# VC10X - The Business of Backing Women: Inside Angel Academe with Sarah Turner

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 9 Sep 2025, 37 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/107680429/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-8-2%2F406705307-44100-2-c905e788e195a.mp3

We're joined by a truly inspiring guest who is changing the face of angel investing. Sarah Turner, the founder of Angel Academe, is on a mission to bring more women into the world of startups, both as investors and as founders. What started as an observation about the lack of women in investment rooms has grown into a thriving community of over a thousand investors. In this episode, we'll hear Sarah's incredible story, from the challenges of building this ecosystem to the shocking realities of funding disparities in the VC world. We'll also dive into the future of investing, the impact of AI, and what it really takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. Links: ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com Angel Academe website - https://www.angelacademe.com/ Sarah Turner on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahturneruk/ 🎙️ Hosted by Prashant Choubey Follow Prashant on X - https://x.com/ChoubeySahab Follow Prashant on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab In this episode, we talk about - - Angel Academe's founding story and growth to 1,000+ investors - Investment screening process and evaluation criteria - Gender differences in entrepreneurship and venture capital - AI's impact on startups and potential bias concerns - Portfolio success stories and lessons from angel investing & lots more Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:33) Sarah's initial observations about lack of women in angel investing (03:41) Growth of Angel Academe to over 1,000 investors (05:37) Investment screening process and what they look for in startups (07:54) Differences in investing in female vs. male founders (11:09) Discussion on low percentage of VC funding going to female founders (12:14) Challenges of building investor network and attracting female founders (15:49) Importance of men taking responsibility to add more women to leadership positions (17:15) Launching the EIS fund and its timing (18:26) Portfolio success story - Bare Fertility (20:10) Learnings about supporting founders through different growth stages (22:55) Impact of AI on startup landscape and investing process (27:29) Personality traits of successful founders (29:33) Vision for Angel Academe in the next five years (31:54) Rapid-fire round - sectors and regions of investment (35:38) How founders can get in touch with Angel Academe For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com Subscribe to VC10X on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

## Transcript

[0:00] I was always astonished by the the lack of women in the room.
[0:04] Sadly we still have. I think it's 86% of all all
[0:09] equity investments in the UK going to all male founding
[0:13] teams. It's so easy to fill a room with
[0:17] female founders. AI is kind of pattern
[0:20] recognition again isn't it? So you would probably find worse
[0:24] gender bias. Our diversity target is 30% men.
[0:31] Hey everyone, this is Prashanth and I'll be host for the VC10X
[0:34] podcast. And today we have Sarah Turner
[0:36] with us. Sarah, the founder of Angel
[0:38] Academy, is on a mission to bring more women into the world
[0:43] of startups, both as investors and founders.
[0:46] What started as an observation about the lack of women in
[0:49] investment rooms has grown into a thriving community of over
[0:53] 1000 investors, with a diversity target of 30% men.
[0:57] In this episode, we'll hear Sara's incredible story, from
[1:00] the challenges of building this ecosystem to the shocking
[1:04] realities of funding disparities in the VC world.
[1:07] We'll also delve into the future of investing, the impact of AI,
[1:10] and what. It really takes.
[1:12] To succeed as an entrepreneur. So without wasting any time,
[1:15] let's dive straight in. This episode is.
[1:17] Sponsored by my own podcasting agency called Podcast 10X, where
[1:21] I help venture capitalists, asset managers, allocators and
[1:24] family offices and starting their own podcast and building a
[1:27] strong brand. Podcast NX is designed in a way
[1:30] to work well with the busy schedule of investors where we
[1:34] handle every aspect of podcast production so you can focus on
[1:37] investing. If you're looking to build a
[1:40] strong investor brand, starting a podcast should be right up
[1:44] your priority list. It's the only form of marketing
[1:47] where you can showcase your strong network.
[1:49] In other words, access to limited partners and founders
[1:53] and grow that network further and contrary to what most.
[1:56] People hear it's still very early.
[1:58] To start a podcast, there are at least 10X more newsletters and
[2:01] thousand X more blogs than there are podcasts in this world.
[2:06] You can learn more about our podcasting services at podcast
[2:09] ten-x.com. I'll make sure to add the link
[2:12] in the description below. Enjoy this episode.
[2:15] Hey Sarah, so good to have you on the VC10X podcast.
[2:17] How are you doing? I'm doing very well, thank you.
[2:20] How are you? Very well, thank you.
[2:23] So to start things off, tell us about the story of launching
[2:28] Angel Academy in 2014 and what was your aha moment to start it?
[2:34] So in 2014, I've been doing some Angel investing for a couple of
[2:39] years. Prior to that, I was always
[2:42] astonished by the the lack of women in the room.
[2:45] It was mostly, it was mostly men.
[2:48] They mostly didn't know what to make of me.
[2:50] And they be steering toward me towards kind of, you know,
[2:54] typically female businesses, even though that wasn't my
[2:57] background, my background was in in tech.
[3:00] And it just got me wondering, why aren't more women doing
[3:04] this? It's, you know, it's great fun.
[3:07] It's a really good way to use your expertise.
[3:10] And so I started sort of thinking about an Angel group
[3:15] for female investors from then. And you know, also parallel
[3:20] challenge, there weren't very many female founders coming to
[3:25] these Angel groups. And if they did come and
[3:28] present, they didn't typically do very well, often kind of
[3:33] misunderstood either personally or their or their business.
[3:36] So I thought I could try and do something about that as well.
[3:41] Absolutely. That's quite an interesting
[3:43] story. And Fast forward to now, you
[3:45] have grown it to over 1000 investors and 70% of which are
[3:51] women. And so tell us about that story
[3:54] of growing this entire thing, you know, from from a place
[3:57] where it was not commonplace that OK, women investing into
[4:02] startups and even at the workplace even, right.
[4:05] So how did you make that happen and what were the challenges in
[4:08] that process? OK, Yeah, it's been a long and
[4:11] challenging journey. But I always say at this point
[4:14] that our our diversity target is 30% men.
[4:19] We have lots of great men investing with us and none of
[4:23] this is about keeping men out. We, we love to involve men, but
[4:28] just supporting more women. So we have over 1000 registered
[4:34] investors with us. But typically there are about
[4:37] 100 that are active at any one time because people come and go,
[4:42] they're waiting for an exit once they've deployed all their
[4:44] funds, etcetera. You know how it works.
[4:48] So it's quite clubby. We tend to know each other and
[4:52] work well together and really growing it to that number.
[4:59] It's taken a lot of time, taken a lot of persistence, a lot of
[5:03] conversations, you know, to get that list of 1000.
[5:08] I've probably spoken to 1020 thousand people over time, you
[5:12] know, through podcasts like this, events, individuals
[5:17] meeting friends of friends. Yeah, kind of banging the drum
[5:22] for this for a long time. Absolutely, yeah.
[5:26] It has to be quite, quite an hassle to get to where you have,
[5:28] right. What was through your investment
[5:31] screening process? What signals do you look for in
[5:35] start-ups beyond this technology?
[5:37] OK. So you know, the the technology
[5:40] is always of interest. That's where we're predominantly
[5:42] investing. But but really, you know, the
[5:46] thing we're looking into very carefully is the team.
[5:48] It's all about the team. What have they done before?
[5:53] What are they bringing to the table?
[5:54] What are the dynamics between the team members?
[6:00] Honesty and integrity is important to us as well.
[6:04] So if they're kind of vague and obfuscate in any way, it
[6:09] doesn't, it doesn't really land well with us.
[6:12] We want people to trust us in the same way that we can trust
[6:16] them. We've got to believe what
[6:17] they're saying in their very ambitious forecasts and things.
[6:23] Obviously, you know, dynamic people, tenacious people,
[6:29] they're often very charismatic and convincing.
[6:32] And you know, those are great signals.
[6:37] If they can convince us a bunch of fairly sceptical investors
[6:41] who've seen thousands of businesses, then they're likely
[6:45] to be able to attract the top talent they need, but also other
[6:49] investors, customers and so on. And then, you know, people who
[6:54] are going to be able to do a lot with a little, not kind of
[6:58] immediately go out and spend all the money on extravagant things.
[7:03] They need to be looking after our money as if it were were
[7:06] their own. So those are the kind of things
[7:10] we do look quite carefully at market size.
[7:13] Is this a market that you know is reasonably easily accessible
[7:18] and can sustain a growing business?
[7:22] You know, what's the competition look like?
[7:23] But it always really comes back to the the team.
[7:27] Absolutely. Yeah, that's quite interesting.
[7:29] And you've also backed a lot of female founders and continue to
[7:34] do so. When you're doing that, are
[7:37] there any special considerations you have to make while investing
[7:41] in female founders? Do you think it's different from
[7:45] investing in male founders? And are there any things that
[7:48] need to be kept in mind to ensure the success of female
[7:52] founders as well? Yeah, I mean, there are
[7:58] certainly differences, but, you know, none of this is about
[8:01] lowering the bar. We're extremely picky and
[8:04] actually, you know, women are very thorough in their due
[8:07] diligence. So getting us over the line is
[8:10] quite an accomplishment. But I do think, you know,
[8:15] there's no escaping the fact that we're we're wired slightly
[8:19] differently. Maybe women have a different
[8:22] communication style. They're less comfortable with
[8:28] the extreme hubris that a lot of men are able to exhibit.
[8:32] And of course, I'm making huge generalizations because, you
[8:35] know, there are men after quiet and modest as well.
[8:38] But, you know, you look at the, the, the successful, you know,
[8:43] they, they talk such a big game and, and yes, you've got to be
[8:47] ambitious and visionary, but I think, you know, women tend to
[8:51] be just a bit more grounded in realism.
[8:54] And I think a lot of a lot of male investors certainly in
[8:59] traditional VCs, you know, they're looking for that kind of
[9:03] really high risk tolerance. They say the, you know, 90% risk
[9:09] of failure for the 10% risk of 100 million.
[9:13] I think men are kind of able to channel that a bit more
[9:17] effectively sometimes than than women are.
[9:21] But you look at the fundamentals of the business, I think the
[9:25] female founder businesses are often the the better ones,
[9:28] they've achieved more, they've got further, but it's so it's
[9:34] quite surface. Does that make sense?
[9:37] Does that resonate with what you're seeing at all?
[9:40] Absolutely. I do think that my take is that
[9:44] obviously women are different than men.
[9:47] I would not say they're the same.
[9:48] They're obviously different. But I do think there are
[9:51] advantages to that as well. And it's it's not like, OK, one
[9:56] is better than the other. It's just that they're different
[9:58] and can be better at different things.
[10:00] And women are are seem to be better at certain things that
[10:05] men don't do as well, right? So it can be management.
[10:09] I've seen women that are more sensitive, but not to get into
[10:13] generalization, but I've seen those things, right?
[10:16] They have more empathy versus the male counterparts.
[10:19] So there are things I'd say there are advantages.
[10:23] And we've also seen, I think data also back said that the
[10:26] female founders have returned a good bunch of capital and it's
[10:31] highly a good asset class to invest into female founders,
[10:35] right. It's a good investment mandate.
[10:38] So yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.
[10:41] And we can often, we can often identify really good ones
[10:45] because you know that there's, you know, other people aren't
[10:50] looking for them. So there's there's no shortage
[10:54] of good opportunities and they're often overlooked in this
[10:58] very skewed marketplace. Way true, way true.
[11:01] And, and the number say exactly that, that only 3% of VC funding
[11:07] goes to female founders, right. That number is not something
[11:11] you're proud of. I think that's something that
[11:13] all of us in the industry need to be working on to consistently
[11:17] improve. You're doing a great job of it
[11:19] of it, but I think even investors who who don't have a
[11:22] dedicated focus on female founders should at least have a
[11:25] dedicated focus on trying to source female founders or
[11:29] getting getting female executives into workplaces or
[11:34] into senior roles, right? Because that's where you get the
[11:38] experience to be a founder one day, right?
[11:40] So I think that needs to happen and I've seen some investors
[11:44] that are putting in that dedicated effort to, you know,
[11:47] specifically putting human workforce to, you know, source,
[11:51] specifically a female farmers, high quality female farmers,
[11:54] What's happening? It's out there.
[11:56] And I think representation plays a big role in that too.
[12:00] You know, if you see an investor that's also female, the same
[12:04] gender as you, and looks the same, feels the same, I think
[12:08] you're more open to interacting with them or pitching them.
[12:11] Absolutely. That's your idea.
[12:13] Yeah, You know, we were, we were overwhelmed by the number of
[12:17] female founders that came forward when we first started
[12:20] talking about Angel Academy. Because, you know, I initially I
[12:24] thought, oh, there's not going to be very much deal flow.
[12:26] I knew some female founders, but not that many.
[12:29] But, you know, it's so easy to fill a room with female
[12:33] founders. Actually, the challenge for us
[12:35] has always been building the investor piece.
[12:37] So yeah. And I I think that proposition
[12:41] of being able to speak to other women, not just the usual room
[12:44] full of men, was very attractive and still is attractive.
[12:49] Absolutely. I completely agree.
[12:50] And that is the reason why I see a lot of firms that are, as they
[12:55] are maturing, we see firms they're starting to add woman
[12:58] founders, woman partners, sorry. And that adds that angle that
[13:03] OK, if a female founder is pitching them, they might be
[13:07] having more comfort in speaking to a female partner versus the
[13:10] male partners. So the quality of conversation
[13:13] can vary there and the detail you can get into that
[13:15] conversation is can also vary. So that's it.
[13:18] And that also is the same point for even start-ups as well.
[13:23] Start up teams where if you have a female in the founding team,
[13:28] it can be a Co founding team or just a founding team.
[13:31] I think they had a unique perspective.
[13:32] We always say, investors say that the Co founder should have
[13:36] complementary skill sets, right? And I think a great way to do
[13:39] that is by adding the opposite gender as well to the founding
[13:45] team, because that's going to give you a different worldview
[13:47] all together. Because women and men view the
[13:51] world differently. They have different habits,
[13:53] different ways of doing things right?
[13:55] And if you have that representation, it's good for
[13:58] you and it's good for the team you're going to build.
[14:00] You're going to hire someone and they see that, OK, there is a
[14:03] woman in the founding team and adequate woman in the founding
[14:05] team that's going to make them more comfortable in joining you.
[14:09] Yeah, I mean I. I think the data certainly bears
[14:12] that out that, you know, female founders go on to hire twice as
[14:16] many women in their business. But sadly we still have, I think
[14:20] it's 86% of all, all equity investments in the UK going to
[14:26] all male founding teams. So, you know, great that you're
[14:31] saying this stuff, but actually it's not, it's not what's being
[14:35] done in the, in the real world, isn't it?
[14:38] Investors are still comfortable seeing all male founding teams,
[14:42] regardless of the sector they're operating in.
[14:45] You know, even in fintech, you know male only teams are getting
[14:50] funded more than mixed gender or female teams, which is
[14:55] staggering really. Yeah, yeah, I, I think there,
[14:59] there are biases. I think no running away from it
[15:03] like female founders hiring female founders hiring female
[15:07] employees. I think that's also some sort of
[15:09] a comfort level that OK, I'm more, I'm more comfortable with
[15:12] working with females. That I think also translates
[15:15] into the male aspect as well. But I think since male are
[15:19] already dominant in the field, the men should take the
[15:22] responsibility to add more women in the workplace into leadership
[15:26] positions and so on to bring more equity and bring diversity
[15:30] in the perspectives into what they're building.
[15:33] So that's really important. And the effort needs to go in
[15:36] from the male counterpart because they are the one holding
[15:39] the power currently and this needs to go from there.
[15:42] But I don't think like women yet like you are like totally taking
[15:46] the power in your own hands and building the ecosystem, which is
[15:49] great to see. Yeah.
[15:51] I mean, and that's the great thing about EIS investing.
[15:54] It is individuals investing their own money.
[15:57] We don't have to wait for institutions to come along and
[16:01] building those relationships can can take years and making those
[16:04] funds happen. EIS we're raising it from
[16:07] individuals and you know, there is no similar fund on the market
[16:13] that is for, you know, moderately wealthy investors to
[16:19] invest. And we're hoping it will
[16:22] particularly appeal to women. I know that angels in our
[16:25] network are very motivated by the idea of backing other women
[16:30] and we know there are other women out there that that we'd
[16:33] like to do the same. So that's the fantastic thing
[16:37] about EIS, amazing tax benefits for for individuals.
[16:42] Absolutely. Yeah.
[16:44] I completely agree. I think you'd find interest not
[16:46] just from women who want to back other women, but I think there
[16:49] are a good bunch of men who want to want to take that initiative
[16:54] and, you know, get more women in the workplace and back women
[16:58] founders, female founders. No, we're definitely seeing
[17:01] that, seeing that as well. Yeah.
[17:04] So, so building the EIS fund talk, talk about why now is a
[17:10] good time and how will this impact the landscape?
[17:12] How will that bring about a change?
[17:14] OK. So it's something we've been
[17:16] planning for a long time and we've launched it with our
[17:21] partners Syndicate room. So they are the FCA regulated
[17:26] fund managers. We're the investment people.
[17:30] So we find the opportunities and do the due diligence.
[17:34] So we have been thinking about it for a long time, but now the
[17:39] timing felt good because we know that before too long there is
[17:44] some more money going to be coming into the ecosystem
[17:48] earmarked for female founders. It's typically distributed to
[17:52] investors who are later stage than us.
[17:55] So we thought there was a particular opportunity to, you
[17:59] know, participate more aggressively at the pre seed and
[18:03] seed level. So once these funds come down
[18:05] the line, then we'll have a bunch of start-ups who are ready
[18:09] to to pitch to them and hopefully win the follow on
[18:13] funding that's so hard to come by at the moment.
[18:17] Absolutely. And would you like to share any
[18:20] portfolio success story or the start-ups that you're back and
[18:24] what they're up to today? One, one of the companies that
[18:31] we've invested in that we talk about in our in our fund
[18:35] materials as well is company called Bare Fertility.
[18:39] They've developed a fertility device which is a competitor to
[18:45] IVF, but it's a fraction of the cost.
[18:49] You do it at home and it requires no horrible hormone
[18:53] injections or anything and they're they're showing the same
[18:57] efficacy rates as IVF. So it's been launched as a
[19:01] direct to consumer offering in the UK, but very exciting.
[19:06] They've just had FDA approval to enter the US market and they are
[19:11] kind of becoming a full service online, a virtual fertility care
[19:18] practice and just, yeah, poised to enter the US market.
[19:23] So we're, we're really positive about them, very excited.
[19:26] We backed them in their very first round 2020 and have
[19:31] participated a a couple of times since.
[19:33] So yeah, we we've, we've, we're expecting good things from them.
[19:39] And, you know, it's a wonderful social impact as well because
[19:44] we've seen all these babies being born.
[19:47] We get pictures shared with us as part of the investor
[19:51] community and you know, it's really changing people's lives.
[19:55] Absolutely. Yeah, totally.
[19:57] Great work there. And you've leveraged about
[20:00] 150,000,000 plus in Co investments, right?
[20:04] What have you learned about supporting founders through
[20:07] different growth stages? So we're at, we think it's 200
[20:14] million now. So we keep kind of adding re
[20:18] adding that up. So I think the kind of the
[20:23] biggest learning I've had over the years since, you know, first
[20:27] starting as an Angel investor is that it's a marathon, not a
[20:31] Sprint. You have to keep supporting your
[20:34] businesses, keep cheerleading for them.
[20:39] You know, good exits take a long time.
[20:43] The early exits tend to be modest.
[20:48] I've also learnt that to be successful as an Angel, you need
[20:52] to focus your money on capital efficient businesses.
[20:56] Our cheque sizes are relatively small, so we want businesses
[21:02] that can get a long way with not very much money.
[21:05] But also the capital efficiency bit is difficult because
[21:09] investment follow on investment next rounds are not going to be
[21:13] easy. So they need to they need to be
[21:16] able to maximize that. And I think another lesson, you
[21:22] know, really sadly still in 2025, the biggest determiner of
[21:29] investment success is whether you're a male CEO or not.
[21:36] You know, that seems to be the biggest single factor if you
[21:39] read all the all the data. But you know, we hope that
[21:43] things are finally changing. There's certainly a lot more
[21:47] discussion about it and awareness of the of the
[21:50] challenges. Absolutely.
[21:52] I think I completely agree with you that, OK, the situation is
[21:56] not great right now. And I think we keep saying that,
[22:00] OK, we need to do something, but I think the time is now and
[22:04] everyone should start, you know, do a dedicated meeting on the
[22:07] subject with their partner group that OK, how do we improve the
[22:10] situation, come up with strategies, how do we do that
[22:13] and implement them right away, right?
[22:15] I think that's the need of that. Yeah.
[22:17] And and it's the doing that's important, not just the talking,
[22:21] because we've had a lot of talking.
[22:23] Yeah, very true, very true. Completely agree with you.
[22:26] And I think practices like, you know, dedicated procedures for
[22:29] sourcing specifically female founders high quality, of
[22:32] course, I think some of those practices, that's those are the
[22:36] kind of things that you can do to play a part in this, right?
[22:40] So moving to the next question, which is around AI, which is the
[22:44] rates right now. How do you look at that
[22:48] impacting for the startup landscape for female founders
[22:51] and the Angel investing process as well?
[22:54] OK, I, I mean, I think we're all using AI, aren't we in some way
[22:59] in our business to be more productive, hopefully, although
[23:03] I find it can be quite a big time sync as well.
[23:08] So you know, I'm using it to help draft emails and articles.
[23:12] I use it to summarize my meetings and record actions and
[23:16] things. So there's some fantastic tools
[23:19] and I think everyone's starting to use those.
[23:23] But on the, you know, the, the start up side, you know,
[23:29] obviously we've been seeing AI and machine learning businesses
[23:32] for a long time, but that's only just accelerated.
[23:37] They're becoming more specialised, aren't they?
[23:39] It's not just a general AI tool for everyone.
[23:43] It's now AI driven fintech businesses or health tech
[23:48] businesses or an Ed tech that's AI.
[23:53] So it's a very exciting time in terms of the investing process.
[24:02] I mean that, you know, there are some tools for assessing
[24:06] start-ups and things, but you know, a lot of these companies
[24:09] are still young. There's not that much data.
[24:12] We're also into building relationships with our founders.
[24:16] So we don't rely entirely on AI. But you know, one of our
[24:22] founders told us about a tool and it it kind of summarises,
[24:27] you know, that and it's kind of high level criteria like, you
[24:31] know, founder start, founder market fit or product market fit
[24:36] and things like that. So certainly can help accelerate
[24:41] due diligence. But I think since so much is
[24:45] about the team, it's kind of we still emphasise building those
[24:48] relationships and how how the founders kind of interact with
[24:52] us tells us so much about how they're going to run their
[24:55] business and get on, get on in the future.
[25:00] Absolutely. Relationships have been always
[25:03] the driving force of the venture capital industry, and it seems
[25:06] that that is the thing that's going to prevent it from getting
[25:10] disrupted and replaced by AI making all the investments,
[25:13] because relationships are still, at least for now, not automated
[25:18] by AI. And also, you know, AISAIS kind
[25:22] of pattern recognition again, isn't it?
[25:25] So you would probably find worse gender bias.
[25:27] You know, most AIS are created by men, aren't they?
[25:31] And then you know, because most investment has gone into male
[25:34] founders in the past, it'll probably be repeated in the in
[25:37] the future. So, you know, we have got to be
[25:40] careful about, yeah, adopting this technology.
[25:45] And I, you know, I would love to see more women building AI
[25:48] businesses because we need that, we need that diversity in the,
[25:54] in the code, don't we? Absolutely.
[25:58] I completely agree with you. I think that's a very crucial
[26:00] point you made there, that if you're training the AI models on
[26:02] our current thinking and our current database, then it's also
[26:06] very likely that it's also going to pick up our biases and it's
[26:09] going to just behave the same way that we have been all along.
[26:12] And it's not that we have been behaving perfectly in all these
[26:15] suspects, right? Like one being that the bias to
[26:19] back male founders versus female founders, I think that can be
[26:23] picked up. So I think the people who are
[26:26] training AI models for their men or women need to make sure that
[26:31] it's only being trained on the right data and not taking up the
[26:36] wrong biases. You know, there are guardrails
[26:38] in place and all sort of things. I'm sure all these big companies
[26:42] would be thinking on those sort of things.
[26:44] But I'm also sure that there'll be missteps and things they
[26:48] would miss. And this too, because they want
[26:51] to launch soon, right? And so many things happening so,
[26:53] so quickly. Yeah, and, you know, blind
[26:56] spots, everyone's got blind spots, haven't they?
[26:58] So it it you know these mistakes get creep in quite easily.
[27:04] Absolutely. I completely agree.
[27:06] And being an investor for so long now, what have been your
[27:10] primary learnings about, you know, helping these businesses
[27:14] build and seeing their successes and failures?
[27:18] Or learnings about founders or what type of founders tend to
[27:21] succeed versus what type of founders that tend to not
[27:24] succeed? Give us your learnings that
[27:26] you're acquired over the years. Yeah.
[27:29] I mean, you know, there is an element of luck involved,
[27:32] meeting the right people at the right time.
[27:36] Timing is crucial. You know, if you had a certain
[27:39] type of business during the pandemic, however brilliant you
[27:43] were, you know, it was going to be tough, wasn't it?
[27:47] So I think there's there is a strong element of chance still.
[27:52] But you know, I think the sort of certain personality traits
[28:01] risk, risk tolerant for a start, people, a people person, they've
[28:08] got to be able to build and manage teams and attract good,
[28:12] good talent. They need to be kind of
[28:17] ruthlessly well organised and efficient.
[28:22] They need to be kind of, you know, transparent and act with
[28:26] integrity because I think that will, you know, those values
[28:30] kind of translate into the business and how you deal with
[28:33] everybody in your business as well as stakeholders, you know
[28:39] ferociously hard working, able to defer kind of a decent salary
[28:46] now for potential rewards in the in the future.
[28:52] Yeah, I mean sort of they are incredible people.
[28:58] I'm in awe, I'm in awe of them and you know, yeah, yeah, our
[29:05] our economy depends on them, doesn't it?
[29:07] The future success of our economy.
[29:09] These are the people that are creating their new growth
[29:12] businesses and hiring however efficient we can still, we can
[29:18] be with AI, we will still meet a hire people and high skilled
[29:21] people. So they create the jobs of the
[29:24] future. Absolutely, completely agree.
[29:28] Talking about your vision for Angel Academy, where you see it
[29:34] going in the next five years? So certainly within the next 5
[29:40] years, I expect to see some exits from our portfolio.
[29:44] Most of them have been in the last last few years, most of our
[29:48] investment. So that would be good.
[29:51] I would love to see more women investing with us as well as
[29:57] more women in VCs. It's a, it's a trend that
[29:59] started because I do think that that's a massive contributor to
[30:04] rebalancing how investment decisions are made, who it goes
[30:08] to. And I would love to see women
[30:11] dominating the lists of all the top, top founders, tech
[30:17] founders, you know, in the sectors that haven't
[30:20] traditionally been dominated by women in the past.
[30:25] You know, so in the, in the tech sectors as well as the more
[30:28] typically female areas in kind of, you know, retail and fashion
[30:35] and beauty and things like that. So we have lots in our in our
[30:40] portfolio that are building solutions to problems in
[30:43] healthcare and the delivery of healthcare, in fintech, in
[30:48] education, healthcare, etcetera. So.
[30:53] Absolutely. So in one of our earlier
[30:55] episodes, I remember we had Eunice Ajim on our podcast who's
[31:00] an African American venture capitalist, and she said that
[31:04] to, you know, improve inclusivity, we'll need to, you
[31:06] know, need inclusivity across the entire chain of venture
[31:09] capital, which starts right at the LP level that we need more
[31:13] allocators who are women, and then we need more VCs who are
[31:18] more women, right? And then again, at the founder
[31:21] level as well, I think that entire chain needs to work out
[31:24] because like you said, more female horns tend to hire more
[31:29] female employees. So when that happens, what that
[31:33] does is that those female employees are when they're going
[31:35] to become pounders and then maybe as they progress, maybe a
[31:37] VC one they are allocated someday.
[31:40] I think that chain, entire chain actually needs more women
[31:44] participation. Absolutely.
[31:47] So moving to a rabbit firearm, wherein I'll ask you 6 quick
[31:52] questions about the investing you're doing and you have to get
[31:55] 6 quick answers. All right.
[31:57] So the first one is one of the sectors and regions you're
[32:01] investing. So we're investing in the UK,
[32:05] across the UK, so all have to be UK based to be EIS qualifying
[32:11] sectors. It's technology and science
[32:15] based companies. So fintech, health tech, Ed
[32:19] tech. We do some consumer tech, we
[32:23] have done some cybersecurity and enterprise SAS is always popular
[32:28] as well. Awesome.
[32:29] What's the typical stage where you invest?
[32:33] Pre seed to seed. Oh, I forgot to mention clean
[32:36] tack. Of course, that's a a big
[32:39] category for us, right? Awesome.
[32:42] Do you lead rounds? We do occasionally but usually
[32:49] we're not the biggest ticket and the biggest ticket usually
[32:54] leads. But we always Co invest
[32:57] alongside other partners. We work closely with them on
[33:02] Rams so. Got it.
[33:04] Awesome. What's the typical size?
[33:06] Cheque size. It it varies, so each of our
[33:12] investors makes their own decision on a deal by deal
[33:15] basis. We aim to get over 100,000 into
[33:19] each business and it will be more obviously, once the EIS
[33:24] fund comes on stream. So yeah, you know, 100 is what
[33:31] we target. It has gone much, much higher
[33:33] than that. Sometimes it dips a bit low,
[33:36] but, you know, a bit lower. But what we do is we're very
[33:39] transparent with the founders and, you know, if it's not going
[33:43] to be a huge amount of money and they'd rather spend their time
[33:45] elsewhere, we let them know. So we, you know.
[33:49] We try to keep it efficient for everybody and transparent.
[33:54] Yeah, absolutely. Where can founders get in touch
[33:57] in case there's a direct way? So we ask everyone to apply via
[34:03] our website because we want everyone to, you know, same it's
[34:09] open to everybody. So even if we are somebody's
[34:12] referred to us, we normally ask them to fill in the the form on
[34:17] our website as well. And the form captures the
[34:21] information that the our investors typically ask us that
[34:26] isn't always in the deck. So the form is really important
[34:30] to us. We then have a a screening and
[34:34] selection process which involves some of our, what we call our
[34:38] lead Angel investors. So they're active angels or they
[34:42] might be subject matter experts in a particular area.
[34:46] So they are involved in the process of screening the
[34:49] companies. If you get through the screening
[34:52] stages, then the next step is to come in, in it come and pitch to
[34:56] the full network. So we then try and socialise
[35:00] your opportunity as widely as possible amongst those thousand
[35:05] registered investors, not just the the 10 or so they're on the
[35:09] screening call. And then, you know, there's a,
[35:14] there's a, a structured due diligence process that we
[35:18] undertake as a group of angels. And by the end of it with a
[35:25] fairwind, there's a a decent commitment from from our angels.
[35:30] Absolutely. Quite interesting.
[35:31] Thanks for sharing that. Going to the last question of
[35:34] the rapid fire round, which is where can our listeners find you
[35:37] and follow you? Well, I'm trying to be active on
[35:41] LinkedIn. Not as active as I'd like, but
[35:44] they can find me on LinkedIn. Founders, please just come to
[35:49] the website because it will be your fastest way into our our
[35:54] pipeline. We'll see you quickest that way.
[35:59] We've obviously got a, a website which has information about the
[36:03] EIS fund, but there's also information about the EIS fund
[36:06] on the syndicate room website. So that's where you need to go
[36:10] to download the documents. But yeah, please do get in touch
[36:15] one way or another. We'd love to hear from from
[36:18] people. Awesome, I'll make sure to put
[36:20] those links in the show notes, fellow.
[36:22] Thanks so much for making time for this Sir.
[36:24] It's been great talking to you. I wish you a happy.
[36:26] Investment, thank you as well. Thank you for some great
[36:29] questions. Thank you.
[36:30] My pleasure. Have a great day.

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