Pitch Deck

Jay is a serial entrepreneur and has founded 3 successful businesses worth over $500m: Yieldify, Reachdesk & Screenloop

He now spends his time in 3 areas: (1) Building tech companies through his startup studio Blissgrowth (2) Co-hosting the podcast Happy Millionaire - which is in the top 10 in Apple and Spotify: It's 2 friends having fun and talking about startups, success and happiness stories  (3) Angel investing - he has done 40 deals so far.

His passion is to bring more joy to work and loves talking about entrepreneurship, happiness whilst having fun.

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Sponsored by trumpet - turning better buyer journeys into more revenue

Founding Partner of the multi award-winning Concept Ventures, largest dedicated pre-seed fund in the UK ($60m).

Reece has invested in 80+ start-ups from idea to unicorns (6 in total) and been ranked as one of the Top Asian Tech Investors on numerous occasions by Diversity UK.

Prior to founding Concept, Reece built and sold several start-ups in the software space, 1 of which was successfully exited, 1 a complete disaster and 1 is still going today.

Passionate about giving back, Reece has created the Concept Venture Pledge where a percentage of Concept's exit profits are donated to a social cause of the founder’s choice. He has also been selected by the FT as one of the top 100 BAME leaders in tech for his consistent work in helping promote diversity in the UK tech sector.

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Chris founded Divido in 2014, now the world’s largest white-label platform for Buy Now Pay Later. As founder/CEO Chris took the company to 10 countries and onboarded over 100 clients including Mastercard, HSBC and BMW. They have raised over $50m are recognised as the 83rd fastest-growing company in Europe by the Financial Times '21 and achieved 1250% revenue growth over three years until 2020. Chris is also an investor with Seedcamp, who have backed over 350 startups including the likes of Revolut and Transferwise, Entrepreneur in Residence at HSBC and Fellow at Primary Venture Partners - Early-stage investor in startups based in New York.

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Amory started life out in investment banking before moving into the energy sector and VC moving to Shell Ventures as Venture Principal. Shell Ventures an arm of the oil company,  invests in early-stage companies that have reached proof-of-concept focused on fintech/insurtech/mobility and clean tech. He is now founder of his own $20m fund, D2 and looking to do 10 deals this year and a further 10 next year, focused on lean startups that don't need further funding to get to Series A and then the founder can decide whether they want to go down the VC route or grow from profitability - and has been an angel investor in the past

D2 is a different type of venture fund. They provide early stage start-ups with equity capital and also offer debt as they scale. Their objective is to bring the right type of capital at the right time to help you own more of your business at exit.

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Novo was co-founder of Syft that was acquired by Indeed.com in a multi-million pound deal and is now known as Indeed Flex, the online marketplace for temporary staffing in the UK and US supplying workers to the hospitality, retail and logistics sectors. Since exiting Syft. Novo has also angel invested and has around 15+ companies in his portfolio including BYP (Black Young Professionals), Tinto (mothers community app) and Ufurnish (marketplace for buying furniture across  retailers)

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Henry de Zoete is an alumnus of Y Combinator and in 2014 co-founded The Big Deal which uses tech to facilitate collective bargaining for consumers. In 2018, he went on to establish Look After My Bills, a tech start-up that became the largest auto-switching service in the UK, saving families money on their gas and electricity. After raising global investment and securing the best deal in the history of BBC’s Dragons’ Den, Look After My Bills was acquired by Go Compare in July 2019. 

He is also a non-exec director for Hornby and the UK Cabinet Office and has been angel investing since 2019, and is now in over 50 companies.

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Eamonn Carey is a partner at Tera Ventures, where he focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments across multiple sectors. He's previously been a founder, an MD at Techstars in London and New York, and a partner at The Fund. He's invested in almost 100 companies across Europe, the US, Africa and Asia. There is nothing that Eamonn doesn't know in this space.

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Delighted to be joined by Hannah Seal, early check investor from one of the largest global VCs, Index Ventures. Before joining the behemoth VC, Index, Hannah set up the General Merchandise business for Ocado before spending 3 years at Ebay UK, managing their consumer marketplace business. Hannah is fascinated by the future of work and has been an early and consistent champion of Europe’s B2B software sector. She is particularly energized by founders who have an unfair advantage in tackling daunting problems in technical or challenging markets. Hannah currently sits on the board of Remote, Fanoa, Seed Legals and others. 

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Dan will need no introduction to most. Dan is an avid mental health advocate, community and brand expert having started, scaled, (failed) & succeeded with various companies over the last 10 years. His newest startup, Heights, exists to make braincare as normal as skincare and haircare. This includes Smart Supplements, mental well-being, and bitesize neuroscience—all combined to create proven pillars to make braincare simple. Dan is also the creator and host of rocketship podcast Secret Leaders, the number 1 UK business Podcast delivering the stories behind some of the most impressive leaders of our generation. Dan also now angel invests and advises startups and is often quoted as the most connected entrepreneur in Europe.

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Alex is co-founder of Velocity Black which is concierge, reimagined for the digital age. Backed by more than $30m in venture capital, they are the 3rd fastest growing company headquartered in the UK according to Forbes, and was named in Deloitte’s Fast 50 2020 list of the UK’s fastest-growing tech companies based on revenue growth over the last 4 years. 

Alex has also become a prolific angel investor and keen commentator on the space both on substack and twitter where he regularly posts content for founders who are looking to raise money at any level, and for people who want to get started as angel investors. He’s also in the process of starting an exciting new startup called sequel, which is in the investment/professional athlete space.

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I was thrilled to have a powerhouse early stage check investor from a powerhouse VC join me. In Summer 2021 Gemma joined Creandum as an investment principal. Creandum is a pan European early-stage VC fund, having invested in companies like Spotify, Trade Republic and Depop. 

Gemma covers the London market and is focused on both B2C and B2B technology businesses.  Gemma was the Chief Operating Officer at Elder Technologies, a Series B health tech startup for the past 3 and a half years, where she helped the company scale from 20 to 120 people and raise a series B in 2019. Previously, Gemma was a Senior Manager at Uber in the UK (2014-2018) where she co-chaired 'Women of Uber' in 2017, and before that, was a consultant at McKinsey. She has a BA from Yale and an MBA (14J) from INSEAD.

Gemma has been an angel investor for the past two years and is very interested in Healthtech, Marketplaces, Agetech, Silver Economy and Sustainability. 80+% of her investments have been in female founders. 

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Saasha is the daughter of Iowa hippy entrepreneurs who was raised with a deep appreciation for the planet and its scarce resources. After completing her MBA at Stanford School of Business, where she met her OLIO co-founder Tessa Cook. 

Saasha spent 13 years in various strategy and business development roles - at the likes McKinsey and Vice President of International Partnerships, American Express. When on maternity leave in 2012 she opened her first business in London, which she outfitted entirely from FreeCycle. The seeds for OLIO were planted. 

OLIO is a sharing app connecting neighbours to stop good food and household items from going to waste, which she founded with Tessa in 2015. OLIO now has over 5 million users, over 42 millions of portions shared and 5 billion litres of water saved, and is the number 1 free sharing app.

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Maya is a multi-cultural & multi-lingual Google and American Express marketing, product & partnerships professional with 15+ years of experience in tech & D2C industries. Currently, as the Founder of a strategic growth consultancy - MarketingCube.co - her clients include portfolio companies of Balderton, Notion, Creandum, LocalGlobe amongst others. 

Maya has also joined advisory boards and is an active Angel investor.  As a ‘full stack’ CMO Maya is able to support with: Identifying & understanding your customers; creating a stand-out brand & revitalised messaging that encourages loyalty; sustainable & profitable growth plans; org design & talent management.

Most recently, in an in-house full-time role, Maya was digitising the UK healthcare industry at Pharmacy2U by bringing repeat prescription management online. Under her CMO leadership, Pharmacy2U grew 5 fold in revenue and secured a brand awareness of 1 in 4. This growth was recognised by the Amazon growing business of the year award and making it into the Sunday Times TechTrack 100.

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This episode we chat with Pietro Invernizzi. Pietro is an investor at Stride, a London-based VC firm investing first checks at the pre-seed and seed stage alongside investing superstars such as Fred Destin, Cleo Sham and Gabbi Cahane. Before joining Stride, Pietro entered the investment world 5 years ago at The Family, a world-famous accelerator, where he spent most of his time helping founders raise money from top angel investors and VCs. He has also made over 20 personal angel investments too. 

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This episode we speak to Matt Smith, a professional footballer for the last 11 years for clubs such as Leeds, Fulham, QPR and Millwall, scoring over 100 goals. Matt, who has a business degree is also very interested in the angel investing world, investing in over 10 startups to date, including the likes of Velocity Black and Honest Mobile.  

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In Episode 2 we are joined by Nikhil Shah. Nikhil is a creative, technology and social impact entrepreneur, passionate about supporting mission-driven founders on their entrepreneurial journeys. He is the founder of Mixcloud, the world's leading streaming platform for the DJ & radio community, with over 20 million listeners and 4 hours of content uploaded every minute. He now has a portfolio of startup advisory roles, social impact and creative projects. He is an angel investor with a portfolio of 30 startups spanning consumer, wellbeing, psychedelics and the creative sectors. Nikhil received a BA and MA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. He is a DJ and a trained yoga instructor.

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In episode 1 we are joined by Deepali Nangia; Deepali is a seasoned, high profile, angel investor with over a decade of experience in private equity, investment banking and corporate operational roles. She is now a Partner at one of the world's most prestigious VCs, Speedinvest. Deepali also co-founded Alma Angels in 2019, an angel community on a mission to level the playing field for female entrepreneurs seeking early-stage startup funding.

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Please Note: The brand name has changed since recording from Captain Compare to GoCaptain

I'm joined by Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital. He focuses his investing activities on seed (and pre-seed) deals in the UK and Israel. Chris is particularly interested in autonomous transportation, business and industrial automation, HealthTech and B2B SaaS. He loves finding companies operating in unloved/overlooked sectors that are ripe for disruption.

Prior to joining Playfair, Chris held senior roles at plan.com including Sales Director, Head of Tech/BI and Head of Product Development. Revenues 

Playfair was founded in 2013 and has made 78 investments with 4 exits to date. Since Chris joined in November 2018, he has led 9 new investments, 3 of which have gone on to raise subsequent rounds so far, and we actually have one investment together into Heka a B2B employee well-being saas product and marketplace.

We listened to the pitch from Abraham Sillah, co-founder of GoCaptain, which is looking to help GenZ pay for driving lessons and get them to pass the test quicker: Get driving lesson finance without affecting the applicants credit score enabling them to learn to drive much quicker than the average learner, by booking an intensive driving course with an instructor and learn to drive under 7/14 days.

We really dug deep on the go-to-market strategy, proving the real need for the business, early startup team structures and understanding your numbers.

I was thrilled to be joined by guest investor, Alex Dunsdon. Alex was previously head of central strategy and business development director for M&C Saatchi. He was also co-founder of thebakery.com from Dec 2012 to Jan 2020, which enables corporates to drive meaningful innovation, as well as creating partnerships with startups. Alex moved on to be chief of staff at Redbrain, one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, helping them transform from startup to scaleup. Currently, Alex set up, and is partner at, Saatchi invest and is LP for Potential Climate Ventures who want to have a global scale impact on the climate - currently invested in and advising over 130 companies. Alex also set up Potential, which is set up to help the 7bn people in the world who have talent but no opportunity. Their mission is to find, foster and fund crazy, unusual, and innovative startups. Alex was also a seed cheque investor into Citymapper, Farewill and Ometria, as well as circa 20 other companies.

Alex is also very keen on cryptocurrency so we bent his year at the start of the episode on all things Bitcoin and beyond.

We listened to the pitch from Aisling Byrne, founder of Nuw, who are looking to help their users reduce the environmental impact of fashion, and gain unlimited access to the community’s shared wardrobe. While there are other fashion swapping/2nd hand fashion sites out there, Nuw have used a unique token system to ensure users trade the same quality of clothes, while taking money out of the whole equation. They have some very positive early traction including high repeat usage rates and are raising funds to help scale the product and market with the aim of having 12m active users over the next 3-5 years. 

We dug deep on scaling a marketplace, the revenue model, subscriptions, competition and feasibility of scaling the userbase so quickly.

I'm joined by legendary west coast angel investor, Zach Coelius. Zach is a 4-time entrepreneur and his last company, Triggit was acquired by Gravity4 in 2015. From then on, Zach has become one of the most revered angel investors in the US with circa 50 investments to his name and 80 invested in total. He currently invests $200K-$1m cheques into early-stage companies and $2-$5m cheques into later-stage ones. Zach uses 3 vehicles for investing; a $45m fund with Industry Ventures as the sole LP; a friends and family Rolling Fund that invests alongside the main fund; and his own syndicate on Angel List that has over 3000 members and was actually the first syndicate on Angel List to get a billion-dollar exit when General Motors bought Cruise Automation in 2016. The syndicate has had 6 exits in total including Hello Sign who were acquired by Dropbox in 2019 for $230m.

We listened to the pitch from Daniel Botcherby, co-founder of Kalda; the world's first mental well-being app specifically for the LGBT+ community. In Beta stage, Kalda is looking to bring together members of the LGBT+ community who are struggling with their mental health and provide group therapy sessions, daily check-ins, peer support as well as fixed courses people can go on. 1 in 2 people in the LGBT+ community have suffered some form of anxiety/depression in the last year, 3x the general population. Due to NHS wait times, high prices for individual therapy and stigma that LGBT+ people feel from a therapist not from their community, Kalda is looking to bring people together and at the same time democratise mental health services, making it affordable, easy to access, instant and being surrounded by peers and therapists from the same community. 

Zach prefers to engage in a more general conversation, rather than a grilling, so we had a chat more broadly about the market in general, expansion plans, future product roadmap and aspirations, competitors and the merits/risks of going after a niche. Some super insightful things highlighted by Zach as well as a very competent founder in Daniel. 

I'm joined by Pietro Invernizzi, first cheque investor at Stride.VC, who recently closed their second $138m seed fund and have recently officially launched the First Check Programme, where they are looking to back up to 20 teams straight out the gate as their first supporter, regardless of how early they are.

Pietro started his career as an investment banking analyst in London before moving into the startup world where he joined The Family, the "coolest" place if you want to build a startup in France. Whilst there, he spent a ton of time working really closely with founders, helping them with all the 100s of questions they ask themselves when building a company, particularly around fundraising. In this context, he started 'angel investing'  into the founders he was most excited by. He quickly realised that investing was his passion and so decided to join the now notorious Stride VC in June 2020, focusing on their early-stage investment.

We listened to the pitch from Tiernan Mines, founder of Hello Lamp Post - looking to reimagine how local governments and councils engage with their community for feedback and ideas. By turning inanimate objects like bus stops, lamp posts and park benches into an engaging SMS conversation, the council can ask for, gather and analyse feedback from locals. The same can go for real estate developers, museums, stadia etc...any public space that wants to engage with its customers or locals.

We dug down on the "why", the importance of their own tech, their true moat as a business and defining a true market opportunity. 

I'm joined by legendary investor and Forbes acclaimed, "Queen of UK VC", Eileen Burbidge. Eileen is a Partner at Passion Capital, the legendary early-stage tech venture fund with the likes of Monzo, Tide, Nested, Butternut Box & Marshmallow under their belts and is actually a Board Director with Monzo as well as being super involved with a lot of the other portfolio companies too.

Eileen started her career in Silicon Valley, working for the likes of Apple, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems. In 2004 she moved to London to become one of Skype’s earliest employees. In 2011, Eileen became founding partner of Passion.

She is also a member of the board of Dixons Carphone, and awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to Business.

We listened to the pitch from Amber Perng, founder of Salmo - looking to digitise, speed up and make cheaper the visa application process, of which there are 1.5m a year in the UK. Based on her own experience having to get a visa after studying in the UK, Amber realised lawyers were charging £4K to fill out forms on your behalf and not much else...it could be better. 

We really dug on the tech importance of a business such as this, the genuine TAM, reaching that target market, the potential to sell more products to the visa customers and whether they are the team to execute. It also brought up an interesting parallel between Eileen (VC) and my (Angel) take on the investment prospects.

I'm joined by Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital who focus on pre-seed and seed investments in UK and Israel. Chris is specifically interested in autonomous transportation, business automation, health tech and B2B SaaS. Chris is also an angel investor with 14 deals and 4 exits to date, previously an operator at plan.com and a corporate lawyer. 

We listened to the pitch from Elliott Herrod - Taylor, founder of The Bunch - looking to reimagine how tenants manage the process of shared accommodation. Elliott had a professional rugby contract with Bath but got bitten by a spider and got sepsis so 3 weeks later decided to go to Uni. He started The Bunch in his 2nd year of uni and took his 3rd year off to get the startup off the ground. The bunch is now in 30 cities, serviced 7000 customers and generates £4m gross revenue. Elliott has a vision to stay with a customer from 18 at university all the way through to renting a property as a young professional, with The Bunch sorting out bills, liability, finding a property and more. 

We dug down on managing and preventing churn, expanding out your customer base to improve stickiness, standing out against competitors and going up against some big boys within your industry. We also discuss the different angle taken by an Angel vs a VC.

I am joined by Veronika Kapustina, an early-stage investor and advisor, who started her journey working on capital raising for late-stage technology corporates such as Uber, Airbnb and Netflix in London and later in California. After moving to the West Coast she started mentoring seed-stage founders and quickly realised that her passion lay in angel investing. After building a high-performing portfolio, Veronika has now become a founder herself, currently setting up a Venture Fund focused on investing in seed-stage founders who come from a social science background.

We listened to the pitch from Marie Farmer, founder of Mini Mealtimes app, looking to revolutionise how children's nutrition is both tracked and improved. The app provides personalised nutrition reports, easy to use food diary, expert nutrition advice and dietician-approved recipes. This was a problem for Marie as a mother which led her to set up the idea; a very assured and confident pitch. We dug deep on the business model and subscription model, getting scale for a B2C app, advertising within an app and building a team and a moat.

Guest Angel is Saloni Bhojwani who has moved from operator to investor. Saloni was a management consultant at Deloitte for 3 years followed by doing an MBA at London Business School to then being a strategy lead at startup Zebra Fuel. She has since moved into the world of angel investing independently as well as at Founders Factory. Saloni is also recently the founder of Sie; a capital platform that supports the most promising female founders on their fundraising journey. Their ultimate goal is to close the gender funding gap by providing female founders with better access to capital, network, and support.

We listened to the pitch by Giles from Chatable Apps; previously an app that, via Bluetooth to your headphones, helped those with hearing loss or hearing difficulties especially in busy environments, that has now pivoted to help those with learning/concentration difficulties including autism and ADD including an actual wearable to be offered via national health services. 

This episode is a super interesting deep dive into understanding/judging a pitch where the Angels don't have much knowledge, wearable hardware vs app subscription, the risk/reward of relying on health services as your go-to market strategy and different pricing models. A really interesting vertical, a well-informed founder and some brilliant Angel questions. 

Guest Angel is Anthony Rose, currently the founder of Seed Legals. Anthony is a serial tech entrepreneur whose career has spanned across many sectors including the advent of 3D graphics, P2P music, video streaming, social TV, social platforms, and most recently, legal technology. Anthony is best known for his work managing the launch of BBC iPlayer for which Wired named him "the man who saved the BBC. Anthony lead the team as CTO from 2007 until 2010. Since leaving the BBC Anthony has founded 5 companies with two exits and his new venture Seed Legals is the number 1 closer of funding rounds, closing deals worth over £400m. 

Pitching to us was Conor, from Kieka. Kieka's mission is to help its users beat the crowds and get from A to B as quickly as possible. Currently starting on the London Underground there is a bigger vision to help beat the crowds in all scenarios from transport to stadiums. It is centred around an AI brain, which is all proprietary tech. 

This was an extremely interesting episode as Anthony had his founder and investor hat on, both asking investor questions and offering advice to Conor and startups as a whole. We dug deep on B2B data play vs B2C app play, achieving network effects, listening to investor advice and overall business focus/strategy. 

Guest Angel, Alex Macdonald is founder of Velocity Black, the leading global digital concierge service. Velocity Black is now on Series C, operates in 70+ countries and has been one of the fastest-growing companies in the UK over the last few years. Alex made his first angel investment 5 years ago that exited last year for a 26x return and now reinvests the gains in early-stage, seed and pre-seed tech investments, with a particular interest in marketplaces. 

Alex joins me to listen to, and question, Benjamin's pitch, Othership; previously called WeCoffee. Set up well before the Corona pandemic, Othership aimed to help freelancers find workspaces wherever they may be; in unused spaces such as hotels, pubs, restaurants, event spaces etc...for a small monthly fee they could get access to this large vetted marketplace across the UK. Corona and the boom of working from home has come at a good time for Othership as they accelerate growth, redefine their business model, take advantage of multiple new opportunities and build a strong community. With other competitors out there, both indirect and direct, are Othership the ones to steal this space? We really drill down on the marketplace model, how tricky it can be to master, and different business model directions. With Alex's wealth of experience in this field and myself building and selling a marketplace startup, this episode is a must for you marketplace founders (and beyond).

Guest Angel Simon Squibb has started 17 companies, invested in over 60+ startups and has mentored hundreds of founders. Having sold his award-winning branding and digital agency, Fluid, to PwC, Simon now focuses on inspiring, motivating and guiding both budding and experienced entrepreneurs by sharing his personal experiences, insights, ideas and tips. His aim is to get 1 million people to start a company. Simon joins me to listen to and question Mariams pitch, Oja. Mariam knows the pain point on wanting to get access to world foods not available in the supermarkets and realised, it's just not that easy. For immigrant families or those that just love world cooking at home, why not get easy access to all the ingredients your heart desires, delivered to your door? That is the Oja mission. We dive into growing a B2C market, the difficulty of implementing technology into old school businesses and flipping the model to a B2B opportunity too. The problem makes sense, the solution makes sense, but is that enough?

Angel guest is Pietro Invernizzi, 1st cheque investor at Stride VC and actively looking for seed deals. Stride has become one of the most respected VCs in a very short time due to the line up of Pietro, Harry Stebbings and Fred Destin. They have a £100m fund to deploy across a small number of exciting companies and founders. Pietro joins me to listen to and question Kemal's pitch, Send Music. Kemal has been top of his game as a music producer for decades, currently producing for Radio 1 and Radio 1 Xtra's Diplo and friends. His lived experience revealed a pain point of new artists sending tracks to producers and other high profile artists/DJs. Currently, it's all done with traditional file transfer sites but what if there was one just for the music industry that also acted as a marketplace for new artists/producers to get their tracks in front of the ideal people; as well as track the listens, downloads and hopefully get picked up? Enter, Send Music. A very interesting dive into disrupting an old school industry, is a supremely qualified founder enough to back and a look at different business models.

Delighted to announce that Series 2 is about to launch. A quick intro about what to expect from Series 2 of Pitch Deck and the release date.

In this short episode we look back at 4 of the startups that featured in Series 1, to see:

- Did they raise their round?

Guest Angel Chet Parker, started out in Architecture, then went into the world of tech, finding his feet at cyber security company, RSA, out of Boston. Whilst there he started flipping houses, builidng up a contact book in California and then went into Angel Investing. 23 investments later, Chet invests in positive impact companies and is now also co-founding his own company, currently in Stealth Mode. Chet joins me to listen to and question Andy's pitch, Honest Mobile. Bulb changed the landscape for the energy industry, Monzo the banking industry and now Honest Mobile want to to the same to the telco industry; improving customer experience and building a B Corp standing. A lofty ambiition indeed, but when an industry is ripe for disruption, then why not give it a go? A great focus on disrupting the big boys, doing things differently and the importance of brand/customer loyalty. 

Guest Angel Samira Ann Qassim founded Pink Salt Ventures to back purpose-led female founders. She invests early stage and is sector agnostic. Prior to investing, Samira gained experience as a successful tech founder and global brand strategist. Samira joins me to listen to and question Alex and Yang's pitch, Just Wears. Fresh from their appearance on TV's Dragon's Den, husband and wife team, Alex & Yang looked at disruptive brands such as Away and Harry's, who disrupted old school industries, and thought men's underwear has remained unchanged and unchallenged since the dawn of time! Can their ballsy and tongue in cheek marketing and very impressive early revenue, convince us that this is an industry ready to turn away from Justin Bieber and his Calvin Kleins? A great focus on D2C, social media marketing pillars and whether the stand out feature of being environmentally conscious is an important purchase trigger for all industries. 

*The sound on my mic isn't perfect in this episode. I hope it doesn't affect your enjoyment of the podcast.

Guest Angel Henry Allan, UK GM of mega D2C brand, Hims, joins me to listen to and question Meenesh Mistry's pitch, Wholey Moly. Surprised at the lack of choice of a naughty but healthy snack, Meenesh and his wife hit the kitchen and set about creating the first-ever healthy cookie. Over 50 iterations later they launched Wholey Moly with interest already from Whole Foods and Selfridges, Meenesh is looking to raise cash to take the brand onto the next level in retail and launch their D2C letterbox cookies proposition.  With the expertise of Henry, this is a great deep-dive into D2C branding, retail margins and the importance of team.  

Guest Angel, Dan Rosenberg, founding partner of acquired apparel brand Represent, and now an angel investor in UK and West Coast US, joins me to listen to, and question, Alma Ramirez Acosta's pitch, Vibio. Vibio is looking to bring 21st century connectivity and sensuality into the world of sex toys. They launched their first female vibrator on Kickstarter with an accompanying app, allowing women and couples to control the wearable via the app as well as having educational content to improve people's sex lives. Alma is looking for funding to promote the new sex toy as well as expand the range. Sextech is a booming space but did we think Alma and her team were the ones to breakthrough? Was there differential enough with their offering? And was there a real need for the gadgetry? 

Guest Angel Melissa Lester, investment partner at Dig Ventures, launched Dig alongside Ross Mason who sold his company, Mulesoft, to Salesforce for over £6bn. Dig is a VC with an angel investment outlook, working with early-stage startups and founders helping them grow into huge successes. Melissa joins me to listen to, and question, Julian Bourne's pitch, Sellar. Sellar is looking to modernise the way craft drinks brands and breweries sell into restaurants, bars and off-licenses; trying to convince them to move away from emails and paper/pen ordering and fulfilment to fully online ordering, payment and stock management. Julian pivoted from his original idea with his early-stage investors' cash to this totally new opportunity; could we see it as an opportunity worth taking and has Julian really grasped and understood the market he is going after? Some great insight into pivoting, running with an MVP and the importance of team.  

Guest Angel Tom Savage, award-winning entrepreneur, travel company founder, Ted talker, angel investor and founder of new forward-thinking venture fund, joins me to listen to and question Jamal Whorms-MonDésir's pitch, Wayfare. Wayfare is looking to re-imagine the travel experience for Gen Z. Jamal wants to start with helping them fund their holidays and then digitise the whole experience from discovery, booking, organisation and payment.  Can Wayfare become the Klarna of travel? There is some real digging on the idea and business in this episode. Tom doesn't hold back. Some great insight into vision vs execution and the importance of your team. Can Jamal hold up to the intense scrutiny?

Guest Angel Kelvin Au, Head of Venture at Founders Factory, one of the UKs leading accelerators and incubators, joins me to listen to and question Joe Lewin's pitch, Zwings. Zwings is a B2B and B2G e-mobility brand; think Lime and Uber Jump but rather than dumping them in cities for anyone to use, Zwings sells a turnkey solution to universities, real estate, local councils and companies; this includes the scooters/bikes, docking stations, white-label software, insurance and maintenance, all for a monthly fee.  Can Zwings take advantage of the new gold-rush in this space due to social distancing? Are Lime and Bird still a threat? Does Joe have what it takes to grow Zwings to venture scale, or does he even want to? The very interesting difference between how a venture firm and an angel investor look at investments, and their potential exit, are highlighted and discussed. 

Guest Angel Dan Rosenberg, COO and first employee of acquired, transatlantic apparel brand, Represent, joins me to listen to and question Chieu Cao's pitch, Mintago. Chieu, the founder of huge B2B perk company, Perkbox, has now turned his SME selling sights onto financial well-being. He is on a mission to bring happiness to employees and this starts with an understanding of how they can reach their goals with active financial planning: Physical and mental well-being are greatly affected by a person's financial state so should HR departments focus on this as a starting point? Chieu clearly has incredible experience in this market having been there and nailed it already, but can he convince companies that financial well-being really is the holistic solution where well-being should begin? Great insights into selling into SMEs and how to build a company ripe for B2B scale as well as how to shape your message to sell successfully into companies.  

Guest Angel Beta Lucca, Founder of bafta award-winning, million-dollar games company, Bossa Studios, joins me to listen to and question Paul Custance's pitch, Lirica. Once ex-FD of Sony, Paul saw the science between learning languages and how we remember lyrics of our favourite pop songs. Now financially, and artist, backed by his ex-employer, Sony, Paul wants to disrupt the billion-dollar, booming, language learning space. He definitely has the contacts in the music space but does he have the know-how and team to compete with the likes of Duolingo and Busuu? Paul is looking for funding to now fuel growth globally, launch gamification into the app and add new languages beyond Spanish and English. 

Guest Angel Eamonn Carey, MD of Techstars London and Director of The Fund, joins me to listen to and question Dan Murray-Serter's pitch, Heights. Heights is a mental well-being and brain health brand, starting with a smart supplement to feed your brain every morning. Having spent no money on marketing Dan already has endorsements from the likes of Stephen Fry and an impressive £30K MRR. Dan is looking for funding to now fuel "proper growth", as he calls it. An interesting deep-dive into D2C brands, the importance of community and product/market expertise. 

Hi there! Host of Pitch Deck, Nick Telson, here. I just wanted to give you a very quick introduction as to why I started this podcast and what you can expect. We have some amazing, insightful Angel Investors lined up as well as some brilliant startups and startup founders across; D2C brands, B2B Enterprise software, E-mobility tech, sex tech and language learning.