I was 6 months in from quitting my day job in architecture. My £12k bank loan and survival funds were quickly drying up.

It was clear that building a website and app for a year was one mountain to climb, the next would be to build a team, launch a company and start shouting about it. This required cash! Or what the industry calls: Angel Investment. I had spent the last 10 years in Architecture designing buildings and drawing pretty pictures– I had absolutely no clue about Angel Investment, nor did I know what an Angel Investor looked like or where they hung out. 

I was fortunate that just 3 months into my sabbatical, miPic was invited to apply to a Virgin Startups competition called Pitch to Rich– now rebranded as VOOM. Read about my 90 seconds in front of Richard Branson – here. 

As a result, we gained some good PR exposure and this validation gave miPic visibility. This in turn meant Angel Investors were keen to talk to me about investment and asking to see our business plan. What I quickly discovered was that for every Angel Investor in London there is a million brokers. These people can take you to the promised land and golden gates– for a small fee… Obviously. 

Things got interesting.

I was introduced to various people involved in early stage seed investments funds. These investments ranged from anything of £20,000 up to £200,000. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was invited in to meet someone and present our plans for miPic. Armed with my investment deck and a huge shot of adrenalin (coffee), I rattled through like a 10 year old on sherbet feeling invincible.  

The outcome of this meeting was yet another invite to a private investor evening where 10 companies would pitch to a room full of cash-oozing pockets– Angel Investors! Hallelujah. In order to attend this event and present my slide deck, I had to pay a discounted £200 fee for the privilege of standing on stage and begging for their money. 

So I took my founding team of two developers along for moral support asking for an investment of £150,000 in the business. Thankfully my time in architecture had versed me, I have fond memories of being fresh from an all nighter in the studio standing in front of 100 other architects on zero sleep and presenting our project to 3 professors without collapsing. More often than not there were grillings, questions that made your veins pop out of your arms and piercing eyes thinking “what are you doing here boy”. Architecture served me well.  

On this occasion the audience questions were almost flirtatious. One man stood up, half drunk from the free booze and shouted ‘If there’s anyone with any money in this room, they should give it to miPic’. As you’d expect for a first time founder, I walked off stage with a slight swagger.

Oh… They’re a different animal.

So the pitches had finished, we all hit the dance floor in what seemed like a river dance to everyone’s favourite Startup of the evening to talk numbers and exchange business cards. It’s hard enough remembering people’s names and what they do, so imagine after the adrenaline crash of a 15 minute pitch and having to tell everyone individually your story all over again.

Suddenly something grabbed my attention, I was presented by a big man and his sidekick standing in front of me. A well spoken chap making jokes about me being ‘Northern’. His first proper words were: 

“How about a £1 million pound investment from a Middle Eastern investment fund”

My ears popped up like a Siberian husky, eyes focussed on this duo like I’d found my first love. He had our attention, as you’d expect, I swiped their business cards and agreed to follow up. On our way out that evening, I asked the event host and investment manager about these potential million pound investors – he looked at me sternly and said “talk to them, they’re a different animal.” Going home that evening as a startup founder was quite satisfying, i’d collected over a dozen cards and was excited to begin meetings with these Angels. 

In the weeks following, I met with several smartly suited gentleman from the event with the reward of… more introductions. Some of these fellas may have been genuine, some of them were definitely full of shit. And some were just looking for jobs themselves as non-execs within startups. What was clear though, the Angel Investment game is one hell of a rat race. 

Then the big fish got in touch. 

We were asked to meet for coffee in Park Lane and talk business. It was clear to me that there was a different vibe to this, one of persistence and consistent business questioning. I checked them out on LinkedIn and searches online, both came from reputable backgrounds, all pretty cool and exciting- says the internet. 

Discussions progressed and it was evident that the two front men I was dealing with weren’t the actual investors or the fund managers, again brokers. I was told that any investment offered would be include a broker fee of 5% cash to them which we thought was reasonable, seeing as £1m was on the table. 

The Pitch

Following multiple canceled meetings and over 6 weeks talking to this team, alongside working on the actual business, finally we had a meeting with the Fund Manager. This time at a lawyers office in Mayfair. Our pitch meeting included the two chaps from the event – now overly friendly, a very pretty business analyst and the elusive fund manager. A guy who appeared to have just stepped off a plane from the mediterranean, dressed sharper than a butchers pencil, ice white shirt and a solid suntan.

I presented miPic to the room assisted by my developer and he liked what he saw. After a few questions he nodded to the others and said “I think this is a good one” then left. On our way out we said our goodbyes to their team and bumped into the original pitch event organiser who invited me to the evening. Somewhat abnormally, he didn’t say hello, just nodded and raised an eyebrow in reception. 

We left that office and walked through Mayfair high-fiving each other that day, just 10 months after turning on the first beta version of our website v1. 

The Offer

£2 million pounds in return for 25% of the business… F**k we were pumped!

We went from speaking to investors for £50-150k investment to £2m. How ridiculous does that sound. 

I later received a couple of calls from the well tanned Fund Manager that week who said in order to proceed with the investment and to complete due diligence before sending over a Term Sheet from the investors, they had to carry out extensive background and CRB checks on myself and each of my team. This would cost approx £2000 per team member which miPic had to pay. Doesn’t that sound baffling!

I was told a £2,000,000 investment was within two weeks away and in order to complete the formalities before sending over a term sheet, they wanted– the founder of the cash strapped startup to send them a few grand. Hang on a minute! I may have been a rabbit in the headlights and new to the game but, do I look stupid! I wrote an email to the team that I was unwilling to send precious funds from our cash flow and politely declined. 

Tactics 

The chilled investment manager, a pleasure to meet in person and over the phone, quickly changed his tune over email with a bit of heated type and psychology. 

I was quickly made to feel like an absolute moron and guilty that the amount of effort and time invested in me over 8 weeks was a huge leap of faith which the Middle Eastern family were willing to take. They were shocked I was unwilling to contribute to this exercise with payment of thousands, so they wished me luck building our product and left us dangling. My team went into meltdown, my web developer Ash, the most laid back dude I’ve ever met, lost it. “How could you turn this down and not pay them, are you mental!” We had a huge row, I was distraught asking my friends and advisors for advice whilst looking at my girlfriend in despair. 

Now lots of people give sole founders a bad rep because the responsibility on our shoulders is enormous but one thing I believe helped me in this situation was exactly that. Myself and Ash could have seriously fallen out if we held equal shareholding. I didn’t want to send any money because we were almost broke and no matter how much the team asked me too, my ‘Liverpudlian’ gut said don’t do it. 

We agreed on the diplomatic approach and attempted to continue the investment discussion and ask for proof of due diligence checks and proof of investment funds etc. But the response was the same, asking for payment up front to advance. Only this time the name at the top of my email wasn’t addressed to me, it was someone else’s name. How could he get my name wrong, was it a typo or was it a copy / paste job? 

The Exit

I decided not to reply to his last email. I went silent, so did they. Strange. The two blokes that were so jovial and friendly for 8 weeks vanished off the face of the earth and didn’t email me again asking about my plans to follow up. The organiser of the event who originally encouraged me to pursue their funding, also went silent.

I spent 8 weeks speaking to these people. Consider my time as equally as valuable as theirs, from pitching at events, writing emails until 3am each night, to meeting investors in Mayfair all for a £2m quid investment which turned into a hoax. I should have billed them. 

You’ll be surprised how much mental and emotional energy goes into these things. London is full of people trying to piggy back onto deals, make some cash or just f**k people over. For every truly good Angel Investor who genuinely wants to invest cash into great ideas and founders, there are 100 devils. 

Like an episode from sitcom Silicon Valley, this post could be completely fictitious and exaggerated, but I strongly advise Founders to really do your own due diligence on Investors and sniff people out as early as possible.

Learnings

1. If it’s too good to be true, it is!

In my case I was told to explore these investment opportunities and trusted people. Although internally, we did wonder why there was a huge difference in investment size.

2. Do your Due Diligence on investors

Investors can often come sugar-coated as a helping hand, when in reality that may not always be the case.

3. Never send anyone money if you’re seeking investment from them!

This does sounds ludicrous, but it happens. I was offered genuine investment from an SEIS fund and their Due Diligence fees were outlined in the Term Sheet and deducted after completion. Never pay anything before a deal closes! 

If this post resonates with you in any way, shout me in the Comments below! Did you overcome a challenging period which seemed impossible?

I was at a conference a couple of years ago watching Dhiraj Mukherjee tell his whirlwind story to a thousand people of co-founding his startup, Shazam, that music app we all use. Little did I know, the impact his inspirational words would have on me personally and our own journey for miPic.

At the time, I was extremely exhausted, probably depressed and unquestionably burnt out, living out of a suitcase at friends’ houses. I faced a very serious realisation that miPic was just a few months away from closing before we’d even got started due to an incredibly difficult situation that seemed impossible to solve. What was a year of pride and ecstasy building our company and brand became a nightmare as new investment in the company was blocked.

Two months after watching this man on stage at Startup Grind, I was standing on a train at Waterloo in London, slumped and dazed when he stepped onto my carriage next to me.

During Dhiraj’s talk at the conference, he gave a little anecdote from the Shazam story which stuck with me that summer. Back when the company was in its inception, the founding team were really struggling with the functionality of their product– specifically the algorithm which detects the song and sends users the artist, title and so on. They were short on funding, each of the founders were looking at ways to support the business or step out and go back into full-time work. They almost gave up. Their lead Tech Scientist asked to be left alone for some time while he gave it one last shot at building the code. Some time later he reappeared and cracked it. Shazam was born. They kept persisting, kept pushing and found a solution.

Background

Just four months before the conference I was unbelievably ecstatic–  we had just launched miPic v1.0 after six months of hard and ridiculously long hours, getting the product out in time for Christmas. With our small team in London and an agency of 10 developers in Argentina, f**k it was fun.

We turned on the new website to much relief and in January 2016 received a few nice surprises. The company was recognised by Inc.com and featured by The Next Web. We were also invited in to meet one of the industry’s notorious Venture Capital Investors, who’d previously invested in the likes of Spotify, Kayak and Facebook. We were all on a high, the team was bouncing and it seemed like we were on track… in the blink of an eye our whole plan was derailed.

(This deserves a post of it’s own, so I’ll come back to that later.)  

A surreal couple of months followed, what was once a very exciting time quickly flipped into fear, anxiety and inconsolable heartbreak. Our roadmap for the year was to build and launch the platform, fix any bugs over the new year period and start marketing with a new round of investment. I made the decision not to accept a proposed new round of investment because it would have killed us, so I was suddenly out scouting critical funding, with a product ready to market and no budget to operate, or to live.

The Train

To give ourselves a fighting chance, I decided to sacrifice my own living expenses, leaving my home of 5 years in Clapham to stay with friends and sofa surf. I would use the remaining Crowdfunding cash left in the tank to hire a marketing assistant to lighten my load so I could focus on chasing down new investment. On this particular day, I chased Dhiraj, right down that train carriage and stood next to him.

“Hi.”

Fight or Flight – When our back is against the wall we do things without deliberating or finding excuses, it’s instinct. No matter how tired or burnt out I was that day, there was no way I was leaving that train without speaking to him. With nothing to lose I said “Hi, excuse me”. I introduced myself and thanked him for sharing his Shazam story at the conference. In twenty or thirty brief seconds I presented my business to him and showed him our app –  miPic. He raised an eyebrow and agreed to meet me for coffee, so we swapped business cards. That evening I sat on the River Thames in Wandsworth eating dinner with my ridiculously excitable Argentinian friend ‘Caro’ and a new found energy, one that wasn’t scared but fuelled and inspired.

The following week, we met in Pret a Manger and I told Dhiraj my problem which halted our progress. With his head in his hands on the table shaking his head in frustration, he said he wanted to help. One sentence that stood out was “you have to pound the pavement Carl and don’t stop”. 

The next day he wrote an incredible heartfelt email to his closest friends in the startup community with a rallying cry – the email subject read ‘Help a fellow founder in need’. It finished on “I don’t know Carl personally, but this is an opportunity to help someone in a way they will never forget.” Now I’m not embarrassed to say as a 36 year old modern-day man, when I read his email, tears rolled down my face for about half an hour. (Thank god, my friends weren’t at home ?)

Keep Going!

That period was the hardest emotional and physical struggle of my life and there was a glimmer of hope. I met all of Dhiraj’s contacts that month for coffee, all great guys but were unable to help directly to solve my problem. This show of support from total strangers gave me the extra kick I needed to keep pushing 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for months. Dhiraj kept in touch over email throughout the autumn with encouragement and intros and it went right to the wire. Thankfully there was a solution that most didn’t think was possible, and we did pull off a miracle to give miPic the future it deserved raising £1.3m investment 6 months after meeting Dhiraj.

The moral of the story is to never doubt your ability to make things happen, even if your exhausted on a train heading home for dinner. With belief, positivity and obsessive hard work, it’s all possible. 

I lost a few things that year but never gave up, I pounded the pavement as Dhiraj asked. If you too are a founder going through hell– keep going, you may surprise yourself at what is waiting for you around the corner. Or even on a train… ?? Meeting Dhiraj really gave me that turbo boost of motivation and restored my faith in human beings when I needed it most.

Startup Grind – Fireside Chat

Three years after meeting Dhiraj on that train, on Thursday, August 8th 2019 we shared a fireside Q&A in association with Startup Grind London.

We discussed Dhiraj’s journey with Shazam from inception to exit and how our chance train encounter empowered me to push on and enable miPic to overcome a mountainous hurdle, saving me from despair that summer. Our talk gave a real insight into the pitfalls and ecstatic moments we encounter founding startups, from seed funding, to crowdfunding and VC investment.

Just tap below to watch the full Startup Grind chat!

Learnings

1. Be prepared for banana skins when you least expect it

If you have investments in the pipeline, there’s a chance things may change, never be desperate and don’t stop pushing until the deal is done.

2. Never be afraid to say – Hi!

When you need help – ASK! Everyone you know and more. Don’t be afraid, the worst that can happen is they say no.

3. Be Positive, magic can happen

Be persistant and be relentless. Exhaust every possible option towards your goal. If you push hard enough, the universe will make it happen

If this post resonates with you in any way, shout me in the Comments below! Did you overcome a challenging period which seemed impossible?