Achieving VC funding is often one of the hardest feats that a scaleup or growth stage company has to master. As NESTA points out and I have paraphrased here… whereas start-ups are an important means by which new ideas are brought to life, scaleup and growth companies are crucial for generating new jobs and exerting competitive pressure on prevailing businesses, this in turn drives improvements in price, productivity and the whole countries’ prosperity. The scaling of new ventures is vital for continued innovation, embedding ecosystems and driving international growth.
Our event was hosted by Max Kalis from Start Design. Generously hosted by @GoCardless in the Barbican @ London.
We had a wonderful presentation and mood set for the evening by Les Green from Lex Associates LLP (Voted Best for Growth Strategies in Wealth Management UK 2016 by Wealth & Finance International). Les has over 20 years’ experience and a wealth of interesting stories from a cross-section of scale-ups – he has seen exciting exits and worked on deals that taught life-long lessons!
Our very own Christopher Nicholson, Managing Director of ACF Equity Research, delivered an excellent presentation to inform and engage the crowd of intensely listening Scaleups. You can see Christopher’s linkedin profile here. Lots of insightful questions from the floor and requests for his presentation – which you can find at the link below.
Christopher was followed by Tim Ward – CEO, eINS.tech AG who was promoting “revolution” within fintech – his central message was that founders who are visionaries need to persist and find inner strength at every turn. He is a Business leader and innovator working in the financial services and technology sectors. Expert in developing game-changing vision/strategy and in identifying the best use of technology to drive meaningful change and increased value. We always need solid legal advice and guidance, which was in this case delivered by Roman Filatov Managing Partner at FjM International Solicitors and Lawyers LLP – Roman has worked on many deals in which his contribution to the term sheet, arguably the pivotal document in any early stage funding, has been crucial. It is so important that growth and scaleup companies consider the term sheet very carefully and not as an afterthought or nice to have!
“There are no straight lines in nature or business.”―Verne Harnish,
We had motivating founder talks from two successful startup-scaleups: One from Nadeem Siam who is Founder and CEO at Welendus – developing a FinTech start-up with an all-new peer-to-peer lending platform. Nadeem is a visionary, Space Engineer, Subsea Engineer and an Entrepreneur. And second and lastly, we were lucky to have Ivo Weevers, successful co-founder at Getalbert.com, the UK’s highest rated finance app (designed for Freelancers, if you are reading this blog).
To get more help with your scaleup the government is supporting www.scaleupinstitute.org.uk/. Please find Christopher’s presentation here and contact Christopher on cnicholson@acfequityresearch.com or call us on 020 7558 8974
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