Jack Culpan

A real hot topic right now. - If you wan't to help shape the investment strategy at MCC and MCR Digital then fill in the short survey.

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Calling fellow startup founders based in or around London... this is a great event that we (adeus) have attended a few times. It's not your typical start up pitch event. It's the opportunity to intro your business to a really friendly room of business people who are open to sharing ideas and providing advice to founders early in their journeys. ___ Join VOCASOs next MIC NIGHT event in London, near London Bridge on Tuesday 5th November from 6pm. Up to 15 founders each do a 1-minute elevator pitch to our member community of seasoned executives, sharing their company's tale and toughest business hurdle ahead. It's not a pitch for money but an opportunity to gain the insights desired for that next stage of growth. A great chance to connect with potential perfect match mentors or advisors within the community who have the expertise or connections you relish. Spaces are limited. Learn more about the event and RSVP or add your name to wait list here: https://lnkd.in/e3iRy9Uf     VOCASO, a fee-free community of founders and advisors. An ecosystem that brings its members, all senior executives aspiring to become Mentors, Advisors and NEDs together with growth companies seeking wisdom and door opening connections to drive growth. VOCASO kick-starts board careers today to impact the economy of tomorrow.

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Overseas startups aiming to raise funds in the UK ( Here’s a game-changing opportunity many are missing ) I’ve met countless founders trying to secure UK funding who don’t know about SEIS and EIS Did you know that overseas companies can qualify? What is SEIS? • 50% Tax Relief for Investors: Invest £10,000 and get £5,000 back from your tax bill. Real “capital at risk” is just £5,000 Additional Benefits: • Loss Relief: Offset losses against income. • 0% Capital Gains Tax on profits. ( You can raise up to £250,000 under SEIS. For larger amounts, consider EIS with a 30% tax relief ) How can overseas companies qualify? You need a permanent establishment in the UK: 1) Fixed Place of Business: A location where essential business activities occur. 2) Agent in the UK: An agent authorized to enter into contracts on behalf of your company. How to Get Started? • Apply Yourself: manage the application independently. • Legal Assistance: law firms charge around £3,000. Even without tax relief, you can still raise funds - but leveraging SEIS/EIS can boost your chances significantly. ( Don’t let this opportunity slip by ) ♻️ Repost this to help other founders!

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𝐀𝐈 𝐔𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐔𝐊 𝐒𝐌𝐄𝐬 AI continues to transform the UK's business scene. A notable 61% of UK businesses anticipate AI causing significant changes in their industry this year, and 14% have made AI investment their main focus. It's becoming clear that SMEs can't overlook the productivity and growth opportunities that AI provides. Whether it's for streamlining daily tasks or improving customer service, AI is turning into an essential instrument for UK business success. How is your SME utilising AI to keep on top? #AI #UKBusiness #SMEGrowth #2024Trends

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Founders, If you're in the fundraising game.... You know there's a phase I like to call 'the gap.' It's that tricky period between getting a verbal nod from an investor and actually seeing the funds hit your account. Verbal commitments are great, but they don't always guarantee a closed deal. Here's how I handle this to keep things moving smoothly: Be Prepared to Act Fast: As soon as you get a verbal commitment, make the next steps as easy as possible for your investor. Any delays on your part can open the door for them to reconsider. Set Clear Deadlines: Make sure your investors know exactly when the round is closing. Setting a firm deadline for contributions helps keep everyone on schedule. Keep the Lines Open: Follow up with your investors regularly. Make sure they have all the information they need and gently remind them of the deadlines. And a little tip for peace of mind. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Hold off on the celebration until the funds are securely in your bank. That's when you know you've really crossed the finish line. ✌️ #venturecapital #vcfunding #entrepreneurship #familyoffice #raisingcapital #fundraising #growth #startups #startupcommunity #startupecosystem #startupfunding

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Should you drop everything & get onto Gen AI? Most founders I speak with are in this dilemma Platform shifts can be a tricky time Here is how founders can think & navigate the GenAI hype 1) Companies are throwing money at the problem - Companies are throwing Innovation budgets - But these are 1 time things - Most AI projects are not successful yet 2) Don’t re-dress your SaaS & call it AI - Tiny AI inside your large SaaS is still SaaS - Result: You don't deliver dramatically more value to your customer 3) Can you change customer behavior? - Customer behavior has to change for your AI solution to work - FACT: Customers don’t/won’t change their behavior easily - This doesn’t work if no change in behavior 4) What should your approach be? - Find areas where clients are ready to change - Aim for 80% success rate at selling with AI - SaaS STAT: 0.1% success rate in SaaS 5) Goal: Make your customer life much much better - Don’t make it another tool they’ve to adopt - If their life is the same, you aren't adding value

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First Priority: Founder First duty: Protect The Founder at Foundership

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The valuations of AI startups are..... 1) About right 2) "Frothy" 3) Insane The round is double the initial target set by Musk’s team. Investors had been talking about raising $3 billion at an $18 billion valuation, including the new cash, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Musk’s team raised the target in light of strong demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The money will be used to take “xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate research and development of future technologies,” Investors in the round include brand-name Silicon Valley firms such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz as well as Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, and Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, #artificialintelligence #fundraising #venturecapital

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2024 is no better than 2023. UK Tech investment landscape surely can't get any gloomier than this, could it? Up to date data from https://deallite.uk Please note we only cover UK Tech Companies. #techinvestment #venturecapital #vc #privateequity #equityinvestment #equity #tech #uktech #techcelerate #deallite #deals #techdeals #funding #techfunding #investment #seed #seriesA #preseed #growthcapital

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Too many founders whinging about increases in taxes need to take a chill and ask if they benefitted from EIS and SEIS schemes for their business. These schemes are only available to certain startups that take external funding but not available to startups that don’t. This is unfair. Those schemes give huge tax breaks to investors that give startups money. Nowt wrong with that I hear you say. Well, it’s essentially a way of having the people’s taxes fund your indebted startup. Be grateful! Here’s the thing, most of those startups fail. The tiny few that succeed end up being bought out most of the time and end up off shore anyway. Ultimately costing the taxpayer one way or the other. I think we need to review the criteria of what startups benefit from government funding and it should be ones that don’t then run to off shore lands whenever they want to throw their toys out of the pram.

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🚫 Listing on Airbnb when you’re not 100% ready to host is a big no-no! 🌟 Once you’re listed, you must start accepting bookings. If you go 30 days without a booking, Airbnb’s algorithms might push your listing out of sight. 📉❌ Here’s a fantastic metric available in PriceLabs that will help you ensure you don’t go 30 days without a booking. 📊✨ This is especially crucial if you’re leveraging Airbnb for mid-term rental tenants, as these homes typically have fewer bookings per month compared to 2-3 day rentals. 🏡📅 Make sure you have the “booking pickup last 30 days” metric set up. It will alert you to take action and secure a booking if 30 days pass without one. 🔔💼 Stay ahead and keep your calendar full! 💪🗓️ Need help setting up your PriceLabs account? Reply to this post, and I’ll be happy to assist you! 📩💬

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👋 Any founders currently fundraising for their tech startup? Looking to support - happy to review your investor deck and share feedback. Connect with me and drop me a message if you'd like an extra set of eyes on your pitch. I’d even be happy to introduce you to potential investors in my network. Good luck out there - I know it's really tough in the current climate. ❤️ Keep pushing forward! #fundraising #startups #founders #entrepreneurship

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This year is all about survival. I've seen enough data to call it. Multiple reports are showing Flat -> No growth. Wayflyer/Iris Finance report had Q1 overall growth at +4% YoY. Common Thread Collective Index has same store sales flat YoY. What does this mean? This year is about survival. The industry as a whole isn’t growing. We can blame this on whatever we want. But the outcome remains the same. Instead of obsessing about your topline growth. (Which is a steep mountain to climb.) Focusing on growing your bottom line. In a low topline growth year, spend time becoming more profitable. 100% YoY growth doesn’t do you any good if you’re out of biz in 2 years. The goal needs to be surviving to 2025. #shopify

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I speak with a lot of founders & biz dev leaders in the web3 space that are looking to up their business development game. As good as telegram is, it’s not going to help you hit those VC metrics. It could actually be your bottleneck in your GTM strategy! You need to maximise the other area's that are probably left behind by your competitors. Here are 2 tactics that are boosting pipeline for web3 companies right now. 1️⃣: Build a presence on Linkedin with an optimised profile. As unique as the space is, people want to speak with people. Nothing gives off a more confidence to a prospect than an optimised Linkedin profile. 2️⃣: Segmentation of Accounts: A lot of data providers do not provide specific breakdowns of industries (e.g. DeFi, Wallets and Tokenizaton). This could is a missed opportunity for highly relevant emails based on specific use cases (e.g. plugging feature gaps in Wallets). Put the extra effort in to do this. ------------------ Follow me for more business development tips.

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🦸 The most successful founders I work with have made hiring their Super Power Why? Because they know it's the quality of their team that will ultimately lead to success or failure. ✅ They are constantly on the lookout for great people, and maintain relationships and networks that will be useful down the line. ✅ They are creative at matching people's skills and experiences to jobs that need to be done. Always thinking outside of standard job titles. ✅ They implement strong hiring processes and hygiene levels in their orgs so the team can consistently hire at the right level. ✅ When things go wrong they act decisively to manage the situation and either support the employee to step up, or help them find the right position elsewhere.

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New Post: Britain’s inflation rate could be about to drop below the Bank of England’s 2% target - https://lnkd.in/g8rf_vFQ - The headline inflation rate could be 'momentous,' but markets remain divided on the chance of a June cut and services will be the one to watch. - #news #business #world -------------------------------------------------- Download: Stupid Simple CMS - https://lnkd.in/g4y9XFgR -------------------------------------------------- or download at SourceForge - https://lnkd.in/gNqB7dnp

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Non-Technical Founder Tax, it's real people let's be honest. So speaking at Founder events recently the biggest question I get is about "how I cope as a non-technical Founder" "how did I get this far" "How to find a tech co-founder" etc. Recently I have started understanding coding more in depth and can MAKE RUN on AI KAT MVP! all on my own. That's because I have a brilliant CTO who is willing and patient to teach me how, so I don't have such a big confidence and knowledge gap. So let's start with a definition: "Non-Technical Founder Tax refers to the extra costs in terms of time, money, and effort that entrepreneurs without a technical background often face while building a technology-based company." This topic is MASSIVE and I have decided to make it one of Content Pillars on my Female Founders Rise Personal Branding Challenge this month. So this is just the introductory post. But let's start with the top 3 problems I faced for sure: 🙊 COMMUNICATING YOUR VISION; The product and the product flow looks completely different in my head, than the words coming out my mouth, and what my CTO hears. Learning how to communicate with visuals, you gotta get a Sharpie and an A3 board. I draw and then try and communicate. Figma is also great there lots of no-code tools now for you to build a simple image that you can communicate. 👨‍🎤 UNDERSTANDING YOUR TECH STACK: This is a basic you need to know when speaking with partners and investors, you also need to understand the why behind the tools. Time and patience, you need time and a patient CTO who will help you truly understand this. Yes you will pay tax in research time but it is so worth it when you are credible in front of investors. 😍 CREDIBILITY: So Y Combinator has a very clear view on this. How can you have a tech company without a technical Co-Founder? I agree 100%. Yes it's the day and age of AI, yes you can outsource etc BUT you need to move fast and now you need to move faster, and if you have to wait and pay every time you need a feature update, you lost before you even started. That is literally a tax and will remain one. Not worth it. You won't make an FMCG product without a factory. Come now, and white labelling is really bad for profitability, growth and innovation. If you want to be a leader, you get your own production line. So yes, you can be absolutely brilliant and still need to get a CTO Co-Founder. That is the fastest way to scale. With low-code AI tools it certainly is much easier to get a prototype out the window, but a MVP a product with 100 000 users, not so much. It's painful I know!!! But it's worth it! What problems have you faced as a non-technical founder, what Non Technical Founder Tax have you paid? Rafael Frančišek Irgolič Vladyslava Vakhovych

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𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 – 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗹/𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗻 𝗨𝗽 𝘁𝗼 £𝟭𝟬𝟬𝗸 ▪ Revenue-generating AI start-up. ▪ Unique product with AI at its core. ▪ Recently raised multi-million ££ funding to support the next growth phase. Bristol is crying out for more AI companies so I’m buzzing to be supporting the latest player in this space. I’ve got two roles, one of which is more research based so I’m looking to speak with Machine Learning Engineers and Researchers with a solid understanding of diffusion models. The ML Engineer needs to have strong production experience and come from an image-based background. Diffusion model experience is the icing on the cake, but the client is aware there’s a limited number of people who will have experience taking these into production. Essentially, if the researcher has the required diffusion model expertise, then it’s less important for the engineer. There is a world whereby we can hire 2 x ML Engineers in place of a researcher, so long as the diffusion model experience is covered. 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: ▪ 0-1 experience is preferred – failing that, experience within an AI startup and the ability to wear many hats. ▪ Strong computer vision background, ideally diffusion models or transformers at the very least. ▪ ML production, pipeline and infrastructure (design and build). ▪ Understanding of MLOps principles. The engineer position needs to be at the senior level, but the researcher is more flexible. As an ML Engineer, you’ll essentially be the subject matter expert, so you’ll need experience in designing and building ML systems and infrastructure from scratch. This could in time turn into a leadership position depending on your career aspirations but it’s not a deal breaker if you want to remain an IC. The preference is to build the team in Bristol but there is scope for those in London to apply as long as you’re happy with monthly travel to Bristol. If you’re based in Bristol, then it will be 3 x days a week in the office. Unfortunately, sponsorship is not available for either position. #AI #artificalintelligence #diffusionmodel #diffusionmodels #machinelearning #ML #mlengineer #aiengineer

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