Uncrowd co-founder discusses darker side of startup funding rounds
Last week, we reported that Arete had led a £3 million investment into customer analytics startup Uncrowd.
Begin and Matrix Capital also participated in the round, which built on a a £500,000 seed funding round in 2020.
Now Uncrowd Co-founder Richard Hammond, who has over 30 years’ experience in the retail sector and is the author of Friction/reward: Be your Customer’s First Choice, has penned a fascinating insight into the fund raising process.
In an online post, he says: “The final months of the raise process are extraordinary; and bizarrely the bit that is fun and exciting and vibrant isn’t the part after you get the ‘yes’ you want, it’s the meetings before that point that are enjoyable.”
“Talking to VCs, angels and investors is fun. They know things you don’t, they usually aren’t trying to oversell to you, they have a wider view of the startup world than you have.”
“Often, they are good company too. We had many, many laughs on these calls. I would say we met, at most, only two total wankers (and no, neither of those are now investors!)”
He adds: “We did talk to one fund that we wouldn’t, in a million cold years in hell, have taken money from, simply for the larks of it. When they ‘passed’, (fellow Co-founder) Rocky Howard and I ran around the office doing that baby crying thing where you ball up your fists and pretend-rub them in your eyes. WAAAAA WAAAAA.”
Hammond goes on to flag up an important caveat; the online post is his experience of investor meetings as a middle class white man.
“I know one brilliant high achieving businesswoman in her early 60s who was told flat out, again and again, that she was too old and too female. The business she was raising for is now flying high.”
He continues: “A heterosexual founder-couple were told ‘he should do the talking’ and I know for a fact that ‘she’ is the better pitcher (sorry M), so figure that one out.”
“Skin colour and to an extent education also have a depressing limiting impact in this world too. The extra high hoops set for working-class black kids, and women founders, are not only a disgrace, but they also lead to monocultures that in the end will hold the whole thing back. The sooner the world of VC works that out, the better.”
Hammond concludes: “When we closed, I celebrated with just one purchase. Not a flash watch, or a bigger desk or anything like that. I bought a nice firepit for the garden, so that me and the family can sit outside together as the winter bites, get more time with each other.”
“I’m taking tomorrow off. No meetings. No buts. Though who am I kidding? No email will go unread, no notification will go unnoticed, no idea will escape being written down and then held up to the light.”
“This is startup life, baybee, and it’s a fucking miracle, and we’re funded, and the wildest apocalyptic horses of hell could not drag us away from making this spectacular.”
