You started your career with later stage technology investing in the US and have transitioned to early stage investing in Europe. How has that progression impacted your approach as an investor
Before joining Eight Roads, I invested in more mature technology companies at Warburg Pincus in New York and San Francisco, and then earlier stage ones at Accel in London. At Eight Roads, we partner with founders in the scale-up stage, which is typically somewhere in-between my prior experiences. Understanding the earlier stages of a company’s journey helps me empathize with founders, while insights into what comes next enable me to offer practical advice on what to anticipate. More broadly, I’ve had the chance to learn from some great investors along the way, and the lessons have been surprisingly similar regardless of stage or geography. For example, I firmly believe that innovation is a global phenomenon, and great ideas and founders can emerge from anywhere, that investment decisions hinge on a blend of data-driven analysis and intuition, and that it’s all about backing the right people.

Running a successful business in 2024 demands constant adaptation. With competition fiercer every day, staying ahead means focusing on what truly matters—your customers. Some trends are proving to be transformative forces, shaping how we engage, build loyalty, and grow.

In fintech, as with any industry, AI can help transform time-intensive and costly processes into something slicker, smarter and more sustainable. The key is to invest in AI early on – this enables people to develop as the company grows, creating upskilling and professional development opportunities for everyone. AI can reduce unnecessary tasks, but it can also reinforce and bolster existing roles, thereby empowering intelligent scaling alongside a highly AI-proficient workforce.

In looking at this question, its important to start by breaking down the SME market. When people talk about SMEs, they generally mean the millions of micro businesses, which have seen strong focus from the likes of Starling, Monzo and Tide. Allica, on the other hand, is exclusively focused on the established SME (ESME) segment. These are companies with, say, 20 or 50 employees that have some of the complexity of a corporate, but rarely the depth of in-house finance expertise a corporate has.

This topic is certainly top of mind; just last week, I was asked to contribute to a presentation on “What founders hate about VCs and why VCs persist in these behaviours, despite being aware of the friction,” for one of Europe’s largest upcoming conferences in the start-up ecosystem.

As an early-stage investor, my objective is clear: to generate returns for our LPs within a predefined time frame. While the investment thesis and timing of Mubadala Capital differ from those of a fund like Peak, the underlying principle remains consistent. In times of economic uncertainty or company distress, fundamental changes may become necessary to protect the interests of all stakeholders—most notably, for investors, this means safeguarding returns or … losses.

What have been your biggest learnings at Algotec, and how do you apply them as a board member in your portfolio companies?
At Algotec, I gained invaluable insights into the crucial role of deep domain expertise in creating best-in-class products. Equally significant is maintaining close proximity to the customer—understanding their specific needs, how they utilize products, and identifying their primary pain points. These principles continue to inform my decisions as a board member for other companies, particularly in guiding the design of their MVPs and efforts to achieve product-market fit.

What were your biggest learnings at Deloitte, Barclays Ventures, and Augmentum Fintech?
Across my past roles I’ve come to appreciate some things that are constant across all stages of investing. For me, one of those is the team. In times of rapid flux like the current platform shift, what I am looking for in teams is their learning rate – how quickly do they incorporate developments above and below them in the AI stack to their product and GTM strategy. No matter how young or mature a company is, this is the one constant throughout a company’s life.

What were your biggest learnings from your time at Wrapp, AdProfit and HDWR from bootstrapping through to scaling a business internationally?
My main takeaway when looking holistically at my founder years is that there is a huge range of differences on the entrepreneurial path and many of them can be incredibly rewarding in their own unique way. How you define success as an entrepreneur is not always determined by being a keynote speaker at the largest tech conferences and sweet-talked by brand-name investors. There can be endless satisfaction from controlling your own destiny and moving slowly. Even though I represent the VC-backed path today, I feel society often forgets to salute the many small businesses that never aspire to grow exponentially and have a huge exit but are still essential to our economy and the lives of millions.

Startup forecasts, valuations and capital requirements are all largely driven by the founders’ and their backers’ views on the future scale of the opportunity at hand. If the opportunity is vast and unprecedented, it is likely to attract investment to match that… I believe that artificial intelligence is one such opportunity, and that – if a ‘hype cycle’ is your preferred way of gauging new technologies – we are in fact still quite far from the “peak of inflated expectations”.

Did you know that humans spend 90% of their time indoors? That’s crazy, isn’t it? And yet navigation / mapping apps only seem to work outdoors.  

Why is that? It’s for a very simple reason, and it’s also not for a lack of willingness.   

These types of apps require a map to help get you around, but they also need to know where you are on that map. When outdoors, GPS does exactly that. When indoors, it’s much less simple, and we at Waymap have made it our mission to build a positioning system (and app on top of that) that works everywhere GPS can’t. Our goal is to be accurate enough to help navigate blind people around modern cities, and benefit everybody in the process.