Greg Taylor

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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“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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