???????? Hi friends!
As I’m still camped out in the Maldives (sigh!) just a brief one from me today.
I thought it would be worth refreshing your memory on some of the pods we’ve released since the beginning of Series 5 a few weeks ago so you can make sure you’re all caught up 🙂
Normal service will resume from next week onwards.
Me looking maybe a little too smug in the Maldives ????
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Now let’s get into it.
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The Lowdown
With Season 5 of Nothing Ventured well under way I thought it would be useful to give you a rundown of where we’ve been and, where we’re going.
Here are the first few guests we’ve had on and some of the up-coming guests from all around the world of venture ????
Building the Investor Accelerator for Africa with Mark Kleyner
Our first guest, Mark Kleyner has had a pretty interesting journey so do check out our Primer episode to understand more.
In our main conversation, we talked about the untapped capital and potential in the African venture ecosystem and why, rather than trying to accelerate founders, Mark and the team at Dream VC are accelerating VCs.
Geeking out Finance Bro Style with Julio Martínez
My second guest was the founder of Abacum, an FP&A platform for mid cap companies ????
In our conversation, Julio and I chatted about why we both think there’ll always be an excel (at least for now) and why it’s pretty damned difficult to try and build a universal platform for CFOs.
In our Primer episode, we talked about Julio’s dream board and how he moved from his dream of being a Paella chef to 20 years in finance!
Tackling the Trillion Dollar Market for Disabled People with Martyn Sibley
In the third and most recent episode of Nothing Ventured, I spoke to Martyn Sibley, previously co-founder of Accomable, an Airbnb style platform for disabled people which then exited to Airbnb itself. He’s now the founder of Purple Goat Agency.
Martyn and I spoke about why language matters. We also talked about the immense opportunity for those servicing people with disabilities and, how by catering for those with disabilities, you end up building better products overall.
Nothing Ventured on the Move
Last month I was able to take the studio on a bit of an excursion and recorded a bunch of short interviews with some VCs and founders in a candid setting.
Hosted by the London Venture Capital Network at the Dream Factory, you’ll see these (occasionally beer or wine fuelled!) conversations every Friday throughout the season.
Here are the first few.
Dan Pandeni Idhenga – Investor at 1818 Venture Capital and Co Founder of the London Venture Capital Network
Dami Hastrup – Founder at MOONHUB, VR driven corporate training
And coming up you’ll get to hear from:
Nathaniel Harding, Managing Partner at Cortado Ventures driving venture in the mid continent
Fatou Diagne and Stephanie Heller talking about how Bootstrap Europe is championing venture debt in Europe having bought out SVBs German debt portfolio
Shruti Ajitsaria on building Allen & Overy’s legaltech incubator, Fuse, after coming up with the idea on maternity
Dom and Elliot Chapman on building, scaling and exiting agencies
Sam Beni on the fall of Tech Nation and why he’s building the agent based networking platform for tomorrow at Platin.
And, as always, we’re just getting started!
And finally, back to memes from our favourite meme master…
Crypto investors last year vs crypto investors this year
— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA)
Oct 24, 2023
????And that’s a wrap for this edition of The Lowdown – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.
???? And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,
???? Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.
That’s it from me so until next time…
Stay liquid 🙂
Aarish
