What have been your biggest learnings in venture and as a Board observer at WeGift, Moteefe, and Deployed?
As I’ve always been focusing on early stage, my biggest learning is that this is completely a people game. You can have incredible founders execute a mediocre idea but you can’t have mediocre founders trying to execute a great idea. Founders (and fund managers!) need resilience and unwavering drive to execute. This also applies to the types of networks and communities you build around you which is so incredibly important in venture and one of Pact’s strong suits which appeals to founders.

Artificial intelligence is constantly at the centre of widespread media scrutiny and debate, with consistent concerns about the potential for unethical usage and privacy and data infringements. However, whilst measures must be taken to mitigate these worries, we need to open up the conversation to understand how AI, when used ethically, can be a significant force for good. A key example of an area where AI has huge potential to improve outcomes is in mental health care. AI offers an opportunity to help unlock a more objective and safer approach to assessing and diagnosing mental health conditions.

I actually think the most interesting results will show up in the earnings of companies using generative AI rather than the tech companies selling it. For virtually all businesses, generative AI can provide a huge cost savings by automating mundane tasks – reducing the need for manual labour. Mainstream businesses that embrace generative AI will see their cost-base fall and their revenues increase.

1. ’Tech founders need to be treated like athletes to avoid burnout’ (FT 10.07.23),’Some tech investors are now realising that putting entrepreneurs under too much pressure can be bad for businesses well as the founders themselves…’
How do you balance the desire for return and profitability against the health of the entrepreneur?
It’s important to note that pressure is essential to a founder’s success. Using the example of elite athletes, they perform under incredible pressure, pressure is a real catalyst for improvement and success – one of my favourite cheesy lines is “pressure makes diamonds”. However, there certainly needs to be a balancing act where the pressure is reasonable. Now with regards to returns vs health of the entrepreneur, there should be no compromise. Unfortunately, there is an antiquated and toxic mantra within the start-up sphere whereby founders feel they must sacrifice everything, take a miniscule salaries and eat beans on toast every night to be a success. This is wrong. In my opinion, there is no balancing act between returns and the health of the entrepreneur – the two are positively correlated. If you want a founder to succeed, then you must provide an environment for them to do so – paramount to this is their mental and physical wellbeing. This is why we have Harry Jameson, CEO of Pillar Wellbeing, on our Advisory Board – he’s a world leading fitness professional who has spent his career training and coaching C-suite execs to enable them to perform in their careers better. Harry is working with us to design a framework that we can give to our founders to ensure they are looking after their own wellbeing as much as possible.

The United Kingdom’s public healthcare system faces significant pressure, with long waiting lists of seven million people making headlines. 1.5 million of these patients are waiting for diagnostic tests such as MRI and CT scans, and there is a side to this story that is sometimes overlooked: the diagnostic gap. 

I have always liked cracking hard nuts, and disliked bad processes that could be done better. My latest venture TRIVER is going after one of the most complex and poorly addressed financial services need: small businesses’ cash flow management. This is a major issue for the real economy and the society, and I believe it can be solved today leveraging the power of data science and technology. 

What have you learnt from the funding of 6 tech startups and have your experiences impacted upon your investment strategy? / As per the ‘hare and tortoise’ fable is being first to market critical as a startup?
My first three start-ups were self-funded and revenue generating very quickly, the fourth was self-funded but nearly broke me as we were too early to market with an e-commerce proposition that retailers weren’t interested in because they thought nobody would buy goods online, my last two ventures have been backed by Angels, VCs and debt.  If I do another start up I will fund it personally for as long as I can, if I need external funding I would choose Angels before VCs because there are no pref terms or board seats for Angels and they’re hands-off.  I don’t want to carry the burden of debt again as it’s a very expensive overhead for a business to service. At Cushon we had VCs and a debt provider, without them we wouldn’t have achieved what we did, so my above comments are idealistic, sometimes you don’t have the luxury of choice.  Timing and cash are two of the most critical factors for a start-up. Get either wrong and it can be a very expensive mistake.  

The story of a ‘broken’ housing market in the UK is not new. The UK housing market has long been plagued by numerous challenges that make homeownership an increasingly distant dream for many.

Preventive care is the future of health and social care and a crucial part of equitable care. This means care does not differ in quality regardless of someone’s age, gender, geographical location, cultural background, ethnicity, religion or socioeconomic status. By facilitating activities like data collection and remote monitoring, technology can enable this, improving health outcomes for all. 

It’s fair to say consumer fintech has had a tough run of it recently. A sector which was once one of hottest investments in the market was hit by a wave of blows last year – from nose diving valuations to funding drops which saw businesses collapsing at an extraordinary rate.