Seedrun

Can you give a brief introduction about yourself?

I'm originally from the US. I moved here about nine years ago. My background's in media and marketing and then I moved to the startup world and really never left.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur/startup founder?

I've worked in a number of startups before and it made me realise this is something that I can do and that I wanted to do. I love the startup space and I started to try to figure out what the idea was that I wanted to go with. Once you've worked at enough startups, you want to give it your shot and give it your go.

Can you describe your startup in a single sentence?

At Old Street Ventures we're building a platform that provides retail investors with low cost, liquid access to the world's top VCs - while letting VCs tap a whole new source of investment capital.

How did the idea for your startup come about?

It's something that me and my co-founder have spoken about a lot over the last few years. We've both been in startups. He previously started a small VC himself. There's this idea that you need one to five million to even invest in VCs to be able to get access to the next Uber and Airbnb. We both worked in startups and have seen these companies come up and there's just no opportunity for us to get involved because we don't have millions to invest in one VC. We wanted to fix that by really making it more accessible to everyone.

What's the most unique aspect of your solution or business model?

I think no one's really quite done it in the way that we want to do it. We obviously want to bring down that high price threshold. We want to facilitate liquidity while also making it SIPP and ISA friendly. Nobody's been able to crack that problem yet! Sure, you can invest in individual companies at low cost if you're on like Seedrs or CrowdCube, but the thing is you have to do your own due diligence and it's up to you to pick the startups - nevermind how much capital and time it would to build a reasonable portfolio even if you were a star picker. We want you to be able to invest in VCs who have a great investment record - we're not reinventing that wheel, just giving you access to the pros.

What’s the most challenging aspect of building your startup?

It's bootstrapping. It's getting started. Being everything for the business, from marketing to sales to ideation. It takes a lot.

What's the most valuable lesson you've learned as a founder?

I think just the ability to bounce back. You need resilience when you're starting because there are some days that aren't great and then some days are like “this went really well”.

How do you manage work-life balance, especially with the demands of a startup?

I have a husky sitting down behind me. She really helps. We go out for walks and we run. She's great company at the pub and gets me out. She also gets me talking to people who aren't in the startup world!

What’s the next big milestone for your startup?

We've just started fundraising. The big milestone is to get our FCA authorisation so that we can then launch our first VC index fund product!

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs or startups?

I'd just start. Even if you're in a job you can still have a conversation and talk to somebody and and get a good idea. If your idea is something that's worth it, you don't need to quit everything. It doesn't need to be a big of a decision. It can be something that you work on on the side, like that side hustle.

Any ideas on how we could improve Seed Run?

Maybe having a way that we can all connect and contact each other afterwards.