Victoria Prew 🔊

We’ve raised €1.5Bn across our studio ventures 🎉 I realised: Funding is a function of future clarity. When we work with founders, we ask them to go 5-10 years into the future. Get concrete. Not just a vision, but a plan you can walk through, step by step. - What’s your CPA? And over time? - What channels are driving your growth? - What needs to be true in the market for this to work? - What does the team look like now, in 6 months, 2 years etc? - What will you do if something big changes? (New tech, new rules, new rivals?) The more detail, the easier it is for investors to see what you see. When you pitch with this level of clarity, you don’t sound like someone asking for money. You sound like the CEO of a unicorn, inviting people to join your story before the world catches up. You start to embody that future leader. Investors feel it. They respond to it. Founders, if you’re pitching, ask yourself: Can you describe your business in 2030 in extreme detail?

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The UK has created 163 unicorn companies to date. Each one had a strategy that matched their vision. If you're aiming to build a billion-pound business, your strategy must reflect that level of thinking. Far too often, founders stop at the surface-level decisions. They don’t align the mission, vision, and actions that drive long-term growth. That's why this infographic is really helpful. It breaks down strategy into three simple but powerful layers: ✅ Purpose ↳ Why do we exist? What matters to us? This is where your mission, values, and vision come to life and keep your team aligned. ✅ Strategy ↳ How will we get there? This is the bridge between aspiration and execution, covering plans, focus areas, and enabling tools. ✅ Execution ↳ What will we do next, and how will we track it? This is where actions, targets, and KPIs create real results. I’ve seen too many businesses stall because they ignore this process. But every billion-pound business I've backed or built has done the opposite. They've had a crystal-clear mission, a strong strategy, and consistent execution. And more importantly, they believed it was possible to build something big. That belief needs to show up in every step of the funnel.  If you’re building a business with serious potential, My book How to Make a Billion in 9 Steps will help refine your strategy. You can order the book here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eRYDKXdT What’s one part of your strategy that you’re currently refining? I’d like to hear how you’re approaching growth. ⬇️ ♻️ Repost if you believe Britain needs more billion-pound businesses. And for more on scaling with purpose, Follow me Richard Harpin.

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2 years today since we launched StackOptimise ⚙️ This is the best decision we ever made ⬇️ Investing in personal brand. For a business like ours - operating in a saturated space, offering a commoditised service - brand is a super powerful differentiator. So Felix and I decided, from the get-go, to post on LinkedIn everyday. We've only missed a handful of days. And it's paid dividends: 1️⃣ Every deal we've closed has been meaningfully influenced by our LinkedIn presence, either to generate or nurture the lead. 2️⃣ We’re constantly flooded with inbound job applications. 3️⃣ Vendors & partners treat you differently when you’ve got influence. 4️⃣ We promote the tools in our stack for free usage, thus minimising our costs. A trade that only works if your brand holds weight. 5️⃣ Team members gain visibility into both the bigger vision and our day-to-day, driving employee retention. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve spoken to who’ve either started, or plan to start, their own business - and I always say the same thing: Invest in your personal brand now. It compounds faster than almost anything else. And literally makes every part of the journey - hiring, partnerships, sales, retention - exponentially easier. ---- Here's our Ultimate Guide to Explode on LinkedIn in 2025: https://lnkd.in/eiv6Aktz

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Brilliant to host a roundtable this week with the British Business Bank and some of the UK’s most exciting scaleups to discuss the future of growth capital in the UK. We heard encouraging plans from the BBB - more freedom to invest, take risks, write bigger cheques, and in some cases, be the first to invest. Importantly, the BBB came to listen and our founders delivered a clear, timely message ahead of this year’s Budget. Risk appetite in the UK remains a defining challenge, but significant opportunities lie ahead, and progress has been made over the last few years. Founders highlighted critical barriers across deeptech, infrastructure, procurement, and the government's industrial strategy. Some of the key themes raised: ▶️ Unlocking public sector contracts to avoid the “feast & famine” cycle must be a greater priority. ▶️ Rethinking how the UK invests in deeptech & infrastructure and sees beyond B2B SaaS opportunities. ▶️ Broadening our definition of “innovation” to back bold ideas, not just tick boxes for grant providers. ▶️ Driving corporate & CVC risk appetite to better link blue-chip companies and founders. ▶️ Aligning procurement with investment to back UK companies - US companies are selected too frequently, buy British. ▶️ Exploring the role of secondaries to accelerate growth. Thank you to Louis Taylor CBE, Kristen McLeod CBE, Stephen Welton CBE and Leandros Kalisperas from the British Business Bank and to all the founders and investors who shared their perspectives so candidly - it’s clear that if we get this right, the UK has a generational opportunity to lead.

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💥 In just one year, the number of female founders in the UK who’ve scaled past £50M revenue has jumped from 80 to 144. That’s an 80% increase — proof that the female founder ecosystem is no longer emerging, it’s entering its exponential growth phase. 🚀 This month’s Pull Up A Chair – Female Founders Report is packed with signs of momentum: • $55M raise by Kate Condliffe at Diana Health to scale women’s health clinics + tech. • Mercury13 co-founder Victoire Cogevina Reynal taking ownership in women’s sport with the Bristol City Women acquisition. • Phoebe Gates & Sophia Kianni raising $8M for Phia, a Gen-Z-led AI/social platform. • And new data from JP Morgan 2025 showing women now drive 30% of all UK high-growth companies, generating £175B turnover with exits at record levels which is important for fuelling the whole ecosystem ✨ More women are breaking through £50M. More sectors. More exits. And the pipeline is only getting stronger. 👉 Read the full September report and join us at Superscalers if you’re a female founder building past £1M revenue: www.superscalers.world

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“How to say yes to 15 coffee chats and still build a business 🙈” Last Friday I put out a post offering to run another 'Founders Questions' session after continuing to get requests for a call on fundraising. This format was simple: an informal group call to share what I learned from Persi’s fundraising rollercoaster, and to answer as many questions as I could in one go (instead of 15 "quick" coffees ☕ !!). I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually show up. Spoiler: they did. 🙌 Fifteen founders, to be exact. Here’s what we covered: ⚡ How to balance product vs traction when raising ⚡ Storytelling as a non-technical founder ⚡ Navigating SEIS/EIS, angels, and valuations ⚡ What to include in your investment package + forecasts ⚡ Protecting equity and structuring founder agreements The best part? It wasn’t just me sharing (let's be honest, I'm NOT the expert) the group brought their own journeys, struggles, and strategies. It reminded me why shared learning matters: most of us founders have the same questions, and the more openly we talk, the faster we all move forward, while still supporting each other along the way. The feedback honestly blew me away: “You are a wealth of knowledge, and I honestly learnt from you a lot on the day.” “When the going gets tough, it’s amazingly motivating to see those a few steps ahead who have done 'The Thing You’re Trying To Do'.” And it turns out helping others doesn’t have to take too much time - I can still say "yes" (as so many did for me at the start of my journey), while building Persi at the same time. Because fundraising is hard enough. Being a founder is even harder. We don’t need to do it alone. And let’s be honest: 15 heads are better than 1! #founderlife #fundraising #help

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In the UK, we’re often hesitant about selling. There’s a cultural discomfort with it as if being direct about value is something to be avoided. But in business, selling isn’t optional… it’s essential. Every founder needs to learn how to sell. Not just how to talk about a product, but how to position it, how to create urgency and how to communicate its value clearly and confidently. Because no matter how good your product is, it means nothing if no one knows about it. Visibility is just as important as quality. You can have the best product in the market but if you can’t convince people to care, it won’t go anywhere. Selling isn’t just being pushy it’s a skill. And it’s one every successful entrepreneur inevitably masters, whether selling to customers or investors.

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Our data shows a clear pattern: Founders outside of financial hubs give away more of their company, right from the start. A founder in Wales raising £500k might be diluted 22%+ But a founder in London raising the same amount would be closer to 13% And that single round can set your company on a certain trajectory: Less equity for the founder, less upside for early employees, and even less room for future investors. The downstream effects are massive and long-lasting. It isn’t to do with the quality of talent or ideas. It comes down to the limited number of fundraising options available in those areas. Being further from financial hubs means there are fewer angels, VCs, and corporates at your disposal. And it’s why regional founders often face tougher fundraising journeys, even when they’re building equally strong businesses. In 2025, geography shouldn’t be a factor when it comes to dilution (especially in a country as small as the UK) but the numbers tell a different story. My advice for founders outside of financial hubs is this: Don’t spray-and-pray. Do your research, identify and target the most relevant investors in your space (regardless of their location, especially if you can demonstrate traction in the geographies where their fund is based), and avoid over-reliance on a handful of local players. Otherwise, you risk giving away too much, too soon. At shipshape.vc, we’re committed to levelling that playing field - helping founders anywhere, not just in London or New York, raise smarter and protect more of the companies they’re working so hard to build. #Fundraising #Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #RegionalFounders #Equity #ShipshapeVC

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