In the ‘Seedcamp Podcast Series’ we talk with key people in the tech startup industry to hear their stories and gleam key advice and learnings from their experiences.
Krishna Gupta, Founder and General Partner of Romulus Capital, joined Seedcamp in Boston on our recent US Trip. Krishna founded Romulus in 2008 whilst studying at MIT. He formed the fund to plug the gap between angel investments and big funds, creating a firm to help build early-stage businesses. In our interview he discusses his entrepreneurial nature and young career that lead to Romulus and his views on the current state of the Seed stage investment market. He also gives his key advice for foreign companies looking to expand to the US and why more startups should be thinking about longer term business plans when scaling.
Krishna founded Romulus Capital while an undergrad with the intent of building technology businesses out of the MIT and Harvard ecosystems. Over the years he has worked across many industries, leading Romulus to regularly be the first institutional partner of seed-stage companies. He particularly enjoys partnering with companies with a B2B angle and innovative technology or science at the core of their value proposition.
Prior to Romulus, Krishna spent time at McKinsey & Company and JPMorgan, where he helped execute billion-dollar M&A deals in technology, media, and telecom. He has also conducted physical chemistry research at the University of Chicago and the Weizmann Institute in Israel, produced a film on ancient history in England used at Oxford and Cambridge, adventured in conflict zones in India, and competed at the USA Mathematics Olympiad. He’s a keen sports fan (football, basketball, tennis, and cricket), is a student of political and military history, and finds the arts a great way to relax and discover.
Krishna received SB degrees in Materials Science and Engineering and Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a graduate of Phillips Academy Andover.
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The VC Long View is a regular series of posts where Seedcamp talks to our network of investors on the trends their following and the ideas they’d like to back. In this post, we talk to Scott Sage.
Scott is an early stage VC and angel investor that works with founders in Europe and is currently an EIR at Seedcamp. Previously he was a partner at Draper Esprit where he invested and worked with SaaS and internet companies including Bitbar, Campanja, Conversocial, Datahug, Lyst, MoviePilot, SportPursuit and Trustpilot. Before becoming a VC, Scott held various finance, research, BD and marketing roles at UBS, BVCA and Smarkets. Scott grew up in Texas and has been living in London for the past 10 years.
Do you have any specific sector focus?
I would say that I am a first principles investor given I invest in the earlier stages of a company’s life. First and foremost I’m looking for founders who have built something new and unique. This means either a new technology or platform or they are creating a new market. I’m also looking for founders who are technical and who have the ability to take the company all the way. Finally, I like to get in early. On top of these guiding principles, I have to be excited about what the founders are building as this is an incredibly long-term game.
As far as sectors, I have been spending a lot of time focusing on enterprise software especially around data analytics as well as more vertical focuses like healthcare and finance. The next big battleground in saas is in financials and for the vertical focuses, you need an incredibly large home market to get going and that is why most fintech companies that have launched in the UK internationalize fairly quickly to the US or the rest of Europe.
What would you say are the top investments you have been a part of? What stood out about those investments in particular?
My best two performing investments so far have been Lyst and Trustpilot. What has really stood out about both of these companies is how the founders have grown with the companies. It has been impressive watching them stay ahead of the company in terms of knowing what the company is going to need.
A personal deal that I got involved with a few years ago as an advisor called MediaCore just got acquired by Workday. The founders were never willing to make big compromises which worked out well for them as they stuck by their initial vision and only cared about serving their customers. I think we are still in the very early stages of creating entirely new markets in the education space.
Another company that is going to have a widespread impact is called StrataJet. They are effectively building two monopolies around enabling business people to travel faster and more efficiently by owning the data in the private aviation space. It’s been awesome to watch so far (especially the CEO who flies in an old jet from airfield to airfield to sign up his customers personally).
What areas are you most excited about and why?
I still think that we are at the beginning of disrupting the old guard in finance and healthcare. I’ve made a few personal investments in this space and will continue to make more.
One of my fastest growing investments is called SketchDeck. It was actually started by two Brit’s who then moved out to the Valley. They are a saas enterprise marketplace company that allows an enterprise to outsource any of their design requirements. We’ve been using them at the company I’m currently incubating to create all of our branding and design, marketing assets, presentations etc. What’s exciting about what Chris and David are building is that highly specialised workers from not only the design world, but soon from software engineering, accounting etc would love to plug-in and work using Sketchdeck. This isn’t too dissimilar from the Uber offering which allows drivers the flexibility of working when they can and when they need. This is going to be a major societal shift over the next 30 years.
What are your thoughts on the current state of the European technology market?
It’s never been stronger. I don’t think really good startups are going unfunded like they used to. It’s still massively undersupplied compared to the US if you look at the sheer amount of demand for VC at almost every stage across Europe from Series A to growth rounds, but you could argue the US has been oversupplied. As capital is becoming much more commoditised it’s finding its way to the best businesses around the world. Just look at the latest rounds in Spotify, Blablacar, Deliveroo, Lyst, etc. a lot of it is coming from the US.
Money aside, I think the biggest problem we have in Europe is a lack of middle management and strong talent that has taken companies public and built $20b+ companies that are still around. The US has a much thicker market in terms of talent so we struggle to find world class product folks or sales managers, but this means we just have to work 10% harder than everybody else.
What have you enjoyed the most since becoming an EIR at Seedcamp?
It’s a cool job because I go from discussing saas metrics with a founder based in Turkey to discussing growing the supply side of a marketplace business based in Stockholm to supporting a founder prep for their Series B road trip up and down Sandhill Road.
Many people don’t realise this, but Seedcamp is not an accelerator any more. They are a first round investor that leads or syndicates pre-seed and seed rounds and they have now backed just over 200 companies to date. It’s been interesting learning how they’ve scaled their internal operations to build a platform to service these 200+ portfolio companies and continue investing at a constant pace.
You can follow Scott on Twitter @Scott_Sage.
This post was originally posted on Medium. If you’re an investor and would like to contribute then please get in touch with us @seedcamp. Or, if you’re a startup working on one of these ideas and looking for your first investment, you can apply for Seedcamp here.
If you’ve been around the Seedcamp office lately you’ll have noticed more than a few new faces joining us. Over the past few months we’ve tripled our team in a commitment to provide the best expertise and support to our growing portfolio. This is part of our lifelong Seedcamp Platform as the go to First Round Fund for ambitious Founders.
As one of Europe’s most active investors of the year* investing in pre-seed and seed startups we constantly see Founders face challenges primarily in seeking investment, reaching product-market fit, scaling their businesses and recruiting the right talent. Though we have an extensive network of experts we wanted to deliver senior level guidance in all these areas, on-tap, via the Seedcamp Expert-in-Residence (EIR) programme.
Seedcamp has welcomed Keith Wallington (Growth), Scott Sage (B2B), and Taylor Wescoatt (Product) to the family. Keith brings exceptional growth expertise from his operations experience at Mimecast which he helped take from 0 to Unicorn. Scott, previously at VC firm Draper Esprit, is one of the most recognised investors in Europe. He greatly adds to the Seedcamp guidance on fundraising and growing B2B SaaS/Enterprise companies. Taylor is well known as a Product Guru and focuses on optimising product experience with his 20 years of experience at places like Time Out, Ebay, and Seatwave. The EIR’s are here to support everyone within the Seedcamp family.
Alongside our new EIR’s we have also brought on two new full-time members to the team. We now have an in-house Head of Talent, Jamahl McMurran, who is here to help our companies find the very best talent as they continue to scale. Cathy White has also joined the team as Communications and Marketing Manager, coming from a PR agency background and specialising in working with startups, she will act as an advisor to our portfolio.
Reshma Sohoni, Partner and Co-Founder, commented: “One of the biggest barriers startups can come up against is having immediate access to an expert mentor. We’re incredibly fortunate to have a network of thousands of industry specialists, but realised we needed to provide our companies with an on-tap resource, in-house, that is specifically there to help support them. Keith, Taylor and Scott, as our Experts-in-Residence, have already made a great impact on our portfolio, and with Jamahl and Cathy now actively helping to support them, we’re providing our companies with the senior advice they need to scale.”
Keith Wallington has led strategy and execution in tech businesses since the 1990’s. Most recently at Mimecast as COO amongst other roles spanning most of the business from Marketing to Customer Experience to Technical Operations as he championed scalable, efficient growth. Keith is focussed on supporting Seedcamp teams with scaling through focussing on the customer journey.
Scott Sage brings with him over ten years of experience in research, marketing and angel and VC investing. He was most recently a partner at Draper Esprit where he invested and worked with enterprise software and consumer companies including Bitbar, Conversocial, Datahug, Lyst, SportPursuit and Trustpilot.
Taylor Wescoatt has focused on Product for 20 years across a range of startups (CitySearch and Seatwave) and bigger organisations (eBay, AOL, and TimeOut). He brings his passion for users to the Seedcamp portfolio, helping Founders critically understand how to build their business around the customer experience from day one.
Jamahl McMurran works with our Founders to refine their hiring piece and attract the best talent. Jamahl brings five years of experience from working with London’s leading digital recruitment agency, ECOM, where clients included VICE, Crowd2Fund, Ticketmaster, Blackwells and Thomson Reuters, to help startups on hiring, business and product development.
Cathy White has specialised in PR for early-stage startups and organisations that support them since starting with Sparkpr over four years ago. While at Albion Drive, Cathy was recognised as a Rising Star of the industry by PR Week and worked with clients that included Transferwise, Klarna, Nominet Trust, Draper Esprit and Index Ventures. A firm believer in not using agencies till you need them, Cathy will advise our portfolio on how to build their own marketing strategies and connect them to the right people when ready.
*Tech.Eu Report, Most Active Investors H1 2015
In the ‘Seedcamp Podcast Series’ we talk with key people in the tech startup industry to hear their stories and gleam key advice and learnings from their experiences.
In this episode of the Seedcamp Podcast, we were joined by Hadley Harris, Founding General Partner of ENIAC Ventures.
Our conversation covers his career in mobile technology that lead to him building ENIAC Ventures in 2009, a mobile centric early-stage VC. Hadley provides insight into how the ENIAC team operate to provide the best support and expertise for their Founders, and the best way for entrepreneurs to work with investors when they don’t know the answer to a problem. He also discusses what ENIAC look for in potential B2B and consumer mobile investments.
Hadley has been actively working at the intersection of business and technology for 15 years. Before focusing on ENIAC full-time, Hadley was a two-time entrepreneur in the mobile technology space. From 2007-2011 he was an executive at Vlingo, acquired by Nuance Communications for $225,000,000, where he held the roles of Head of Business & Market Strategy and Vice President of Marketing. At Vlingo, Hadley was responsible for the firm’s user acquisition and monetization. In the early years Hadley also lead Vlingo’s efforts in business development and finance. After Vlingo he became CMO of Thumb, a mobile social platform that boasted the 2nd highest user engagement next to Facebook. At Thumb he was responsible for all of the company’s marketing and business development activities until they were acquired in spring of 2012 by Ypulse. Before heading to Vlingo, Hadley worked at Charles River Ventures where he spent time helping with mobile investments while looking for a young startup to join. Prior to that, Hadley held a variety of roles including Corporate Strategy for Samsung and Product Management at Microsoft. He began his career as a software developer and engineering team manager for Pegasystems.
Hadley is a noted expert in the mobile space having been quoted or profiled in Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, Business Insider, MIT Technology Review and interviewed on Fox Business News. He was also named New York’s Best Early Stage Investors by Business Insider.
Hadley holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
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As part of our Seedcamp Platform twice a year we travel to the US with a select group of our startups to introduce them to some of the world’s most prestigious companies and investors. The two-week trip helps our startups build bridges across the pond; accessing Learning, Network and Capital from a different perspective to develop their knowledge, markets and connections. We start the trip in New York on October 13th, Boston on the 15th and San Francisco and the Valley on the 19th.
Some of the companies we will visit include Facebook, Google, Pinterest and Stripe, in addition to leading investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. The teams will also attend multiple networking events including one at Spark-Labs in NYC which is open for anyone to attend.
Our Founders and the Seedcamp team in New York
If you’re in the US keep an eye out for the teams joining us:
- ByeBuy, the world’s first unlimited renting platform for consumer electronics. Bye Buy is building a new business model in a global multi-billion dollar consumer goods market.
- Captini, is a social WIFI analytics and monetization platform for resellers, distributors and enterprise partners.
- Curve is an integrated smart card that syncs all your cards into one, and simplifies the way you pay. “An Apple Pay with a card”.
- Fractal Labs is empowering businesses by helping them to evaluate their KPIs and make data driven decisions. The company was launched by team of digital natives with deep technical, design and financial expertise.
- Hype is a contextualised and heavily curated local discovery and media channel for generation Y. Hype is a revenue generating app that having focused on London, is now planning to expand to US.
- Lateral is a machine learning based recommendation API for knowledge work. The deeply technical team currently working with blue chip clients in education, publishing and professional services.
- Qminder is a fully customizable cloud based queue management system, trusted by retailers such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and customer service teams at World Bank, Uber and the Olympics.
- Poq is a leading cloud platform for the next generation of app commerce.
- Revolut, the revolutionary app allows you to instantly send and spend money globally with zero fees.
- TRDATA is a Bloomberg for Emerging Markets. The solution is used by over 500 companies worldwide, among them Bloomberg, Barclays, Societe Generale, Raiffeisen, USAID, AIG and others.
- UI Path provides robotic process automation that anyone can use. UI Path allows users to train and design robots that manipulate software like a person.
Applications are now open for our pre-seed investment. For more information and to apply go here.
The VC Long View is a regular series of posts where Seedcamp talks to our network of investors on the trends they’re following and the ideas they’d like to back. In this post, we talk to John Henderson.
John is an early stage tech investor at White Star Capital, backing Seed and Series A companies across Europe. Prior to this, he ran operations and business development at Summly, a news app that used natural language processing to automatically summarise hundreds of thousands of news article every day — acquired by Yahoo in early 2013. He also held roles at The Boston Consulting Group and Linklaters, and co-founded his own startup in 2005, where he had his first taste of just how hard the entrepreneurial journey can be. White Star Capital is an LP in Seedcamp.
What areas are getting you most excited right now and why?
Summly was a natural language processing (‘NLP’) company with the vision of algorithmically summarising all the content on the web for mobile. Four years later, I still believe in that vision and the potential for NLP and deep learning to create huge value. For example, NLP will allow us to interface with machines that don’t have a natural UI such as cars, wearable devices, robots and our homes. We are already seeing the beginnings of this in Siri, Google Now, Viv and others. Combine NLP with deep learning and the possibility to automate many communication tasks becomes apparent. Examples might include scheduling (x.ai and others are creating automated personal assistants), medical diagnostics (IBM’s Watson will soon be the world’s best GP), legal discovery, call centres, translation and even journalism. I wrote about this recently and gave a bunch of examples there.
I’m similarly excited about recent advances in computer vision. Just last week, researchers in Canada announced they had developed software that can take any image and automatically generate a caption describing it. This combination of vision (image recognition), machine learning (image labeling) and NLP (caption creation) is simply astounding.
There are whole professions dedicated to deciphering images and drawing insight. Think about the airport security official who scans your bags looking for that gun you shouldn’t be taking on the plane, or the radiologist who trains for 5+ years to be able to accurately diagnose illnesses from scans of your body. Computer vision could also be used to help self-driving cars understand where they are, to diagnose skin cancer from photos or to identify fertile agricultural land from satellite photos. There are startups doing all these things and much, much more.
What do you look for when evaluating investments? Any specific themes, regions or other considerations?
I try not to make investments based on trends or themes per se, but rather to identify outstanding entrepreneurs solving problems in areas where I believe there is an opportunity for disruption.
My job, therefore, is a combination of identifying the most talented people and evaluating promising markets and competition.
One important thing I look for is founder-market fit (why is this person/team the right one to solve this problem?) and market timing (why is now the right time for this company to win?). It’s surprising how many companies I meet that simply don’t fit these criteria.
When it comes to regions, at White Star, we invest across Western Europe and North America. Personally, I’m focused on the UK, Germany and the Nordics. I like those regions because of the deep technical talent coming out of universities and established companies, a great work ethic, a support network of talent and experience, and global-minded ambition.
How can founders get in touch?
The best way is always via an introduction! Otherwise, I’m very responsive on Twitter @JohnEHenderson.
This post was originally posted on Medium. If you’re an investor and would like to contribute then please get in touch with us @seedcamp. Or, if you’re a startup working on one of these ideas and looking for your first investment, you can apply to Seedcamp here.
The VC Long View is a regular series of posts where Seedcamp talks to our network of investors on the trends their following and the ideas they’d like to back. In this post, we talk to Scott Sage.
