Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep 18: Investor Insights for Fashion and Textile Startups with Gabrielle Swycher, Joseph Aziz and Nic Gorini (x Fashion District)
219 Plays1 month ago
Special episode: No Ordinary Cloth x Fashion District
In this episode, host Mili Tharakan partners with Fashion District London to bring an insightful discussion on securing investment in the textile and fashion industries. Featuring three seasoned venture capitalists—Gabrielle Swycher (Redrice Ventures), Joseph Aziz (True Global), and Nic Gorini (Spin Ventures)—the conversation explores what investors look for in startups, actionable advice for founders, and the trends shaping the future of sustainable fashion. Whether you're a founder seeking funding or an industry professional curious about investment dynamics, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Fashion District is a hub for fashion innovation in east London. They connect fashion, technology, business and education to provide an ecosystem of support for fashion and textile startups that includes innovation networks, affordable space, business support and investment.
Topics covered on this episode:
- Investor Expectations:The importance of founder resilience, passion, and purpose in early-stage startups.
How startups can demonstrate traction, scalability, and market potential to secure funding. - Actionable Advice for Founders:Tips for crafting a compelling pitch deck and avoiding common mistakes.
How to identify the right investors by researching portfolios, mandates, and value alignment.
The significance of building strong networks and understanding your target audience. - Sustainability and Circularity:Key factors investors assess when evaluating sustainable innovations in textiles and fashion.
The role of regulation, measurable impact, and integration into existing systems in driving investment decisions. - Emerging Investment Trends:The rise of circular fashion, re-commerce platforms, traceability technologies, and regulatory-driven opportunities.
Insights into the challenges and opportunities in biomaterials and new business models.
Meet the Expert Guests:
- Gabrielle Swycher (Redrice Ventures): Principal at Redrice Ventures, specializing in early-stage investments in purpose-driven consumer brands and tech across the UK.
- Joseph Aziz (True Global): Investor at True Global, focusing on early-stage consumer and retail startups with a robust network of corporate partners to support scaling efforts.
- Nic Gorini (Spin Ventures): Founder of Spin Ventures, a niche boutique fund dedicated to accelerating the transition to a circular economy through innovative technologies.
Resources:
- Venture Deals by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson – A guide to understanding venture capital for first-time founders.
- Waste to Wealth by Peter Lacy – Exploring business models behind circular practices.
- Estia Ryan's LinkedIn post on newsletters in consumer sustainability spaces.
You can connect with me here: Linkedin I Insta I Buy me a coffee
Email me: No Ordinary Cloth
Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash
Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to No Ordinary Cloud
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and a warm welcome to the No Ordinary Cloud podcast where we stitch together a rich tapestry of textile innovations one episode at a time. I'm your host, Mili Tharakin, a textile innovator and researcher. If you're passionate about the arts, science and business of textiles, you've come to the right place. This podcast is your gateway to exploring groundbreaking ideas and transformative trends shaping the future of fashion and textiles.
Collaboration with Fashion District London
00:00:27
Speaker
Hope you're all off to a great start in 2025. This is the first episode in the new year from me, and I'm super excited about this.
Spotlighting Textile Startups
00:00:35
Speaker
Today's episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Fashion District London, where we spotlight startups and innovators tackling some of the industry's biggest challenges. And in this fourth installment of the series, we're diving into a topic that's critical for early stage founders and established businesses alike, investments.
00:00:56
Speaker
We'll be exploring what it takes to secure funding in the textile and fashion sector, a space that's bubbling with innovation, and catching the interest of many investors.
Panelist Introductions
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm thrilled to introduce our expert panel today. We have Gabriela Schweicher, a partner at RedRise Ventures, which specializes in supporting purpose-driven consumer brands that aim to scale globally.
00:01:19
Speaker
Then we have Joseph Aziz, an investor at True, a firm dedicated to reimagining business as a force for positive change. And Nick Garini, founder of Spin Ventures, which focuses on accelerating the transition from a linear to a circular economy.
00:01:35
Speaker
I wanted to say a special thank you to Helen Lacks and Claudia Gandy at Fashion District for making this episode possible. Their support has been instrumental in bringing this special series to you and also bringing together this dynamic panel.
Episode Overview: Trends and Funding
00:01:51
Speaker
So what can you expect in this episode? We discuss what investors are looking for in a startup and what makes a startup investable.
00:01:58
Speaker
But investors are not just about money. We also talk about what valuable support they bring to the table beyond funding. These panelists are experts at reviewing pitch decks. They review thousands of them. And I think they might even be dreaming in slides. ah But they share about what you need to do to make that first impression really stick and get them to sit up in their chair.
00:02:20
Speaker
We also discuss emerging investment trends in sustainability and circularity. And also, did you know there are key times of the year that most of the funding happens, especially in the UK? Well, stick around to find out all about it. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to scale up your business or a first time founder just starting off on your journey, there is plenty for
Panelist Journeys and Motivations
00:02:43
Speaker
everyone here. I believe this episode is packed with valuable insights. So let's dive in.
00:02:49
Speaker
Hi Gabby, Joseph and Nick. It's fabulous to have you here. I feel a bit nervous sitting in front of three investors, but you all seem extremely kind and friendly. Thank you so much for joining us today to discuss a topic that is so important to building a business. This is a highly anticipated episode, so I'm very excited to dive in with lots of questions. Most of them have actually come directly from startups and listeners.
00:03:13
Speaker
But before we kick in, I thought it would be great if each of you could give us a little intro about yourself and what you enjoy most about being an investor. Let's start with Joseph.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, hi, my name is Joseph Aziz. I was born and raised in Lebanon, moved to the UK around three years ago. Basically, most of my career has been in VC. I did electrical engineering before that and realized I would like to dive a bit deeper into the startup world. So did a bit of that in the tech space, but then realized maybe that's even more interesting on the business side. So moved to VC in 2018, did a bit of work in a journalist VC and moved to true ah late 2023, where we do a consumer and retail investing. And that's the core of my work at the moment. So early stage consumer and retail is basically all we look at and all that excites us. so And what do you enjoy about being an investor? What gets you out of bed?
00:04:06
Speaker
I feel like the chance to speak to all of these founders having brilliant ideas and coming out to execute them and to kind of find their way around that whole space and just me having the chance to speak with them and hopefully ideally invest in their companies just makes me quite interested and excited to yeah, jump out of bed and get to work.
00:04:25
Speaker
Lovely. How about you, Gabby? Give us a little intro. Yeah. So, hey, I'm Gabby. I've been a red rice now for coming on three years. I'm a principal here. Was in investment banking before for all my sins. um And was super fortunate to start my career working with some of the the largest consumer companies across Europe. So I work with the likes of Wreckit, AB and Bev.
00:04:47
Speaker
Unilever, which is amazing. And you see the deals on the front of the papers, but what you maybe don't get, which you really get at the early stages, working with people that are unbelievably passionate about what they do. So moved early stage, and at Red Rice we invest in early stage consumer brands and tech, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, but I know can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
00:05:06
Speaker
For us, we invest into seed and series A tickets of up to about two and a half million into businesses doing anything from about 1 million to 10 million annual revenue. Thank you. And how about you, Nick? Tell us a bit about yourself. Hi, everyone. So Nick Garini, founder and managing partner at Spin Ventures.
00:05:24
Speaker
I've been in these sectors for about 40 years. I started at ES10 recycling skateboards. so As all my friends were throwing about these skateboards, I used to recycle them and sell them back. That I call at my very beginning into like the circular space.
00:05:39
Speaker
And then, you know, another ventures was created in 2006, where we were so like recycle, you know, waste streams from large corporations into accessories. That company ended up terribly bad. I wasn't ah in the difference of our industry at the time, but that gave me the motivation to set up spin ventures in 2012.
00:05:58
Speaker
And that with the same values and the same vision that there are certain individuals that can see value where everyone sees ways. So when everyone asked me what business are you in, I think, you know, we are in the business of imagination. And that's really what we invest in is in individuals who have that kind of like unique ways of looking at the world differently.
00:06:17
Speaker
And then we've created like an ecosystem around it. So we have ah our fund structure to invest in, pre-seed and seed innovators. So these are all the companies that enable circularity, aligning both economic growth and decarbonizations on one side. And then on the other, we are sort of like very entrepreneurial by nature. So we've always brought together entrepreneurs and work with large corporates to make sure that they accelerate the transition to a more sustainable model. I'm super excited to be here today and I guess this is what really gives me the energy. It's to be surrounded and meeting like these phenomenal individuals who are out there with such an abundance of positivity and resilience. Not only to see a different world but actually to make a different world happen and that for me is immensely energizing.
Investor Insights on Startups
00:07:08
Speaker
Brilliant. Well, we have a lot to cover, so I'm going to go straight into the questions. Let's start with the biggest question we have for you. Help us understand how startups are evaluated and what expectations investors have from them. What do you look for, especially from textile and fashion startups when considering an investment? And I guess what are the key expectations that you have from founders? Gabby, would you like to get us started? Sure. Yeah. i think that It's funny because I was looking at this question before before we spoke because I knew we were going to talk about it and and it's the thing that people always want to know and it's also often the hardest thing to answer. Super company dependent, super category dependent. But i'll I'll do my best to to start and I guess I would say that the most important thing for us to meet the early stages is the founders.
00:07:57
Speaker
And that's a mix of things that is what expertise have you got across to the entirety of your career or your skillset that puts you in the best position to be the person to make a company that's going to do well. So that's the kind of the hard skills. And then I would say on the soft skills side of things, when we're looking at any company in this space too, is we're looking for founders that are going to make it. Being a founder is not easy. It's a really, really tough job and a lot of respect for every founder out there. So finding founders who are passionate, who are resilient, who are driven for a purpose, I think beyond the money, because when the going gets tough, believing that they're going to continue to push through is really important. And then beyond the founder, there's there's lots of other things we look at and it's an amalgamation of all of them. It's everything from market, product, financials, customer love, moats that the company has, all all those good stuff and and can talk about this a little bit more if that's helpful later. Nick, would you like to add to that? What would you be looking at?
00:08:54
Speaker
I would 100% support and marry what Gabby was saying. I think, especially at the very early stage, the founder is what anyone is really investing in. And so absolutely, it is about the founder purpose. i But I'm not saying this in a spiritual way, because if either someone is doing it, because that's their nature, so it's not something that one chooses, it's like they're calling, you know, and there are these individuals that were born to do what they're doing, and that's really what we're trying to assess, because again, as Gabi was saying, yes, at the beginning there's the enthusiasm, but then it's a marathon, so this enthusiasm then needs to turn into resilience and inventiveness and solving problems and motivating oneself, their family, their partners, their co-founders, their people, so either one does it because it's their true calling or it just it it won't resist, it failed, it burns out. So although it's not very tangible to describe, you know I think that's the priority. In our case particularly after this first survive purpose check is
00:10:01
Speaker
Kind of like the ability to drive alignment between environmental impact and economic growth. and And those things for us um has to be absolutely aligned. One could have created the most amazing technologies that, I don't know, sort of like transform waste streams into new fibers. However, if the price is not competitive with others, I'm afraid it won't work. And similarly, one may have created the most performing products, but actually if it it delivers a bigger environmental impact than what's on the market, again, it won't work. And that makes it kind of like twice as much as difficult because, you know, you need to both drive significant economic growth and returns and significant tangible, positive, measurable environmental impact. Joseph, at True, you focus on early-stage startups. What is unique to the assessment of early-stage startups then?
00:10:54
Speaker
I would say because obviously like many of the founders or the companies wouldn't necessarily have the most amazing traction, maybe even nothing at all. And that's something obviously we're expecting. For me, things I would look at, especially in the fashion space that could really help are like having a strong network. And I feel like that is so essential in terms of knowing who to reach out to and when to reach out to that person, to that entity, to that, I don't know, possible co-founder or client or whoever it is. That would just make things so much easier in the future. And then when you say, I want to get.
00:11:25
Speaker
I'm gonna close five clients. I know exactly who these clients are. I know the path to reaching them. And that would make me as an investor feel comfortable saying, I'm happy to give you a ticket it at this very early stage because I know that you're able to kind of reach what you've said you want to reach. I feel like that's one. And maybe another one would be just like deep understanding of your target audience. Obviously from having had experience in the past or.
00:11:46
Speaker
having been in maybe another fashion company or having done anything in that space that just kind of shows that you know exactly what your problem is. You've maybe felt it yourself. It's very personal to you. But even if it's not, then as long as you understand it very deeply and you portray this to me and you make it very clear, then this all gives me like a lot of confidence to like sign that investment check.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Academics Transitioning to Founders
00:12:09
Speaker
it's It's really interesting you both brought up experience in the field being important because recently many of the bio textile startups that I've come across have actually spun out of biochemistry labs or material science labs, but they're building materials for the textile and fashion industry, which they don't really have any experience in.
00:12:27
Speaker
And that's what you're looking for. So how do founders, especially those who come from academia, navigate that transition from being an academic researcher at a lab to a founder attending Paris Fashion Show and finding their feet in an industry that they've never been a part of?
00:12:45
Speaker
Great question. I feel like the other way around is maybe even tougher if you're going from a founder to someone who like really wants to know a lot about biochemistry or anything like that technical. But having that as a starting point, you already know your technical stuff very, very well. Next step is obviously you still have to do a lot of onboarding. You have to kind of learn how to be a founder and what it takes to be a founder. I guess one experience gives you that. So as soon as you set your mind to it and you start gathering a few people around you, asking questions, linking up with investors, listening to podcasts such as this one, will all give you like the first building blocks towards becoming a founder. But I think I don't have like names to recommend, but I feel like going through a specific course or like founder sessions, and I know there's a lot of them in the UK and London specifically, and I'm sure worldwide as well. But coming in with this very strong technical background obviously gives you a very strong advantage.
00:13:38
Speaker
The next step is, okay, learn how to implement that into maybe a different space. As you said, like moving from maybe something a bit too technical to something in the fashion space, extending what you already know. So I feel like it's not impossible. It is very much doable. There is a lot of help available from especially like a accelerators and incubators and the likes of those.
00:13:57
Speaker
Absolutely. Oh, that's encouraging. Gabby, at RedRise you focus on the ready to scale startups. What are the key criteria's you're looking for from startups who are at this stage of scaling? Yeah. So I think that.
00:14:10
Speaker
What we're looking for is, I suppose, once you've done that founder piece, it's then showing that the the idea, of the concept, has started to gain traction. And exactly how much traction will differ and depend, depends on the category. But being able to show that whether it's a consumer or a business, that your clients are buying into the products that you're offering. And perhaps, depending on the market, that they're choosing you over competitors if it's a market that's fragmented with other players in it.
00:14:38
Speaker
And once we've done that, it's then looking a little bit more at the unit economics. Do the numbers make sense? So say, for example, you have, you're a DTC fashion business and you've proof that consumers want you because you've got 1.5 million of annual revenue. Well, if we dig a little bit deeper and we look at those marketing metrics, how much are you spending to acquire each customer? And is that, are those the bills and blocks for a sustainable business over time?
00:15:03
Speaker
Nick, you've been in this business for a very long time. What are some of the biggest challenges that you've seen that early stage startups face when trying to secure investment, especially in textile and fashion? And how can they overcome these obstacles? I guess I'm stressing about textile and fashion because there is a lot of information out there for software and hardware startups, a lot of support for them.
00:15:26
Speaker
But support and investments are a lot less in textiles. When considering textiles and fashion, they can't be reviewed as you would a software startup. So with that in mind, what are some of the challenges that startups face in our world of textiles?
00:15:41
Speaker
I think there are there are some external challenges and then there are some internal challenges. Some of the internal challenges sometimes are really questioned whether there is a founder that's worth investing and there is a technology that's worth investing or the team is structured in a way that good technological scientific skills are paired with the great commercial skills. I mean, we don't put experience as a requirement. No one would have ever invested in Mark Zuckerberg because he didn't have any experience in social media. So, but again, that's the case of a very sort of like driven founder, but sometimes they're not that driven. in So I think that is a challenge because as much as one is developing the most amazing technology products or you know business solutions, but if they don't have that kind of like roundness of know a great product, a great solutions, a great business,
00:16:30
Speaker
and an equally strong, if not stronger, business and commercial acumen, then I'm afraid that becomes a challenge. And in our experience, strong technical academia, universities spin off with a very strong scientific engineering background compared to perhaps a team with sort of like maybe like a less stronger technical background, but a better stronger commercial background stand to be more investible business in the long run. So sometimes it is a way the team is structured that doesn't make the company investable, especially at the very early early stage. And sometimes like the solution might just be, hey, go out there and find a co-founder that is equally passionate about your vision. But so you come back with both a technology, a technical vision as much as a commercial.
00:17:17
Speaker
and a financial vision. So that's that's one challenge. Sometimes there are other challenges, as we said before, me know maybe it's it's not it's it's not a solution, maybe it's it's something that hasn't got and the market potential, or maybe we are not able to see that market potential.
00:17:32
Speaker
And so that leads me to the other set of challenges and that is most of the time, first time founder, they don't have experience and an understanding of the kind of like intrinsic a complicated relationship with investment. And so they approach investment from a place that doesn't respond.
00:17:49
Speaker
with investors again i don't know about gabi and joseph but we tend to receive about 3 000 pitches every year so there's there's a great deal of investments into you know sourcing these but also controlling those deals and it gets down to what is investment proposition what is that one is pitching and that the the ability to clearly extract That in a way that is simple and kind of like allow individuals to kind of quickly understand, okay, this is the market they're going. This is why they're good. This is what they've done so far. Let's have a chat. That is kind of like a, I wouldn't say a split second, but it's kind of like ah an initial conversation. So that sometimes become a challenge because you may have fantastic, amazing founders.
00:18:28
Speaker
who are not experiencing kind of like writing you know an effective pitch or engaging with investors in a way that creates proactive conversations. So those are challenges that can be worked on. I think you know Joseph was mentioning before, ah there' there's plenty of like content now, there's there's plenty of documentation on you know what is the perfect pitch. And that is because thousands of people have been working. So that there's a format, it's just like the the way the industry can understand the better.
Investment Strategies and Visions
00:18:56
Speaker
Each of you come from slightly different investment firms with a different thesis for your investments. I was wondering if you could, in fact, pitch your company to us. Tell us about what you do, how you support startups, and what you specialize in. Joseph, tell us a bit more about True.
00:19:13
Speaker
so yeah as i mentioned Very briefly at the start, true as a consumer and retail investor, what does that mean specifically? So we're investing in pre-seed to Series A, tickets of like £150,000 all the way up to £1.5 million pounds at the later stages. But what we look for in terms of sectors specifically is anything that's consumer tech or consumer product.
00:19:33
Speaker
or even retail tech or supply chain tech. So if you're selling to a consumer, whether it's a nice food and beverage thing, or whether it's an application that helps you with your health in any way, all of that falls under our mandate. And then if you're selling to a retailer, whether it's a grocer or apparel store, whatever the use case is, again, this all falls within our mandate.
00:19:54
Speaker
And what makes us maybe slightly differentiated than possibly more generalist VCs is that we have a really good network in that retail space. So we engage with different partners, big corporates across Europe, US and the UK. So whenever we feel that the startup could potentially benefit from an introduction to someone or possibly even show them the products that they have and try to get them to use them or to onboard whatever tool they have, whether it's a SAS tool or a tool that helps you have better market insights or even better in-store technology to understand your customer and their behaviors. This is all possible through our network and through the people we know. And we also have a dedicated innovation team that's spending most of their time obviously dealing with their clients and advising on everything that's innovation. But also whenever I see something that's interesting,
00:20:38
Speaker
Any startup that's doing anything that fits into that retail space, I send it over to our innovation team saying, hey, do you think you can introduce them? Do you think that's useful for any of your partners? And then I would already get an answer quite quickly and then make any necessary intros. That's kind of where we are giving a value out to our portfolio companies. And obviously within the PE and because you also have a private equity fund under truth, any company that's within their portfolio or within the VC portfolio could be a value add to any of our other companies as well. So let's say we have a certain number of brands across both portfolios, we're investing in retail tax solutions that could benefit. any of these as well. And obviously we're very happy to make intros. The founders meet you meet each other anyway ah through events we have in the office. So yeah, it's it's like a nice ecosystem that kind of benefits itself as it goes and as it grows further. Perfect. And Gabby, could you tell us about RedRise? Yes. So we invest Seed and Series A into consumer brands and tech across the UK. That's both B2C and B2B.
00:21:40
Speaker
And the way that we see the world is that we really wanted to set up a fund that had both investors and operators at the core of it. So the current fund we're investing out of, we've been investing out of for three and a half years. It's a 60 million pound fund. We've made 17 investments and we'll do another five to seven over the next 12 to 18 months. And what we do once we're invested is is the whole of our team is available to the portfolio whenever helpful.
00:22:05
Speaker
to support in whatever way the founders are looking for. And so looking across the group of partners that we have at the fund, there are four of them and three of them come from founder operator background. One is a brand guy and he is absolutely extraordinary. um He was most recently CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi. But before that, he had his own ad agency, which which he grew and sold to publicist. So he knows what' what it's like to be a founder, to be an operator, to lead a global organization. And we're very brand led as a fund, so we can really support on that side of things. One of the other partners, Johnny Halbron, was at Thomas Pink for 20 years. He was CEO there for 15 of them. So he knows everything retail, supply chain, finance.
00:22:42
Speaker
and And that's the way we think about things. We have a tech operating partner, John Paskin, who who founded a tech business that was subsequently sold to S and&P. And so what we do is we try and come together as a team and support and all the specific aspects that that any of our companies might have. and We also recognize that we probably don't know everything. We know a lot, but we don't know everything. But the benefit of having a little bit more gray hair on the team than your typical venture team is that if we don't know something, we probably know someone who does.
00:23:10
Speaker
How about you, Nick? What's spin about? We are there in each boutique fund, and we were not born as a fund. I think we have created a fund to execute our mission. now Our vision is is one of a regenerative work where businesses can try by both sort of being profitable in a sustainable way, but also working in sync with nature.
00:23:32
Speaker
So that's kind of like our vision therefore our mission becomes to kind of like create the vision for some sectors because sometimes there is no vision for ah a regenerative industry and most importantly finding in those individuals who have those visions, who are developing those technologies to make it happen. And so as an ecosystem approach, investment is is just a part but the other part which I'm going to go through is equally if not more more important. um So in terms of investment, if you think about corporations in the consumer retail sectors, you know clothing and apparel brands, accessories, shoes, furniture, so those who Joseph may have invested in,
00:24:10
Speaker
ah or like you know amazing brands that that are growing, other whether they are small, medium, or large corporations, or they now have realized that the way that they've been running businesses so far is just not working. We've overcome 1.5 degrees last year from Paris Agreement. It doesn't work for the environment, it doesn't work for the impact that's out there socially, it doesn't work for an economic or financial perspective.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then there's a new competition coming with more exciting, regenerative propositions that have a lower impact on the environment. So what we're seeking for are all of those technologies and solutions, so business-to-business solutions, business-to-business-to-consumers, or ventures that are testing business-to-consumer model as a way to explore business-to-business model.
00:24:57
Speaker
that would allow corporations to still to operate in a way that is more efficient, driving more revenues and keep the profitability, but decarbonizing their value chain. And so to be a little bit more specific, there's different verticals. So one is material science. So everyone who's working on New material like like to replace oil-based materials or to to find bio-alternative like ah biopolymer for example or new regenerative materials which lead us to recycling technologies, so abilities to reuse material as an example could be end-of-life textile waste into raw fiber. We then look at all the data across the supply and value chains, no data, no goals, no score, so data again to
00:25:44
Speaker
assess, measure both environmental impact with economic metrics so that the the consumer and retail sectors then can start seeing that this is not just about decreasing the impact, it's actually about increasing efficiency and so two things go hand in hand and then I guess last but not least is a very exciting world of re-commerce and those are all the technologies and platforms that are again, ailitating corporations to return products, reuse products, repair products, replace products, rent products. So this is sort of like our focus. But as I was saying earlier, investing won't push the needle so much. you know So we have the other part where we really to start working with corporations to start integrating these technologies in their operations.
00:26:34
Speaker
and really sort of inspire, educate, demonstrate to leaders that ah this is about creating both operational efficiencies, incremental revenues and the carbonizations of their value chain. It's quite a novel concept and and so to that functions, we've created a whole platform. It's called the House of Circularities, like a platform that is designed to deliver pilots, pilots, pilots, pilots help ventures, pilots have corporates, pilots help investors. Wow. Well, within just the three of you, there's such a difference in the kind of businesses that you support. How can an early stage startup determine what type of investor is right for them? What are the key factors that they should be looking for in their investor?
00:27:20
Speaker
Again, I would say for startups to look at, obviously the LinkedIn pages of the people who work there, but also the websites of the companies themselves, the VCs, and then looking at their portfolios and re-empting any potential conflicts. So in case there's another company that does exactly the same, in a lot of cases, the the VCs would say, like, sorry, we can't do that. There's a portfolio conflict. Or that would be their thesis to kind of like combine all of these different companies that do similar things and put them into one. But then this goes to the founders, to the founder to decide if they do or don't want that.
00:27:50
Speaker
And yeah, I would just make sure that there's enough relevance for the VC instead of just wasting time speaking to them and like going through many calls and then realizing there's just no fit, whether the stage or the sector or anything else, it just doesn't fit. So um I would just say, make sure you know really, really well ah who you're about to speak to and why you want them versus someone else. And I think that's a question that I ask founders quite often is,
00:28:12
Speaker
So why did you choose true? Like why us? Is there a specific reason? Do you want to leverage our network or is it just because there's a mandate fit? And if they can answer that quite clearly, if they're very honest about it and there's a good fit, then it's a good conversation. Otherwise who would have probably both could have used that time to do something else. So. Absolutely.
Effective Pitch Decks and Timing
00:28:31
Speaker
Oftentimes an interaction between an investor and a founder starts with a pitch deck in your inbox. As Nick pointed out, you get around 3000 pitch decks or more every year to review. What are you looking for in that very early stage from a pitch deck? What gets you to sit up in your chair and think, oh, hang on a second. Yeah, I want to meet this founder and learn more about this business.
00:28:55
Speaker
Basically, one of the most important things at the earlier earlier stages is the founders. So if I could see like a comprehensive intro on who the founder is and what they've done in the past and how they're relevant to the project at hand is extremely important. And when I kind of see that fit as I'm going through a pitch deck, then it's automatically like a really good green flag, a chance for us to like have a deeper look and then understand exactly what they're doing and what they're working on. and that That's the top one for me.
00:29:21
Speaker
But what are some of the sort of red flags that you see when you're looking through thousands of pitch decks? What are common mistakes that start to end up capturing in their pitch deck? Possibly the two that come to mind, the first and is having a pitch deck that doesn't look finished in terms of the contents of the format's not necessarily there.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I know that sounds a bit silly, but I think that you need to think of your investors like any other stakeholders, like consumers. And someone once said to me that if you make something look nice, pe it doesn't really matter what the content is. Now, that's not the advice I'm giving you. Make sure the content is good. But make take the time to make the pitch deck look good too, because to the point of receiving thousands of decks a year,
00:30:08
Speaker
I'll dedicate as much time as possible to a company as I can, but that first glance makes all the difference. And so that ah that tends to be quite an easy filter because if you haven't spent the time presenting it well to me, how can I buy into the idea that you're going to spend the time making something look quality, be quality for a consumer or for a business. And then the other thing which I you see on the other occasion, although perhaps more rare is don't put advisors on the page that aren't actually your advisors because people will probably figure that out and it's not the best look. Joseph, any red flags that you see quite frequently? So obviously, yeah, the part about it not being a very polished pitch deck is an important one. I feel like, again, maybe it's personal preference, but also when you're looking at thousands of pitch decks every year, once you get one that's like 70 and 80 pages long, that is a red flag for me because I feel like if you have a lot to say,
00:30:59
Speaker
You need to explain it to an investor in a very, very short amount of time. You should kind of have an elevator pitch already prepared in your mind. I'm not saying send just like a one page teaser to the investors, but send something that's concise enough to get the idea across, but not share like the whole thing because I will want to read more if I'm interested, but sending me this all at once is just, I won't have enough time to get through all of it. So I'll probably miss the most important points and I'll just be confused and maybe we won't have a nice conversation. So trying to be concise is a very good one.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, I second both Gabi and Joseph's conversations. Again, there is plenty of literature and documentation out there. It's no secret, I mean, places like Y Combinator 500 startups, but many of the platform funds incubator accelerators are distributing content in these directions.
00:31:49
Speaker
99.9% of the successful pitches follow a specific structure. And that starts from the problem that one identifies, the solution that one has identified, the opportunity that that creates and how the company is going to master that opportunity. Those four slides are the key. And then if one wants to have the team and the visions and and the great, but in my experience, those four, the clarity on those four elements, and that could be a phrase, a phrase and a number, phrase and a number, that is where the seasons are made. And then the second is just an understanding that the first meeting is like a first date. So you're not going to put like all of your life into like, you know, 10 or 100 pages. This is literally to go, okay, this is relevant for us. It seems they have clarity on what they're doing. Let's meet.
00:32:40
Speaker
And then there's going to be, you know, kind of like the due diligence and questions and meetings. But if the very first, and again, I don't want to be, I don't want to take this lightly, but it's kind of like, you know, swiping right or left, power of some pitches in their simplicity. From A to Z, from Airbnb to Zalando, you know, they're all out there. Do some research, simplify, challenge your own pitch, ah find a friend or a friend of a friend, ask them to challenge your pitch.
00:33:10
Speaker
If a kid age five cannot understand it, it's not simple enough. If it's not in 10 pages, it's not simple enough. If you can't pitch something in five seconds, it's not simple enough. Hey, if you haven't put enough time in pretty much selling your business to someone else, then that's already kind of like a red flag.
00:33:29
Speaker
Are there times of the year that are better for startups to approach investors? Is it better for them to approach in the beginning of a new year or later in the summer? I guess what I'm asking is if there are investment seasons. There tends to be best time, I would say, approach in September and January, and then you have a September to December period between school holidays and and Christmas, and then between Christmas and and summer again to raise, I would suggest.
00:33:56
Speaker
If you are like a pre-seed companies looking for private investors, in London there are data that shows that the the period of most successful investments happen between January and April. And that is because the SCIS incentives. So it's when a private investors will receive their bonus and then they have until April to deploy their bonus to be within the kind of fiscal year. And that's why there's a higher concentrations of private investments into that period. But don't start pitching in July. I mean, that's. Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
and And to that, make sure that you're thinking you give yourself three to six months to raise. And that's a year before, six months before, you're thinking about when that raise might be so that you can make sure that you have enough money when you go out to raise. You don't want to be raising with less than a certain amount of money in the bank if you've already raised before, because it puts you in a slightly weaker position. But also, yeah, making sure that you set up your business so you know that the day you go out to raise, you've had good performance the few months before, you've got the traction you've wanted.
00:34:56
Speaker
And then that you have money in the bank to be in the best position possible to negotiate with investors. Just sorry, just jumping on what Gabby was saying, and a little bit of ah at the cost of sounding a bit abrasive, but I think it could help many founders out there. If one goes out from a place of need, I bet their fundraising is going to fail. ah Investment doesn't come from a place of need. You put yourself in a very weak position. So if you are an early stage company, that's just that's a red flag.
00:35:24
Speaker
If you are at a later stage company, you become subject to the quite aggressive type of investments. Investment is an opportunity. Yes, there has to be mission alignment, but lately it's about turning one into two or three or ten. And so that is that is the job, right, is to find individuals aligned with one's thesis and mandate, but the other is to see that ability of transforming one into two. And that does not come from a place of need. It's already like a big, big red flag.
Value Beyond Funding
00:35:53
Speaker
Remember, this is about creating an opportunity for yourself, for your business and for other investors. Joseph, what would you think are some critical questions that startups should be asking investors? What should they be asking you to make sure that you're a good fit for them?
00:36:09
Speaker
So yeah, one that I mentioned quickly earlier was how can we as a startup benefit from you as an investor? What added value, what connections can you make us? And maybe another one that's maybe not entirely obvious all the time is, are you willing and able to follow on in future rounds? Can you let us know what you would need to see in order to get there? These are the first two that come to mind.
00:36:32
Speaker
Any other questions that can be your Nick, I would say second or third time founders more confident and experienced. They would serve like challenge back saying, okay, your money is as good as, you know, Johnny's money. Uh, what is the value that you could add that is tangible. And, uh, and I think the sector is kind of like moving to tangible value creation models.
00:36:51
Speaker
I guess some of the questions are very early stage is looking at some of the details that makes the the biggest difference because again, first time founder tend to focus only on, ah ah but I'm raising at like, you know, 64 billion per money. That's okay. But if I have a 20 X liquidation preference, then you could raise at one or 10 billion. It doesn't matter because I'm still getting my returns.
00:37:11
Speaker
So do your homework. There's plenty of literature out there. There's a great book I recommend. It's called Venture Deals. And that explains all the technical terms. So I think, of course, there's value alignment, chemistry with investors, and you know understanding the niche and the value creations. It's a founder responsibility to be prepared on discussing a term sheet.
00:37:33
Speaker
Do not just delegate, oh, I got a good lawyer, friends of mine, you know, I'm called. No, it just, it's, it's very important that one starts getting an understanding of all the elements of a term sheet. First time founders, early stage startups tend to think investors are just there to give you money and they sort of leave you alone. But there's a lot more value that investors bring to the table. Gabby, could you maybe share what startups could he could expect from investors beyond a big check?
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think very fun dependent. The first thing I would say is that the founders know their businesses. They know how best to run their businesses, but what we do every day is we invest.
00:38:13
Speaker
we manage fundraising processes. So as founders are thinking about this round and once they raise this, it's then what's the next round and constantly being in communication with your investors about what they should be looking for at the next round. And hopefully that's a follow on and further participation for re-existing investors, but also try and put the onus on them for figuring out what needs to to be achieved in order to get new external investment at the next round because that's our bread and butter. That's what we do every day. So so definitely um lean into investors on that. And then also I know as Joseph said earlier, network is something that the investors tend to have because of the quantum of companies that we speak to. So network is great. And then fund specific, as I say, we're very good at supporting and we can do brand stuff, we can support some finance. One that we spend a lot of time on that I'm sure a lot of investors do is hiring.
00:39:03
Speaker
The benefit of sitting across the team, across 15, 20 companies, is that so many of our companies are experiencing similar challenges around hiring because they're at similar stages. So often, I imagine your investors might have good words of advice around what to do, whether to fire someone, to hire someone, whether that hire is good. We sometimes do kind of final, not so much interviews, but we will speak to key hires often before they're made, just to just to provide that that sounding board.
00:39:30
Speaker
one of the wish to have is long-term alignment. And that's where I think an investor experience and point of view could really create tangible financial value. because At some point an investor starts seeking exit. Okay. So that conversation starts sooner. Imagine, you know, me as a father going to Gabby and Joseph and say, Hey guys, how how are we going to exit this business in the next five to seven years? Then that aligns the conversations.
Evaluating Sustainability Impact
00:39:55
Speaker
And it it might be like a quote to the conversations but at least the business and investors start aligning into an idea of exit whether is that is in a hopefully other what it's an IPO whether it's like a purchase from a P or from another brands you start building into that trajectory you start working.
00:40:16
Speaker
and that aligns the interest of the founder and of the investors. And so to start the conversation, of course, when the time is right, if you're a pre-seed thinking about exit, that might be a bit premature, but the minute that you start having significant revenues and you're growing, it helps to grow into and specific directions where both the investors and the founders see a potential exit with sort of tangible value creation creation steps.
00:40:39
Speaker
Now we're going to move on to some questions in sustainability and circularity. And Nick, this is an area that you really specialize in. I got more than four or five startups ask a variation of this question. So sustainability and circularity are increasingly important in textile and fashion. What key criterias do you look at to assess a startup's impact in these areas? And how do you measure the effectiveness of these businesses?
00:41:04
Speaker
There are a lot of new materials being developed which can transform the textile industry. But how are you measuring the impact of these new technologies or processes? Joseph? So one good way of doing that is making sure that the founders have a really good understanding of the regulatory environment around the space that they're in. So knowing if their textile will be, there's a potential for it to be adopted on a very wide scale. For example, if regulation is going to force brands and retailers to start looking into these solutions, then this is obviously, I think, a very good starting point for that, and then would say a lot about their impact in the future and how much they could
00:41:43
Speaker
sell or even expand their business. And I guess ah maybe it's not also very obvious to know immediately, but a good way to tell if a certain space is going to expand a bit more, a certain type of textile is going to be the next big thing is to see starting interest from retailers and brands. So again, if you don't have a good network, then you will have to ask around, you will have to make sure in every conversation you have with any partner in any event that you are.
00:42:09
Speaker
active in, just asking around and saying, have you heard anything about this specific space, this specific textile? If you have connections to retailers or grocers, which for example, we can provide through True, we can ah leverage our network. So if you're having a conversation with us, you know, we're linked to all of these different layers, then you would ask us, have you seen that? And then we can kind of help you with that research. Again, even if we're not directly investing,
00:42:32
Speaker
we can go to our innovation team and discover these things so making sure there's that initial interest that initial excitement from all of these big players that can make things happen is a very good starting point because otherwise you'd be building and building and building and then you realize have an amazing product but no one today wants it but they might in 10 years but that's maybe too long for you to wait so Gaby? Yeah, i think I think it's an interesting one. It's certainly one that we are constantly thinking about, but I think if I'm being honest, we're still we're learning with the companies. Sustainability is a topic that's been on everyone's minds for decades now, but the ability to measure impact is still something that's being improved upon today. so So no one specific thing that we look to, but certainly a conversation that we're having with founders as we invest and once we're invested.
00:43:23
Speaker
to to make sure that we're all on that journey together. Circularity, it is sort of like our course, so we're very niche in that. I'll start by saying there's a lot of confusion out there. I always go, whenever I'm in a room and I ask someone, what is this color? Everyone would say it's yellow. Now ask everyone, what is a sustainable t-shirt? If there's three people, you're very likely to get four answers. And they might be, you know, so there's a lot of subjectivity and sustainability. And I think that is what ah time has created, so lot misunderstanding, lack of alignment, stakeholders fights, et etc. etc so What we are seeing is that is now finally changing. I think in Europe, Europe is driving, so the world's green eco-friendly, sustainable band, so they're no longer to be used. They are replaced with other worlds that reflect specific data measurable aspects and and regulation is pushing towards that perspective. That goes both for the companies and for the technologies behind it as well as for the investors. you know The concept of ESG investing has been one of the most confusing thing that's been out there. And again, I was reading last weekend on the FD that it seems like that is also going to be banned in the future to follow either the SFDR regulations or the SDR ah regulations, and depending whether the fund is in Luxembourg or UK. But again, that's going to be changed. Those frameworks have some purpose, but for startups, you might see that there's a company that's trying to solve the entire textile industry, environmental issues, and their ESG score is going to be terrible. So
00:44:59
Speaker
that I think it's confusing. So from an investment point of view, I think there's a lot of confusion in the market, in the media, in other investors, in LPs, in funds about what that is. We focus on something that is very specific and that is the ability of a technology to create economic and environmental value. It's it's very specific and it has to be aligned. So one has to have a technology that create that kind of like performing products or technologies from both a performance point of view and a price point of view together with the ability to demonstrate environmental impact. So are you trying to replace this material with that material? Great. They need to work the same, if not better. They need to cost the same, if not less. oh And they need to offer a tangible, measurable environmental impact.
00:45:54
Speaker
That's not sufficient. They also need to offer and they need to be based on the ability to integrate into existing systems. Because if so if one is inventing a new dying technologies that requires a manufacturing partner or a corporation to invest hundreds of millions, it will never happen.
00:46:14
Speaker
It hasn't happened. It's not happening. It will not happen. So it's ah these are combined. So it's not one or the other. in There are conditions that are quiet, although not sufficient to invest. But yeah but there are individuals that are coming to market with solutions that are offering stronger, more competitive performance in terms of products and price.
00:46:35
Speaker
decarbonizing, you know, kind of like supply chains or with waste to value models and with the ability to integrate with existing systems. And those are very, very strong founders with very strong preposition.
00:46:47
Speaker
Looking at the recent history of investments in textile and fashion, in the last five to eight years, maybe there was a lot of bio-textile, bio-material startups that gained a lot of attention, especially from investors. But suddenly now investors seem to have cooled off and they're not as eager to jump in. They're being far more cautious, waiting to see what's going to happen. What is making them nervous about investing in the sector, especially in bio-materials, and what can be done to overcome this nervousness?
00:47:17
Speaker
How can we build confidence in the investors again? I feel like it's always a very interesting and exciting field, like looking at these alternative solutions for textiles. But I feel like after this big ah series of investments that you mentioned, there was a bit of a cool off or a cool down period. And I feel like because it was such a new space and people were still testing it and trying to see how how and what works best, it maybe took a little bit longer to scale.
00:47:42
Speaker
And then the cost of these alternative solutions probably has not yet reached that stage where it could be mass market that easily. So there has been some reluctance maybe in terms of investments and then slower adoption by brands and things like that. And this is all not amazing news, but what we're starting to see, maybe some hints of is again, the point I mentioned very briefly earlier is like regulation that's changing. So we have heard of a lot of like incoming ah rules and laws across the EU and the UK, especially with everything around the digital product passports and knowing exactly what kind of textiles you're wearing and where they're coming from and all of these to kind of encourage sustainability and circularity and using the best type of textile. And once this becomes more commonplace and then once brands are forced to use it and manufacturers are forced to be very specific about what they use, then maybe the ones that are not using the most ideal types or the more sustainable types of textiles will be forced to start changing and then maybe even onboarding these alternative solutions. So I'm not saying this is going to happen this year for sure, but we start to see hints of that change slowly happening and for reasons for these brands to start buying again and to activate that space. And obviously investments should ideally flow more and more after that happens. Any other thoughts? I think that so often investors at the early stage will look to companies that have come before. And so where there have been companies that kind of raised money perhaps in the in the bubble of 2020, 2021 and have had down rounds because not because maybe the companies aren't good, but because the valuations that they initially invested into that were too high. and That scares investors.
00:49:21
Speaker
But so I think that the best thing that companies coming through can do today is to to get that product market fit and to get that traction to show investors that these companies can work and can and can have revenue and also to differentiate themselves from the companies that have come before.
00:49:37
Speaker
But how are investors making these evaluations between startups? For example, if there are two companies that are both making alternative leather from two different waste streams, maybe one from banana skin and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. So I'm making this up and maybe an alternative leather from orange peels, both alternative leather made from waste materials.
00:50:02
Speaker
How are you comparing these two leathers? They both look, feel, and behave like leather. Consumers can't tell the difference between banana and orange. How are you evaluating these companies, banana versus oranges? Nick, you're smiling, so I'm going to ask you to answer this first.
00:50:19
Speaker
i I believe this is, I think I'm trying to connect you also to what Joseph and Gabi were saying, because I think this is also part of the problem that of the past, that one comes to market with you know whatever alternative letter made of you know whatever alternative materials, but then looking at the product performance and looking at the price performance, looking at the beauty to integrate and looking at their actual impact, then the results are In fact, it's it's a good marketing stunt, but you know marketing stunts are not investables because what you're looking is actually real value creation. And so I can only share our experiences and what we're looking at. There are technologies that are transforming waste to value model.
00:51:00
Speaker
in adding what's called double materiality. So this so a part of the business is a performing products and with the ability to reduce that environmental impact and integrate with our systems. But there's ah there's kind of like a latent sort of like ah other business model, and that is if there's a company that's making proteins, fiber from banana waste or from po barley waste,
00:51:22
Speaker
then one is not just selling the fiber, but is also selling, and al be this is very nascent models, the ability to reduce one waste stream's environmental impact because they're not burning it. So that reduced their impact, which creates value for the waste stream's producer, which gives them a price advantage. But on the other side,
00:51:46
Speaker
the company, the customers, also become an off-taker. So if you are, again, an example I can share because it's public information, everyone's talking about, you know, the end of life of fast fashion textile waste because it's barely recyclable because of the mixed blended fibers. Well, good news, that there are bioinstrumental processes that allow for end of life textile recycling.
00:52:11
Speaker
And so their value is not just solving ah kind of like an end-of-life textile problems on one side and taking to the regulatory environment Joseph mentioned earlier, but also it creates an opportunity for the new customers because if the company is transforming millions of kilos tons into raw fiber, cellulose, ethanol, then these are marketable products But the underlying value that is not often developed is, well, the carbon emissions that are saved on both sides, those are have a double material impact, both on the waste streams, the customers, and the startups. And again, this is very new model. But so to go back to your original precise questions,
00:52:57
Speaker
One may have created the most amazing materials out of whatever waste streams. But again, if that doesn't create a specific measurable value, both in environmental and economic terms, then it's kind of like a novelty. So it's not a strategic innovations. That is our experience. Europe, 80% of the investments in climate tech are happening are depending on how one decides to find climate tech, but are happening in Europe.
00:53:26
Speaker
Really exciting that you mentioned new business models. What are some of the big investment trends that you're starting to see in the fashion and textile sector? What can people expect in the next five to eight years? Where will the money flow?
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah, again, for us, and it's just happened to be the case that we're looking a lot at regulation through our innovation team and what they're hearing from their partners. But we feel there's so much happening in like circular fashion, traceability, recycling, resale of stuff. And we have a couple of portfolio companies in that space already, especially in the circular fashion space.
00:54:01
Speaker
And we are seeing things are moving a bit faster there. So again, I don't want to generalize, it's maybe what we've seen through our network. But yeah, circularity and fashion is is quite a big one, I would say. Yeah, all of those, certainly sustainability and circularity. We spent quite a lot of time last year looking at um the B2B solution so that brands could could own part of that secondhand market rather than it just being peer to peer. But challenges there so far around kind of being able to scale in that space, consumers understanding what it is that the brands are doing. Often today the brands are ah using some sort of rental or resale as a marketing tool in a given month or a given quarter, but they're not really integrating it into their entire operation. So I think we really like that space of of
00:54:53
Speaker
how the brands are operating in in the re-commerce ecosystem, but there needs to be more commitment from the brands before it becomes a play that can scale within venture.
Future Trends in Textile Investments
00:55:03
Speaker
For for us, it is about phase two of the kind of like material revolution, so hopefully after the first kind of like bubbles and and some learnings, there's a new wave of materials and technologies there. I think, again, data throughout supply value chains,
00:55:19
Speaker
but most importantly the the integration of digital product passport is happening so all the integrations and the value creation technologies around that ah regulatory change are going to create new business models ah that's exciting all the re-commerce this is transformative for the retail industries because since we start selling products we're used to sell products now we need to sell products but also return products and reuse products and so there's a phenomenal opportunity that but it is one that will transform corporations and that will take a bit of time. The first bubble of investment that went in, especially into biomaterials, we just talked about how investors didn't see traction and returns as quickly as they would have believed. I think one thing that has been proven is that the timeline and complexity of building and scaling new materials is very different to building and scaling up.
00:56:14
Speaker
Apple hardware which people or even investors are far more familiar with and they are almost maybe expecting similar timelines to play out in fashion and textile which it hasn't our investors patient enough for the textile and fashion industry because what the sector is trying to do is radically change materials and processes.
00:56:34
Speaker
in such a diverse and complex industry. So it will take time from prototype to scaling up. Are investors patient enough for ah seeing the results and how can we help investors feel confident while they wait?
00:56:49
Speaker
I feel like in many cases, the wait is just part of what we're doing. As you said, maybe some software companies can just develop really fast and be on the market quite quickly, but then it could also take years and years for them to reach the levels of traction that they would like to see and the growth that that we would like to see as well. And I feel like if you look at the fund's life cycle, which is anywhere from like five, seven, 10 years, that's quite a long time, I would say, and so much can happen within out of that time.
Fund Lifecycle and Alignment
00:57:17
Speaker
And I think investors should have the patience to wait a little bit. And they understand that in many cases, the wait is part of reaching that goal. So it's just a natural expectation. and think I don't know whether it maybe take a bit more of a cynical approach. in the I think that rightly or wrongly, there are funds that have timelines and prevention that is often five, 10 years. And if those funds are already a number of years into that fund life, it it might be hard.
00:57:44
Speaker
But I think my answer to that would be to spend time understanding what it is the investor wants, because I don't think it's beneficial to anyone to to to try and convince a an investor that ah time to exit is going to be faster than you believe it is. But I think the benefit of the financial ecosystem is that venture isn't the only opportunity out there. There are so many different types of investors out there that that maybe it is sometimes that venture's not the right one, but but angels or family offices, I think, looking in this space sometimes looking for investors that have more of an evergreen approach that don't have a finite time period might be the best option.
00:58:21
Speaker
I'm going to be a bit cynical here. I think if a founder doesn't have that sense of urgency, then there's a red flag. Regardless whether the product market fit is going to happen in 12, 18 months. Personally, my experience, you know, you could tell in a room, if you have like five founders and 10 corporates, you could see the founders in two seconds, they're going to create that relationship and make make things happen. So that sense of urgency, it's it's what differentiates like a great founders from one, they would say,
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah, but, you know, the market is not there, yet therefore, you know, results speak louder than excuses.
Personal Textile Stories
00:58:55
Speaker
This is a question I ask all my guests and it's not related to investments at all. So you can take off your investor hats and just relax for a second. Textiles is far more than the functional pieces of clothing that we use every day. It is far more powerful and deeply intertwined in our lives. Could you each share about a piece of clothing or textiles that might hold very special meaning or memories for you? Something valuable that you hold on to.
00:59:24
Speaker
Oh, hang on, it's it's not a piece of textiles. Okay, it's a little toy car. Nick, tell us about that. So apparently I was walking with my mom and my grandfather in this beautiful Indian, um in an island in the Indian oceans, and then I saw kids making cars out of Pepsi cans. And I hysterically grabbed my mother's arms and um and I asked her to buy this. So this has been my favorite toys for the past 40 something years. I can't wear it, but it pretty much represents what I'm still doing today. Oh, amazing.
00:59:56
Speaker
It sits on your table. It is clearly something that reminds you of your purpose. It's beautiful. How about you, Joseph? I would say it's a blanket that my mother-in-law knit for me. And that was when I felt like I am now officially part of the family, despite everything. um So yeah, it just felt like a very personal and nice thing to have. And I just feel like, yeah, part of that ah extended family, I would say.
01:00:22
Speaker
Beautiful. Gabby? What a lovely question. I was speaking with my family recently because my sister and I, going back decades, were bridesmaids. And we have these beautiful little white dresses with purple sashes around that clearly we are never going to fit into you because I was about four years old. um But we still keep them in the closet because they mean so much.
01:00:46
Speaker
Oh, that's lovely. I actually have a similar dress from when my sister and I were flower girls. It was yellow with a red sash, very 20 style. And I think my mum still has our dresses as well. Thank you all for sharing those personal stories.
Recommended Resources and Networking
01:01:01
Speaker
As we wrap up this episode, it would be great if you could mention a couple of resources, maybe books or websites or podcasts that would be valuable for our listeners who want to dig in a bit deeper and understand the world of investments, pitching and cutting deals, et cetera.
01:01:17
Speaker
I can point to something that that an investor at ah another fund posted recently, which is probably quite helpful. There's an investor called Estia, E-S-T-I-A at ICA. And on LinkedIn, she posted a list of newsletters in the consumer and the sustainability space that she finds interesting. Fantastic. Nick, you've got some books in your hand. Yeah, the two sort of like that I've always share, I think one is a venture deals. And I think there's a new version and that just kids like first time founders and founders kind of like an overview what investment process and then secrets of Sandy Road. This is around a 16 Anderson Horowitz and Sequoia and kind of like tells the story of you know, what venture capital is I was born and it kind of like explain a little bit of the mentality behind it.
01:02:01
Speaker
These are generic, and then we could go into specific, I think, ways to wealth. Peter Lacy, it's about the business model behind circular practices. Again, I think it's now seven years. I think it was perhaps too early when he launched it, but I think it's still very much valuable today. Brilliant. I'll put links to these resources in the show notes for easy access. Joseph.
01:02:22
Speaker
I wouldn't necessarily point to a specific like piece of content, but I think what the work that the fashion district is doing, especially in London is really, really valuable and so good in that space of fashion. And we've engaged with them a couple of times, like I met Helen before and I've met their cohort of startups. So I think engaging with them, seeing what types of events they're hosting is super helpful and could give even more and more insights and trends and yeah, just like a nice overview of that fashion space.
Connecting with Panelists
01:02:50
Speaker
Absolutely. I am the biggest fan of Fashion District and thanks to them that this episode is possible as well. They do such incredible work, especially because they're focused, they're laser focused on supporting fashion and textile startups who need a lot of help. And so I'm really glad that they're there to help us. ah what What is the best place for listeners to find you? Is it LinkedIn?
01:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would say LinkedIn is a great source. We try through True to post like a lot of the insights that we have through some deep dives that we do. And obviously our channel, like the True channel is quite active as well, but just make sure you're typing in the correct True and just look at the logo and you'll find the one. um Gabby, where can people find you? Yeah, either LinkedIn. um um My name, both of us, and last is impossible to spell, but if you go to the Red Rice Ventures LinkedIn, I'm sure you'll be able to find me. And also if you want to submit a deck, we have a pitch deck form via our website, redriceventures.com. We look and respond to every deck that comes through that. Amazing. And how about you, Nick?
01:03:54
Speaker
similar, I think link it in, but hello at spin dot.vc. And then we are sort of like starting sort of like ah an intimate breakfast sessions for founders. We're also doing one for investors and one for corporates. And that's going to be at the Conduit Club and it's open for founders even earlier stage and than we are. So intimate breakfast for circular or textile startups. So that's going to be sort of like published even more. And that's what opportunity need to come and and meet informally and have a chat.
01:04:23
Speaker
That's brilliant. Gabby, Joseph and Nick, thank you so much for making time to have this in-depth conversation and giving us a peek into the minds of investors. I really, really enjoy that conversation and I know the listeners are going to find this super, super valuable. After this, if you get bombarded with pitch decks from textile startups, please don't blame me for it. But I think there is a real need for investment and support for fashion and textile startup. The industry is at the cusp of some of the biggest innovations in its history and I hope more investors will pay attention to this and I'm thrilled that all three of you are interested in investing in this space. Thank you all again for your time and for sharing such valuable insights with us. We'll be in touch.
01:05:08
Speaker
I found that to be such an insightful conversation. It was so interesting to hear all three of them stress the importance of the founder. A lot weighs on this person, but I was encouraged that there are skills that we can all learn to be better at sharing vision and taking people on a journey with us.
01:05:26
Speaker
I think it was a light bulb moment for me during the conversation when Nick said that as founders, you know, asking from a place of need. Instead, you're offering an opportunity for the investor. I hope you find that inspiring, giving you the confidence to go out there and pitch. And I hope this episode has empowered you to take the next steps in your entrepreneurial journey. I have added all the links to the resources in the show notes and I'd encourage you to connect with Gabby, Joseph and Nick. They are very helpful.
01:05:57
Speaker
If you've enjoyed our conversation today, I'd love for you to support the podcast by leaving a review and you can also support me directly through Buy Me a Coffee. You know that a cup or two helps me work late into the night as I bring you more insightful content. Thank you again for joining me today. Stay tuned for more episodes and don't forget to subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, craft and sustainability.
01:06:22
Speaker
Until next time, I'm your host Millie Tharkon, reminding you that there is no ordinary cloth. Every thread has a story to tell, and this is where you'll hear it.