Casey Lord

Right now, I'm wide awake, since I just landed from the Bay Area a few hours ago. And so here I am, catching up on LinkedIn notifications from the past week. Right up there and lighting it all up, is Noggin HQ with news of further support for their mission! https://lnkd.in/dSmcpme8 I met Evangeline A. & Laura Mills back in 2022 through Hannah Leach. And have been supporting them since. Admittedly I was concerned on how they were going to take on the likes of Experian. But that was put aside once hearing their passion, grit and emphathy for the challenge space, having themselves (and their friends) facing the blockers to even get a mobile phone contract, and seeing their vision for a product and service that can offer people transparency, choice and control of their data. Noggin is for anyone who has ever faced closed doors due to your credit score. It is the next-generation Credit Reference Agency. Outdated credit scoring practices mean millions are unfairly excluded from accessing products they need (often with no explanation). And you’ll be unsurprised to hear, it’s historically disadvantaged groups who suffer most. Noggin will facilitate fairer and more efficient decision making enabling lenders to sell responsibly and profitably to the 40% of young people who are unnecessarily rejected when applying for credit. Bonus points awarded for all this being built in the North East of the country. Not to mention it always being nice when joined by friends, in this case: Dama Sathianathan, Edwina Johnson, Andrea Sinclair, Thish Nadesan, Amrit Sami, Sarah Touzani and others...

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I don't know sh*t about sh*t. But I know this is garbage. - All-female founding teams: Receive 2.3% of VC funding - Mixed-gender founding teams: Receive 10.4% of VC funding - Female founders receive about a quarter of the funding they seek: While male founders receive half on average And if you have brown skin? Basically forget about it. The numbers just shrink. I keep bumping into founders that have a bigger uphill battle than the rest. And I'd love to be able to provide some level of help outside of intros and ideas. Who has resources? Who are the VCs that are focused on underserved and underrepresented founders? Can you help me build the list? Or locate the one that already exists? PS: Before you come at me, yes, I realize I'm a middle-aged white man with a c-level title at an early stage company that has received funding. Be part of the problem or part of the solution. Ya feel?

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"Sunk cost. Execute then reflect. Be brave to delve into unchartered waters. Distribution > Product. Frameworks are learned - not necessarily taught..." Our Head of Ops, Julia Chen interviewed the generous Matthew Geleta & Darryn Rabec on their experiences building and scaling impactful ventures. Some key takeaways were: 📌 "There are other ways to build not governed by the powers of VC - not all businesses NEED to be venture-backed" 📌 "Surround yourself with the people who inspire you to elevate with them" 📌 "If you're bootstrapping, play in an arena that is in a big enough market but without high-capital players" This wraps up the second session of the #EmergingGiants2024 Summit. Huge thank you to Harrison.ai for providing the space!

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Two weeks ago, we officially launched Mimo! We’ve been blown away by the response but truthfully this journey has had ups, downs and lots of lessons. Here are 10 learnings so far. 👇 1. There’s no imposter syndrome like ‘founder imposter syndrome.’ I worked in VC and consulting for years. Honestly, I often felt like an imposter. But nothing matches the imposter syndrome I felt as an entrepreneur trying to pitch a product that wasn’t ready yet! Wouldn’t trade it though. 🙂 2. “Work” and “life” are never in perfect balance. Since starting Mimo, I’ve watched my two toddlers grow a year older. Being a dad and a founder is super rewarding. But I won’t sugar coat it…it’s hard too! Shout out to the partners and families supporting entrepreneurs chasing their passion. 3. Personal relationships matter in business (maybe more than they should). Being able to call people you know to make intros, try your product and get fundraising advice helps a lot in the early days. Important to remember it’s a privilege that not all founders have. 4. Co-founders can disagree on anything…except values. Alexander, Andreas and I have had plenty of heated discussions. What gets us through them is our shared values and mutual trust. When co-founders agree on values, disagreements never feel personal. They feel progressive. 5. Hire fast, but never lower the bar. You’re an entrepreneur and you need to move quickly. I get it. But rushing a hiring decision will slow you down in the long term. Bar-raisers only! 6. Clarity wins. We raised our first round thanks to one simple Notion page. There was nothing fancy about it, but the idea was clear. Clear thinking always beats slick presentations. 7. Optimising your cash conversion cycle is 2024’s best growth hack. We’ve spoken to hundreds of SMBs and accountants in the last year. The ones that optimised their CCC are in a better position to grow this year. Those that haven’t yet, well, that’s what Mimo is for. 😉 8. When you raise your first round, it’s all about the vision. Not the product. 9. When you raise your second round, it’s all about the product. Not the vision. 10. Your first customers won’t come to you. You have to go to them. The photo below is of Alex and me biking around London to find Mimo’s first customers. They didn’t want to face London traffic and I don’t blame them! No matter how big you want your business to be, you have to start small.  The last 15 months have been the most rewarding of my career by far. Big thanks to our customers, team, partners and investors for coming on this journey with us.  We’re just getting started! #startups #smb #fintech #payments

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Female founders raise 3% of venture capital in Europe. Imagine you have a son and a daughter. You give 3 candies to your daughter and 97 candies to your son and you ask both of them to open a candy shop. Now imagine the numbers with equal funding in the context of the numbers in below post. Why do investors deny such a potential portfolio growth and underestimate women just because we are ourliers in tech industry...

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Your feedback keeps us going! 🚀 This is feedback from a recent workshop we ran for Hatch Enterprise UK on funding strategy.  Our mission with GuessWorks is centered around demystifying the entrepreneurship journey. It's incredibly fulfilling to provide that stepping stone and cheat sheet for others that are inspired to start the journey. Now, gearing up for our next workshop! And if you're a founder looking to join a programme like this - Hatch actually have another Incubator coming soon - applications close end of Monday 29th April... Gain the tools, knowledge, and network you need to market effectively, access crucial funding, and grow your business sustainably. Don't miss this chance to stay accountable, connect with fellow entrepreneurs, and achieve clarity on your business growth strategies. Apply now but be quick, applications close on Tuesday 7th May (link in comments 👇🏻). #Founderskills #startuptraining #accelerators #innovationskills #entrepreneurshipeducation #feedback

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Hundreds of books are published each year on venture capital fund raising. But this one rises way above the pack by a long mile -- as it's written by the Managing Partner of Europe's most successful seed investor Seedcamp, Carlos Eduardo Espinal MBE who has been part of over 500+ investment thus far. Highly recommended if you need a refresh on the latest trends (especially when one needs to unlearn and relearn), post pandemic, or is new to the fund raising journey. Hope you find it useful. He'll appreciate the feedback either way (always the best way). #fundraising #ventures #learn #unlearn #relearn

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The government’s latest tax relief extension via VCT and EIS schemes is great, but only if investment reaches founders across all backgrounds. Women founders and those from ethnically diverse communities are still significantly underfunded, and this needs to change if we’re serious about fostering real innovation. With the excitement around AI, let’s ensure we’re solving real problems—not just building tech for the sake of it. Will these initiatives drive progress where it's truly needed? #StartupFunding #InclusiveInnovation #DiverseFounders

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5 Years Ago I Posted "So many people want to get into VC but VC is dominated by people who look like me" - Yep - old white bloke .. "What about all the brilliant under-represented people who cannot get in - no matter how hard they try" Perhaps like you or a sibling or a friend or a colleague... "Why don't I start an Academy for those under represented to get into VC" 150,000 impressions later - that's what we did - we founded Included VC & more than 100 Fellows are now VCs - taught by the best, emersive in nature & a thriving global community Now It's Your Chance, Once Again 📣  APPLICATIONS OPEN: INCLUDED VC’s 2024 Global Fellowship - A unique ‘Venture Capital MBA’ Global VCs have come together to create change in the world of Venture Capital. We’re looking for outstanding, so far overlooked individuals who have ambitions to break into VC. Included VC Fellows receive: Masterclasses & In-depth knowledge ✅ Investment Committees ✅ Fully remote with summits ✅ Direct mentoring from leading VCs ✅ Oh, at NO cost, it’s fully funded ✅ Led by the irrepressible Nikita Thakrar and VCs, Fellows and supporters all around the world 🌍

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In the UK, we're a few days away from a very consequential election 🇬🇧 I'm a longterm fan, supporter and through Google ex-funder of Startup Coalition (then Coadec) who have always done a great job repping the startup voice to government; their Startup Manifesto is now live advocating for the centrality of British startups in any economic strategy. This manifesto is a roadmap for the next government, and I'm proud to sign my support. Core tenets the UK needs to crack to thrive: - access to world-class talent - incentives to start, then access to capital to scale;  - a clear, simple set of rules and regulations flexible enough to encourage new and innovative startup business models to grow;  - support from Government levers to unlock innovation. Go read, go sign:

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My email to a founder that I'd like to invest in, re: what makes Graham & Walker special: "Every fund has traditional 'value add', and so do we - big amplification channels, help with press, impressive network that we can name drop etc. But I don't think that's what makes us special. We're the fund you want on your side when things get hard. And they will, in fact, get hard. (And, somewhat ironically, if you don't believe things will get hard, then I don't think we'll want to invest in you). We are ride or die investors. We have a high tolerance for the early, ugly and messy. We're honest with you, but always kind. We shine when it's hard to talk to the rest of your investors. As proof points I offer what some of our founders have to say about us. And some of my writing, both in public (like our values, and the viral article about female founder takedowns), and in private (I'll forward you the email I sent to the whole portfolio late last year). Most importantly, I invite you to talk to any of our portfolio companies, particularly those who have had moments of struggle as well as moments of victory. I'm excited to be on your cap table. Our mission at Graham & Walker is to change the face of the Nasdaq by investing in female founders that can go the distance. I believe you might be one of them."

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If you're looking for VC funding in the UK, check out FundFinder.live If you're one of those people that likes to just play with all the circles on an Apple Watch because it's super satisfying, but struggle to pick one because playing with the interface is too satisfying, then maybe don't go to this website :) FundFinder has a similar interface to Apple Watches, but on web. Thank you Hector Mason, Jack Richardson, and the team at Focal for sharing this. Simultaneously showing me a very useful tool that could save me time in research, but also could waste lots of my time thanks to my brain (not sure if ADD or something else). And thank you to Concept Ventures and Justified Studio for building it. Oliver Kicks - who deserves the credit? #random #fundraising #startup #vc

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A huge first step in closing the female funding gap in VC - the Invest in Women Taskforce announced a massive £255M fund to back female investors. Why? 🚨Appallingly, less than 2% of equity funds go to women founded businesses - a challenge I saw first hand when building a tech startup in London in the 2010s with a female co-founder (the unstoppable Brynne Kennedy) 2✖️Women investors are twice as likely to back women than male investors (we need more female GPs starting firms and sitting on ICs) 📈£250 Billion (that’s a B) could be added to the UK economy alone by backing women I was lucky enough to join the wonderful launch event last night at Mansion House. The energy was palpable and the room was full of powerful women leading the charge. Excited to see where it goes from here and a huge congrats to taskforce co-chair (and Smart Society Ventures advisor 💪), Debbie Wosskow, OBE

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I don't go in for 'building in public' in general, but every now and then I think it's worth sharing what I'm seeing in the market. The below graph shows the average time to close a deal over time at EmergeOne and you can see that this has been creeping up since last year (adjusted for seasonality) and is currently close to 3 months to close a deal. So what's happening? Well, I was recently at an CFO event where we got a bit of a data driven view into the state of private markets. Some key points that came out: 🏷️ Median post money at Series A has dropped from 80m USD in 21/22 to 65m USD in 2024. This is still up from 40m from circa 2020. ％ Top quartile is significantly over at 107m. 📈 Series B median post money is $137m, top quartile $287m USD, but bottom quartile significantly struggling. 🚀 Deal velocity has slowed but started recovering. 💰 Lots of deals are happening but not priced - bridges abound. So how does this therefore relate to what we're seeing in terms of time to close? Firstly, we are a consultancy providing fractional CFO support to venture backed tech startups typically post Seed and pre Series A so this data reflects what we are generally seeing in the market as well. But the two main issues that are seemingly impacting our numbers are around deal velocity and bridge financing. There are simply fewer deals being done and they are taking longer to close, so the volume of potential clients we can target has dropped significantly. This does, however, mean that the quality of deals we're working on is significantly higher this year. Secondly, as companies struggle to raise priced rounds, they are raising lower amounts of capital on convertibles. This impacts us as CFOs are only truly valuable when there is a significant balance sheet to manage, less capital = less need for CFOs and hence the decision as to when to bring us in gets pushed out. But equally, that insecurity over funds means that founders are much more hesitant to make significant hiring decisions, prioritising hires that can directly influence revenue / traction in the near term. But they also know that they need the support so are often waiting for the 'magic moment' where they hit an inflection point that gives them confidence to pull the trigger. Outside of the deal data, we are also seeing venture indexing towards more R&D heavy businesses (life science, hardware etc.) and these sort of companies are often not commercialising for several years. They have security over spend and regard finance as a future problem. We are seeing a lot of companies approaching Series B without anyone in finance, deferring that decision till they close. But we are also seeing leads come through from a multitude of sources proving there is appetite for strong commercially minded CFOs to support and grow these scaling businesses. So as the market stabilises, I would expect to see these numbers come back. Business wouldn't be any fun if it was all easy, would it?!

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Founders that are feeling lost could do this 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. More recently I'm seeing late-seed/ Series A founders struggling with where to focus and how to get teams aligned and build with intensity. Many "hard things" come up in our discussions, and to be honest I often struggle to figure out where I can have the most impact. Being a founder (especially now) feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, staring into the abyss, and chewing on glass (per Elon). 𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁? The older I get, the more I know that the magic is in simplicity and clarity. To be and feel in control, founders need to know the details. With greater clarity founders can act with both information and intuition. And 𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁. It sounds obvious but I see the greatest growth when founders double-down on doing this one thing first: 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗮𝗹𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 and 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 about what is 𝚛̲𝚎̲𝚊̲𝚕̲𝚕̲𝚢̲ going on in the business. 1) What are 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 and pipeline really thinking and feeling? 2) What is your 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 really seeing, thinking and feeling? Simple and obvious, but not always being done. Getting unvarnished raw data is step #1 to finding focus and getting back on track. #founders #leadership #startups #clarity #truth #simplicity

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I was wondering what external support other founders on here seek or have in place to keep their business (and them) moving. A coach? An advisor? A therapist? I’ve learned over the last few years that, for me, a mixture of the above have been necessary to keep our business (and my brain) healthy. Here’s why👇 : 🧠 Accountability & Perspective → You’re so close to the helm at the beginning of a business, you’re spinning plates all day every day. It’s too easy to end up focusing on a particularly wobbly plate for too long and miss others which are about to fall. Having an outside perspective is critical to having an overarching view of your business. They don’t need to know every single detail about your precious business baby to still bring value to you. That can come in the form of a coach or advisor - and they can come in many forms too. That external perspective helps you see beyond the daily challenges and plan for the long haul, whether it’s them getting you to ask yourself questions (coach), or them imparting wisdom from their own experience (advisor). 🏆 Experience → Which brings me to experience. Our current advisor Sandra Marichal was dropped into our laps from some kind of startup utopia, with a totally unique and impressive set of skills and experience that are a great fit for us. She found us - and that was because we had an online presence on places like LinkedIn where we talked about our journey with TaskHer, so she could see she could bring value to our business. With other coaches/advisors, it’s been us asking the question to people we were already talking to in other capacities. We’ve looked for people who’ve been where we are, who’ve got great networks, who are a number of steps ahead of us. 👉 Who we have really liked spending time with. We’ve managed compensation for this in various ways. Some people are happy to give their time for free. We’ve arranged sweat equity agreements. We’ve paid cold hard cash. 😭 Emotional Support → I love a bit of therapy, and that twice-monthly gig belongs to my therapist for the foreseeable. But, emotional support is also available in a business capacity. Someone who’s experienced all the ‘no’s’ when fundraising and understands how it feels. Someone who remains steadfast about what you’re doing when maybe you’re having a wobble. Basically, someone who is invested in the business but who won’t have a nervous breakdown if it falls apart. It’s so important and so powerful to your motivation as an individual and a team. Do you have a support team you’d recommend? 😎 Here are some people we couldn’t have done without on our journey: Sandra Marichal, Divinia Knowles FCMA Assoc CIPD, Nick Hall, Gareth Williams

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As a founder, the past few months have been an eye-opening ride. Juggling multiple projects meant some ideas were put on hold, including one close to my heart: helping skilled job seekers find UK visa sponsors. I've seen friends struggle with this and a lot of the data and information on the web can be misleading. While the list of companies that provide Skilled worker sponsorship is publicly available information the number of visas issued by each company isn't. However after contacting the UK Home office and waiting a few days I was able to get data for Jan 2022 to Mar 2023. Having a reference on the number of Skilled visas issued in the past helps shortlist and make an informed decision while applying for jobs in the UK. With some AI assistance and some no code tools I was able to stitch together an interface over the last 24 hours. It's designed to help job seekers make informed decisions when applying for UK positions. Some data labels are not up to date as the volume of data was huge. Will be working on correcting that gradually and finding a good logo for the site. Ps: I'm working on getting more recent data (Apr 2023 - Mar 2024) to keep the tool current. 🔗 Check out the link in the first comment if you're interested or know someone who might benefit. #UKJobs #SkilledWorkerVisa #JobSearch #UKImmigration

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I've had a deluge of email recently asking for help and advice on how to get into Venture Capital as an industry. People have asked about a variety of roles, (from starting their own firm or becoming a partner, to joining investment teams at a more junior level or working in 'operations' and 'platform' teams). I'm thrilled about this. Venture is growing as an asset class and it needs lots of new people with new perspectives and different types of background and experience to make it not just bigger but also better. However, trying to find time for one-on-one meetings to respond to this growing number of requests is now failing as my day job (of actually working in the industry!) hasn't gotten any easier! Rather than disappoint some people at random, I'm going to write a series of short LinkedIn posts on the stuff I generally say each week in the New Year and also answer any more specific questions in the comments below. Hopefully I won't bore those of you who have no interest and, if there are specific questions or topics you wanted me to address in this broad area, let me know via PM or below. Thank you!

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I couldn't help noticing that the debate about UK Capital Gains Tax has been based around first time founders (who don't care about tax) and investors (who may or may not care about tax). Missing from the debate are serial founders. It's a significant blind spot because they are a very important part of creating a self-sustaining (tech) startup culture. It seems that in the general imagination, startup life is like this: 1. Have a great idea 2. Work hard at it 3. Make millions 4. Retire and get a yacht Reality is a lot more messy and convoluted than that. I'd bet that the vast majority of founders don't follow this path. So I hope that the narrative gets wiser to the nuances of the startup sector; I'd love to see the UK building a more self-sustaining tech startup sector. Post here: https://lnkd.in/euKNpjAw

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