Alex Macdonald
@alexfmac
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Founder Velocity Black (exited to Capital One) & sequel 🌎 Building legacies for the best athletes in the world ➡️
London & Miami
Joined August 2011
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Last week we completed the sale of my first company Velocity Black to Capital One.
9.5 years of hard work.
A few thank yous 🙏
1. My family and friends for keeping me sane through the ups and downs of the startup journey.
2. My wife for her continued support and patience.
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💰Here are 13 investor databases for seed stage Founders looking to raise money.
100k+ investors.
Not Techcunch. Not AngelList. These are the databases you haven't heard of.
This is to all the Founders hustling on a Saturday 🍻 Happy hunting 🎯
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However you are less likely to be hospitalised or die in the short term, but this is a separate (albeit important) point.
Everyone should be able to choose whether they take the vaccine.
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All 3 are true:
1. UK Gov data shows dramatic reduction in risk of hospital & death in short term if vaxxed.
2. UK Gov data shows higher infection rates for those >30 & vaxxed vs unvaxxed
3. I'm vaxxed but think people should have a choice, and I will respect their choice 🙏
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Since April 2020 I’m proud to have prioritised my health.
- Lost 16 kgs (35 lbs)
- Minus 9% points body fat
- Added 2.5 kgs muscle
- Metabolic age reduced from 40 to 27 (I’m 34)
No fad diets, no weight loss pills, no surgery.
Sharing to help others improve their health 🧵
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@davidzweig
I was suspended from Twitter in Oct 21 for sharing 'misleading info' about Covid-19.
The 'misleading' info was a UK Govt report showing higher Covid infection rates among vaxed vs unvaxed.
Tweet had 10m impressions before suspension.
Appealed but lost.
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Final thought on this before bed (late here in the UK 😴):
Despite disagreeing with many responses, I respect and look out for all of you.
Whether we are suffering from govt tyranny or a viral attack: we will fare better if we stand together & respect everyone’s opinions ❤️✌🏽
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Truth > tribes
Proof > propaganda
Education > indoctrination
If you have a problem with me sharing the UK government’s data: you’d love living in China or Russia.
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Performative morality is 10x more widespread than actual morality.
Beware of those at the top of the performative morality league table.
They’re usually found at the bottom of the morality league table.
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Freedom of thought and expression is the mother of innovation.
Innovation is the mother of prosperity.
Attacks on freedom of thought and expression by governments and society should be seen as an attack on future prosperity.
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Founders: Here's how to raise your seed round from top VCs and Angels:
1. Quickly
2. Maximising valuation
3. Setting you up well for the next round
⬇️💰⬇️
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Since I started angel investing I've seen more than 5,000 decks and helped founders raise more than $100m.
Here's common feedback I give founders on their decks:
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@patrick_oshag
Top ‘chains’:
1. Aman resorts
2. Peninsula
3. Dorchester Collection
4. Oetker Collection (Eden Roc, Jumby Bay, Lanesborough & more)
Independents:
1. Grand Hotel Tremezzo (fav below)
2. Reschio
(I founded a company that does tens of millions of dollars in lux hotel bookings)
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Founders: it's fundraising season 💰
Last year I posted a thread with links to 13 investor databases and 100k investors.
Here's my 2022 list.
More databases. More useful and all free to use 💪
Happy hunting 🎯
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@catdecal
I did say that in the thread! To be clear my point isn't about the efficacy of vaccines in preventing short term hospitalisations or deaths, it's about mandating people to have it when it doesn't seem to prevent infection risk (and seems to increase it in the medium term)
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When Besos launched his online book seller more than 20 years ago environmentalists worried about its impact on the planet.
So Jeff responded by planting 1 tree for each book sold in Brazil.
The Brazilian government named the forest after his company.
The Amazon was born.
Bezos, 1999, in the basement where he launched Amazon
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Best angel investment to date.
0.5x liquidation preference.
No exit strategy.
😁🎉🍾🥳
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Everyone loves talking about red flags 🚩
Well here's 10 positive indicators ✅ that show me an early stage founder is worth investing in:
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📚I'm sharing my reading list on marketplaces, built over the last 7 years. It's 170+ books, blog, pods, videos and research papers. I estimate it's ~ 2m words.
I've tagged it all in a database so you can quickly find what you need.
More below ⬇️🧵
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♾ Seems like a good week to do a META thread (on Fundraising)
I've pulled together my favourite threads on everything from deck design to investor databases to strategy.
200+ tools, 100k+ investors, and great advice from some of the most respected people in the game ⬇️
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@ZubyMusic
'If a government does everything for you, you'll soon find it can only do so by taking everything away from you.'
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How to make $1m in 12 months with no prior education:
⏱find a trending topic in software with
@explodingtopics
🛠build it in no code with
@nocodetech
tools / tutorials
🚀launch with
@ProductHunt
📈scale to $10k MRR w/
@getclearco
/
@pipe
💰sell with
@microacquire
Done.
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@NapierHolland
It is what you make of it. I agree in the winter it can be tough, but personally believe it’s hard to beat the UK in the summer.
There are many advantages of being in the Uk - and particularly london. It would be hard to reach the pinnacle of any career living in Portugal.
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My very first angel investment returned 26x.
I was lucky.
I've now reinvested the majority of the proceeds in other startups.
Here's how I now assess early-stage startups 👨🔬
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1/ No-Warm-Intro-Required Investor List by
@ybelyayeva
An air table, filterable database of investors who welcome cold outreach.
Also checkout the guide on cold outreach by Yulia:
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@ZubyMusic
Courage has never been in shorter supply in today’s cancel culture world, which is ironically when we need it most.
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Essential binge-reading for all interested in
#tech
and
#software
eating the 🌍. Insight overload.
@vgr
http://t.co/kJjsSK0xYU
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@JoshuaOgundu
Apparently the only reason he raised everyone’s salary and reduced his own is the other shareholder and board member sued him for taking so much money out of the business prior to that.
By the way the other shareholder is his brother.
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Yesterday I completed a 14 page, 4,000 word investment memo for my new startup 🚀
I highly recommend founders create a memo like this in addition to a deck.
It will:
- significantly speed up funding process
- convert higher quality investors
- serve as an FAQ (save you time)
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@soundslikecanoe
🚩talking badly about former employer
🚩responds defensively to feedback on a task
🚩has few / no questions about the company
🚩turns up late without warning
🚩lack of tangible metrics / KPIs demonstrating impact in previous roles
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Overheard in the VC elevator:
‘He’s the kind of founder who confuses revenue with GMV and thinks having a soho house membership is the same as having a personality…
Not our people.’
Art 🤌🏽
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My most frequent advice to founders:
‘I don’t think you should raise venture capital for this.
There are many paths to building a successful business, and raising venture capital has killed many good businesses.’
Founders nearly always ignore me 😭
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@ZubyMusic
‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’
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3/ Gritt by
@AdMoCam
Investor database focussed on Angel investors, completely free. Filterable. Awesome product.
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@KieranMaguire
The obsession of clubs with NFTs as a fan engagement tool is lunacy.
They should just sell a low priced digital membership with specific tangible benefits.
The notion that it needs to be a tradable asset is where the scams come in.
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For all the founders, angels & VCs working away on a Sunday: here's the best of startup twitter from the past week 🔥⬇️
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I'm creating a toolkit for Angel Investing with a list of educational resources, deal-flow networks and models for analysing startups.
Here's part 1: Education.
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Awesome data from the
@PointNineCap
team on B2B marketplaces. Highlights:
- Valuation at Seed range from $5m-27m
- Valuation at Series A range from $30m-120m
- To raise at Seed: GMV growth >3x YoY
- To raise at Series A: min monthly GMV of $1.5m and net revenue of $80k
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@StuartBlitz
‘It’s an AI powered platform to teach VCs how to become polite, fully functioning members of society. You’d be a perfect beta customer. Email?’
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Competition slides in decks are about as useful as a chocolate teapot
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@Jason
Who wants to be a member of something where the membership can simply be traded?
This is the antithesis to the membership strategy of every successful membership club (eg golf clubs, soho house, annabels)
A democratised member club is a club no-one wants to join.
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🇬🇧London Founders: Announcing Reverse Office Hours ⏱
If you have a free desk: let me work from your office for a day in the next month.
In return I’ll take you out for breakfast or lunch and you can ‘pick my brain’ on any topic from fundraising to hiring to GTM strategy
🤌🏽
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@lolitataub
Use docsend.
Pro tip: send different links to each initial investor you speak to.
You’ll be able to see who is being most useful / sharing the deck with other investors.
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For VCs & Angels; assessing founder ambition is much more important than accurately assessing market size.
The size of the market does not matter if the founder is going to accept an offer for $60m for the business.
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Pre-seed founders:
Do you really want to go down the route of raising from angels & VCs?
Once you go down the venture funding route, you can't turn back & it can kill your company...
Explore other funding routes first (e.g. grants, revenue-based financing, debt).
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The VCs in the UK who can help startups expand to the US have a massive competitive advantage.
These are mostly US funds…
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Confession: I passed on investing in companies including Revolut, FreeTrade, Zego, Marshmallow (all now unicorns) at seed & series A 🤯
My reason was 'I don't know enough enough about fintech / insurance.'
Do not underestimate being in the right place at the right time...
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I am a huge F1 fan.
It's surreal for me to see the brand of a company I started on the nose of a Formula 1 car.
I'm very proud of our team who executed this game-changing partnership together with
@AstonMartinF1
.
Good luck to
@alo_oficial
&
@lance_stroll
this weekend.
We're delighted to announce a new lifestyle partnership with Velocity Black, a digital members' club and luxury concierge.
Together we'll deliver Velocity Black members with the ultimate opportunities to live and experience the greatest motorsport series.
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My new co. involves partnering with top performing VC funds.
I want to partner with some emerging managers, however there isn't sufficient historical returns data to assess them.
Aside from a vibe check, how should I assess them?
cc
@MacConwell
@dunkhippo33
@mgv_vc
@paigefinnn
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I may have sold my first company last week… but I’m still in the office at 22:30 only days later ensuring I launch my second on time.
Some things change.
Some things stay the same. 🤷🏽♂️
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Investors who want to see an 'exit strategy' slide in your deck are not the investors you want.
What are other investor red flags? 🚩
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If you ask me to sign an NDA before sharing even a basic deck, I’m out ✌🏽
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My biggest cheque last year was into a pre-seed startup that was default alive, generating cash but growing steadily.
VCs ignored the round claiming they weren’t ambitious enough with growth, so I led the round with my syndicate.
Same VCs now asking me for intros 😂.
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Things I don't care about as an investor:
1. What school you went to
2. Who else is committed to the round
3. Who your advisors are
Investors who ask you these questions should be avoided.
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4/ Active Angels by
@Trace_Cohen
Database of ative angel investors including contact details.
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Founders with $50k MRR growing 50% MoM: VCs told me they’d get back to me in September depending on market conditions
Adam Neumann, pre-product: I’ve just raised $350m at $1b, here’s my landing page
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Top hiring tip for startups: never work with external recruiters.
Incentives are never aligned.
They coach bad candidates to interview well.
They poach successful candidates out again in 1-2 years.
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Founders are from Mars and investors are from Venus
'We haven't spent anything on marketing.'
Founders: This shows we can acquire users cheaply
Investors: They have no idea how to scale user acquisition
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Wild week.
I spoke at an event at SVB on Tuesday, and today it was closed.
Thoughts with all the startups and people affected.
I hope a buyer emerges quickly and that depositors are made whole beyond the insured threshold. 🙏
p.s. I won't be speaking at any more banks...
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🎯 Cold Outreach Playbook & Awards 🏆
Investors who ignore cold outreach, ignore underrepresented founders and suffer worse returns.
I received a lot of cold outreach this week. I've put together a playbook for Founders looking to improve and awards for the best outreach 🧵
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One big test of loyalty / ethics for founders:
- do you offer pro-rata to all your existing angels?
Or
- are you the type to squeeze them out / down when a fund comes along later
I always have and always will prioritise the investors who back me earliest.
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Good people give back once they’ve made it.
Great people give back before they’ve made it.
I am very excited to announce the RareBreed Ventures
@vcunlocked
@500GlobalVC
/ Stanford University full-tuition Scholarship! This intensive program was instrumental in helping me. For all underrepresented, aspiring venture capitalists apply today:
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I saw a deeply troubling and divisive post last week by a US VC.
If you're from a minority background and looking to get into VC, follow these awesome people:
@MacConwell
@ArlanWasHere
@Andy_ayim
@MrAndyDavis
@ella_wb
@michaeltefula
@harrymclaverty
@JuneAngelides
@YvonneBajela
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Introducing Pitch League - a free AI pitch-deck coach 🚀
We're removed the password restriction and you can now submit your deck.
- Constructive feedback
- Scoring across 4 categories
- Compare your startup to others in the leaderboard
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Founders: reload the money guns 💸🔫
500k people viewed this thread last year on investor databases 🤯
I've since added 9 more databases and put them in a post for you:
📒 22 Investor Databases
💰 400k investors
💰Here are 13 investor databases for seed stage Founders looking to raise money.
100k+ investors.
Not Techcunch. Not AngelList. These are the databases you haven't heard of.
This is to all the Founders hustling on a Saturday 🍻 Happy hunting 🎯
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After nearly a decade of founding 2 companies and investing in 30+ here are 10 uncomfortable truths every founder should know:
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Fundraising is still opaque.
First-time founders rarely have a good understanding of what investors want to see.
Here's are some common things founders do which they think are positive signals for investors, but are actually negative ⬇️
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Excited to officially join my 7,833 Co-founders at Stealth Startup 🚀
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The traits that make people fun to work with / likeable don’t necessarily make people good founders.
If you refuse to invest in ‘arrogant’ founders you’d have missed out on Jobs, Kalanick and Zuckerberg.
I recently passed on a company because I didn't like the founder. BUT, I have strong feeling that the company will be successful. Founder was not awful, offensive or shady, just kinda arrogant and entitled, not my vibe.
But if my job is returning capital to LPs and I believe
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Investing alongside top VCs proves you can get access.
Investing before them proves you can pick.
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Underrated company perk: a library
Team gets free books
🤝
Founders get to brainwash the team
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'We're going to be f*cking rich!'
'Let's do a really good job because they paid us first.'
I dare you to watch this video and not smile.
Here's to all the kids shovelling snow, cleaning cars and hustling.
True entrepreneurship.
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It's possible that majority of late stage startups that raised last year would currently be valued below liquidation preference.
Cooleys valuation data for 6 months to September 22:
Series D: -87%
Series C: -74%
Series B: -45%
Good times for PE & Acquirers...
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We started a 24 hours sequel AI hackathon to build a valuable tool for founders…
Stay tuned 🤖🦾
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19/ The results are not just the numbers in the first tweet.
This has been the most productive year in my life from a business & personal perspective.
I made better decisions. I made more money. I was happier. (p.s. I got engaged). All a direct result of prioritising health.
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Not all startup successes are made overnight.
In fact most are not.
If you feel like you're grinding hard but not getting the recognition you deserve; take a look at this chart.
Then get back to work.
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September is probably the best month of the year for pitching VCs.
Go get 'em.
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My podcast habits this year.
This tells you everything you need to know about me:
- based
- work in tech
- love sport
what do I get for being too 0.5%
@thesamparr
&
@ShaanVP
?
Merch? A retweet?
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Create your target list carefully.
Optimise your time by selecting VCs and Angels that invest in your space and at your stage.
@OpenVC_
has a database of 4,400 VCs filterable by stage and criteria.
We've just released a VC search engine 🙃
4,400+ VC firms. Type in "Enterprise SaaS 👨💼", "Fintech 💵", "Black founder 👨🏿🦱", "Woman-led 🙋🏻♀️"... And voilà!
It's 100% free and collaborative:
Also, RT to help a founder out! 👏👏👏
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>80x returns in 18 months?!
I invested in
@JoinOdin
pre-seed round in September 2021.
I have since used them to invest in 4 startups which I syndicated + 11 companies through other syndicates.
I also created a founder spv for sequel w/ Odin.
Today got my first distribution
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Weird how all the best venture funds in the US have picked London as their European HQ despite brexit.
👀
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I love London.
It's the best place in Europe to start a company.
It's a magnet for talent and capital, and its lead versus the rest of Europe should continue to grow.
It still pales in comparison to several cities in the US, which is why my new co is headquartered there.
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If you have a problem with people sending you scheduling links, you have an ego problem.
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'We're going to be f*cking rich!'
Hard to watch this video and not smile.
A dose of positivity to start your week.
What was your first job as a kid?
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