mistake #5: Running a messy process Dragging it out for 12+ months means lost momentum ✅ Set clear timelines and stick to them ❌ Mistake #6: Raising without a plan Fundraising just for runway isn't enough. ✅ Have crystal-clear use of funds ❌ Mistake #7: Not understanding investor expectations ✅ Research fund size, check sizes, and returner expectations ❌ Mistake #8: Spray and pray outreach Generic emails show a lack of preparation ✅ Personalize every single outreach ❌ Mistake #9: Starting too late Less time forces you to take desperate decisions ✅ Start 6-9 months before you need capital ❌ Mistake #10: Fluff-heavy pitch decks Jargon doesn't impress investors ✅ Focus on the crucial information only The founders who avoid these mistakes raise faster, on better terms and from the right investors. Which ones are you guilty of making? We turned our years of angel and VC experience into an actionable mrrunlocked guide on how to get your first funding round in 2025 and hope it’s helpful for you. Watch out and thanks to Alex for the great initiative and major work.

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