Mike Walsh

🚀 Join Us at AI Forge Incubator: Meet Solo Founders Seeking Co-Founders! 📅 When: Wednesday, 29th May 📍 Where: The Old Street Gallery, 62 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4DQ 🕒 Time: 5pm-9pm Are you a visionary CTO, CPO, or commercial expert ready to make your mark in the AI start-up space? Here's your golden opportunity! ✨ What's Happening? Our solo founders are in week 5 of a 12-week intensive incubator program. They are actively seeking co-founders to join them as CTOs, CPOs, or in commercial roles. These companies will be pitching to 450+ investors during the week commencing 8th July, with a high probability of securing funding. 🌟 Why You Should Attend: Dive into the world of promising AI start-ups. Contribute your skills immediately by joining an existing business. Be part of the prestigious AI Forge incubator program. Potentially integrate your own business ideas into an evolving proposition. Network with talented individuals and successful entrepreneurs. Gain invaluable insights and advice from seasoned founders and mentors. 🔎 Types of Businesses Seeking Co-Founders: Our 9 solo founders are leading ventures in: EdTech SalesTech LegalTech FemTech MedTech MarTech 🎉 Event Highlights: 💬 Speed Dating Sessions: Quick, focused interactions to maximize connections. 🔍 Pre-Matchmaking: Initial meetings set up to streamline the matchmaking process. 🤝 Networking Opportunities: Explore collaboration possibilities with like-minded entrepreneurs. Don't miss out on this unique chance to partner with innovative AI start-ups and accelerate your career in the tech industry. Register at Seeking AI Co-Founders · Luma - https://lu.ma/f22d1ih9 #AIStartups #CoFounders #TechInnovation #Entrepreneurship #Networking #AIForge

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Striking: Zenobē, a UK climate tech startup, raised £600m from KKR and £270m from Infracapital, bypassing VC entirely. Zenobe captures excess energy from wind farms to stabilize the grid and reduce gas power reliance. This means: Zenobe secured one of 2023's biggest startup fundraises — without any venture capital. #battery #fundraising #venturecapital #energystorage #infrastructure #growthinflection Sifted: https://lnkd.in/g8wF-xA5

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In Amelia Hill's second article on the challenges facing #femtech founders, she outlines some of the other barriers which are just as much of a brake on growth as lack of investment... 😲 Of the 35 femtech companies that responded to censHERship's online survey, 75% had been refused a bank account; 60% had had an account closed, 50% faced “excessive scrutiny”, 32% experienced delays in processing and 21% were charged higher fees. 🛑 But even if you clear these hurdles, your online ads are likely to be blocked or banned. 🐣 As an eg from our portfolio, Béa Fertility is banned from using the word "vagina" in the description for their medical-grade fertility device on Amazon. (Of course, no such prudishness exists around male sex toys or products for erectile dysfunction!) 😇 There are no easy fixes, but we can all advocate for these businesses and buy their products. Some of us with spare cash to invest can choose to support them through angel investment. Read the full story here 👇 https://lnkd.in/e_xRFfUC Amber Vodegel John Souter Angela Cretu Faye Walsh Drouillard Deborah Gruenberger Rosalind Singleton Sally Kemkers #femalefounders #angelinvestors

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One of the objectives of Space Ambition is to engage and inspire both generalist and DeepTech investors to explore opportunities in the SpaceTech sector. We believe that many of you will eventually consider investing in Earth Observation startups. Today, I published an article highlighting the top private Earth observation companies currently operating satellite constellations. I hope these examples will help you make more informed investment decisions.

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"Funding Collapse sends investment in start-ups to six year low" The Times today covering the shocking stats that VenturePath uncovered, with our partner Beauhurst. Great quotes from supporters Michael Moore CEO, BVCA and Julian David CEO, techUK. * UK VC funding at Series A is -44% from last year, and worsening * Q3 24 is down a staggering 57% from Q2, itself down from Q1 * 9 in 10 seed funded startups cannot access Series A VC funding, the next 'rung on the funding ladder' * Just 32 future scaleup companies across the whole of the UK were able to access their first VC funding round in Q3...a 6 year low * Half a billion less capital is going in to UK scaleups at Series A, than just 2 years ago! As the UK scaleup funding gap widens, we are losing ground against other countries, at both startup stage (a position the UK worked hard to achieve, since 2011), and for scaleup support. OECD data: 13th in the world for scaleup support, and that's before Series A funding access dried up. I get that its confusing. Another report (BBB, Nations & Regions) released this week spoke of positive trends in private investment, stating "The data for Q2 2024 shows that investment value has continued to grow". Great, I love to see optimistic data. But under analysis that bundles venture with private equity (later stage), where a few megadeals skew the numbers. Otherwise the exact opposite is true. Our independent research here, for the UK ScaleUp Investment Mission, is laser beam focussed on Series A. The funding round where companies move from the c.1m startups launched each year, through the 2,179 that access seed funding, into the rarefied category of being recognised as future scaleups, attracting Series A funding (£2-10m). The UK venture landscape is currently funding just 248 pa of these companies, and declining. We've been sharing this urgent call for support with the new Government since the day after the election. I've personally met with several Ministers, and spoke to all the relevant Government departments. I will shamelessly repeat loudly what is at stake. UK scaleup funding at Series A has nearly halved in a year, and continues to decline steeply, more than halving in the last quarter. VenturePath developed The UK ScaleUp Investment Mission to convene the scaleup support ecosystem and £7bn of funders to help address this problem, to improve nationwide access to VC investment, and create more venture-backed successes. We have clear support, clear recommendations to reverse this decline in UK scaleup investment, and have made a clear ask of Government for participation in this, to ensure immediate action is taken to create the conditions for success for UK scaleups, ensuring the focus on growth isn't undermined by lack of capital, or equitable access to it. Government decision makers, we'd love your interest, to progress to action. HM Treasury: Rt Hon Rachel Reeves Spencer Livermore James Murray & CC Poppy Gustafsson (welcome to the debate).

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Delighted to have contributed to this report with bold recommendations for boosting investment into innovation. The UK in particular faces a funding gap that late stage private capital can and must address. This will facilitate the passage of our leading companies to a listing on the LSE and directly drive their growth https://lnkd.in/ekyUk-bY

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👋 Founders in my network! AI Forge is hosting AI Startup 2024 in London, and this is your chance to be at the forefront of AI innovation. Whether you're launching a new venture or scaling your existing startup, great opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs, industry experts, and potential investors. #AIForge #AIStartup2024 #Founders #Entrepreneurship #LondonTechMeetup #AIInnovation Jaafar Almusaad Innocent S. Nathaniel Bubu

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🌱 Looking to Connect with Leading VCs and Early-Stage Investors? 🌱 At Virtualnonexecs, we don;t only work with PE firms - we are also proud to be working with some of the UK’s most active early-stage investors to help them find the top board advisors and chairs who can drive impact. If you're a non-executive or chair looking to connect with the heart of the startup ecosystem, take note of the names below. Here are 10 of the UK's most active early-stage investors and the incredible numbers that back them: 1. Octopus Ventures - Backed 100+ startups, with a portfolio value of over £1.3 billion. 2. Seedcamp - Over 400 startups funded, including unicorns like Revolut and TransferWise 3. LocalGlobe - Invested in 300+ startups across deep tech and fintech. 4. Playfair - Early backer of companies like Stripe and Anduril. 5. Passion Capital - Early investor in Monzo Bank, managing £100M+ in assets. 6. Ascension - Over 100 startups backed with a focus on social impact and fintech. 7. Frontline Ventures - Backed 80+ startups across Europe with a key focus on B2B. 8. MMC Ventures - £500M+ under management, supporting 60+ innovative growth companies. 9. Balderton Capital - Invested in 220+ startups with notable exits like THG. 10. Entrepreneur First - 500+ startups built, including companies now worth over $10 billion collectively. ✅ To join Virtualnonexecs: https://lnkd.in/eXBj687 ✅ If you are a VC or company looking to hire: https://lnkd.in/d3na7CEC #NonExecutiveDirectors #Chairs #VentureCapital #Startups #Virtualnonexecs #BoardRoles #Leadership #BusinessGrowth

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My thoughts on AI visual novels 📊🤖 Compared to traditional entertainment channels, the value brought by AI is its high interactivity, with excellent average user usage time. In the short term, the competition stayed with language chatbots like variants of character ai. But in the long term, it will be moving towards short dramas and visual novels. Visual novels are more engaging than character chat but AI by itself is hard to create engaging long form story. It's still not interesting enough without human involvement. AI indeed lowers the threshold for creators, but creating engaging content is still a scarce skill. In the long run, chat models and image models cost will reduce to zero and it will be a basic infrastructure offered in the cloud so every company can access it. Therefore, for companies building AI visual novel, the key edge is creators network and community. In any creator platform, producers are a minority. AI will significantly lower the production threshold, but how much it lowers and how many additional creators it brings is still uncertain. I predict a slight increase, as creating story modes still has a high threshold. **Tools:** The tool side needs to create very user-friendly editors to greatly reduce the threshold for creators. **Ecosystem:** The logic will mainly revolve around building a content ecosystem. Content is a form of product on the platform. Some content are better than others. Creating AI experiences based on existing IPs might be the easiest to achieve, as creating new IPs is very difficult and uncertain. **Growth:** The growth strategy can be surfacing top content on the platform to other social media like tt and twitter. UA costs will be high as competition is intensified. So having unique IP and better content is still the most important organic growth method. **Consumer End:** The biggest value add on the consumer end is the interactive gameplay and immersive experience on the platform. But in the long run, the core value remains in the content ecosystem, in other words, if great stories can appear in the platform and the variety. I am very optimistic about AI visual novel applications, especially with the continuous development of multi-modal AI, more immersive experiences will emerge. Key drivers to consider 1. how much does AI technologies lower the cost of content creation 2. What is a good incentive structure for creators on a platform like Character.AI 3. What would be the long term business model for such platforms? Would it be more like creator network with UGC or content subscription service?

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This graph is why we are building REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. More context in The World is a Supply Chain (Link: https://lnkd.in/ebTg5FU7?)

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🔬 The transition towards biomanufacturing, and the move away from traditional, energy-intensive processes in industry is creating unprecedented opportunities for start-ups. Understanding the investor's perspective in this space can help founders prepare more effectively for their fundraise. Investment Manager, Dr Marina Fuentes, details the most critical aspects Mercia Ventures and other investors look for at the Series A stage. Read more ⏬ #BioManufacturing #Blog #Investor #VentureCapital #Investment #SeriesA #Founders #Opportunity #Learning

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PE and VC firms still only have women in 11% of key investing positions. Only 2p out of every 100p invested goes to backing female-led companies. Unlocking the potential of female-led enterprises will contribute about £250 billion to the UK economy. The bottleneck for female entrepreneurs is still access to funding. I’ve been there, pitching your business to a room full of men always feels a little strange. While some of them are supportive, there remains an unconscious bias against female-led companies. This is heightened when pitching companies that solve problems and pain points specific to women. The answer to this problem is creating and supporting more female angel investors. With the support of the British Business Bank, the Invest in Women Taskforce is exploring ways to amplify the value of women backing other women through match funding. Forbes did a feature on IWT’s work titled “When Women Mean Business For Women”. To learn more, read the full piece for yourself here: https://lnkd.in/ezN9AjTQ

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🤖 𝗔𝗜 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 𝘃𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 - 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 🥊 The Financial Times conducted a test where it asked some executives in advertising, animation and real estate to test out SORA AI as well as rival offerings from Pika and Runway. There are some interesting views from the executives and obvious aspects that tell us about the readiness of the technology. ❓𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝘁? 🔏 From the article, initial prompts were sent to Sora so there appears to have been no direct access to the Sora platform (it is still not publicly available) 🎥 Sora sent back the generated video clips. ⌨️ The whole area of prompt engineering is interesting here (McKinsey & Company article on this is in the comments) Sora tweaked some of the prompts they received before sending the video clips back stating the output would be better. 🪄 Sora is clearly ahead of Pika and Runway in terms of capability (training these models takes money and time - they have huge levels of investment) 🤯 The commercial real estate promotional video (below) is really impressive. 🧑🏽‍🤝‍👩🏻 All of the tested platforms struggled to varying degrees with people with odd distortions and movement. 🗣️ One of professionals involved said he expects "perfection" and AI "probably won't get there" Another said, "These tools will speed up the way we communicate creative ideas and make them more tangible. For example, in the early stages of presenting a concept to a brand" 🌍 It is clear that the nuances of prompt engineering are really important when you are trying to generate great output (just look at the generated promo videos being produced by Sora) Prompt engineering is what the wider public need to understand to make the technology more accessible and beneficial to everyone.   ⚠️ A word of caution too, there was a lot of recent hype surrounding a short video created by Sora and a Canadian production studio. It turns out that traditional techniques had to be used to fix consistency issues with shots generated by Sora. ⌚ Time will tell... The speed at which these platforms especially Sora is moving will definitely aid humans whether they completely replace us imperfect humans is still an open question. #GenAI #Sora #OpenAI #AI #TextToVideo Original Article: https://lnkd.in/dpp3viKD

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👑 🇬🇧 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗢𝘅𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝗿𝗸 via City AM A closely-watched league table has once again named London the tech capital of the world, while Oxford and Cambridge are closing in on New York. 🔝 The Z/Yen Group Limited Smart Centres index – which ranks 79 global commercial centres on their ability to create, develop and deploy tech – showed London remained in first place, a title it has held in the biannual ranking since overtaking New York last May. 💭 Cambridge is a super-interesting story and could this model be replicated with other regions of the UK. Yes, it has one of the leading universities globally but there are other excellent universities across the UK too. 👀 Here are some further eye-opening insights about Cambridge according to a Dealroom.co report (link in comments) 🦄 Cambridge (UK) has produced more unicorns per capita than anywhere else in the world, inc. the Bay Area & Boston. 📈 Cambridge represents 18% of UK’s tech value, with only 3% of the input! It produces over $16.9 in value for every dollar of VC investment. A testament to the potential when academia, entrepreneurship and venture capital converge. 🧪 Cambridge is the #1 university in Europe for producing spinouts, showcasing its robust pipeline of innovation #uk #tech #london #cambridge #university #innovation #partnership https://lnkd.in/dgBU3Tmf

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Selecting the right investors is crucial for entrepreneurs, particularly in the healthtech sector. Entrepreneurs should seek investors who understand and share their vision, ensuring alignment and productive collaboration. Angel networks bring together investors with diverse expertise, including those with specific knowledge in healthtech, providing valuable insights and support. They offer collaborative funding opportunities. For instance, a healthtech startup might find several investors with domain expertise willing to contribute smaller amounts. Their endorsement can attract additional investors, making it easier to raise the required funds. Additionally, investors with strong networks and connections in the healthtech sector can open doors to potential customers, partners, and additional funding sources, which can be instrumental in the growth and success of the startup. #Healthtech #StartupFunding #AngelInvestors #InvestorRelations #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #GrowthStrategies #Networking #BusinessGrowth #Innovation

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This is a good and important read on #FOAK projects and the ClimateTech Valley of Death, with good insight from some very sharp investors. One often overlooks aspect of this challenge is WHO will build these early commercial projects that are smaller and don't often appeal to top tier EPCs. Developing and building these projects will be a critical, often binary factor in the outcomes. https://lnkd.in/gbedmkmt

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Question. Who should we meet about climate hardware exits or more specifically M&A . We have IPOs and private secondaries pretty well covered, but happy to learn more. We’re now approaching 10x in climate investments since 2021 compared to cleantech 1.0. We’ve unfortunately repeated some of the mistakes and there are some signs that large bets will fail. But there are also some fast growing, even profitable climatetech startups. The problem is we don’t have many exits to confirm that this time is different. The last required step is to turn paper gains into cash. Unfortunately, as we learned about fundraising, the software playbook isn’t reusable because so many of the companies include hardware. So who has figured this out? Could be founders, investment bankers or folks who’ve led corp dev. Main specific qualification is they’ve worked on deals involving hardware or climate, or both. Please add to the comment s (if you prefer email or DM, that works too).

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Is Investing in Nature the Next Economic Revolution? Welcome to the Climate Insiders podcast new look! 🎙✨🔥 Nature Capital is a backbone of a sustainable economic model that benefits everyone Prof. Dr. Martin R. Stuchtey from The Landbanking Group (and previous founder of Systemiq Ltd.) joins me to go deep on the impact of investing in nature. We break down nature’s role in reshaping our economic systems and safeguarding the climate. We explore: - The role of nature in our economic systems - Why we need to preserve nature for future generations - How to shift from an extractive to a regenerative economic model - The potential for nature-based assets for the next generation and the economy - The importance of Nature as Wealth and including natural capital on balance sheets Watch the episode to understand why nature capital might be the most crucial asset class of the 21st century. Check out the full episode in the comments! P.S. If you enjoy this episode, please let us know your thoughts in the comments on YouTube! #NatureCapital #ClimateInsidersNextLevel #PodcastRelaunch

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