Updates for January 2022

Hey everyone! Hope you have enjoyed your Christmas and New Years. It’s been such a crazy time, with the Omicron variant that swirled around and Plan B that smacked us right in the face. This being said, however, 2021 has been a great year for us. Among our achievements:

• Received over 60 Phase 1 applications and 35 Phase 2 applications
• Funded 3 startups: ZIM Connections, GoCaptain, and Kinicho
• Recognised by UKTN, Alex Macdonald, Considered Capital, and IndieLondon (newsletter)
• Cemented ourselves in the UK VC ecosystem by hosting various events… with more to come

And now, during this month, here is what we have worked on:

• We have a brand new application form! Many of you were frustrated by some of the bugs and the length of the old one, so we are in the process of constructing a new application form. Right now, we have a manual version, but eventually everything will be built on Bubble and be a lot more advanced technologically than what you see now (but still will take the same amount of time). If you never finished your old application (we’re looking at you, Phase 1s…) come fill out our new one! Link here.
• We have hired a new fractional CFO! He will help us organise our internal financials and modelling in a nice and clean format.
• We are very close to hiring a new fractional CMO. Stay tuned as you watch him/her work magic in our social media, online presence, and marketability.
• Our founder, Jonathan, is applying to be an FCA Fund Manager, with George and Toby as senior members. This will allow us to have maximum flexibility long term, which will continue to allow us to serve you, the founder and investor community, to the best of our ability.
• Databases: Added on the Signal NFX network
• More articles related to founder and investment theory, which we hope you find interesting.
• Podcasts: Our founder, Jonathan, was featured on The Tippy Top, and will soon be featured on The Exploratory Journey and Nothing Ventured. Stay tuned to hear about this!
• Speaking Opportunities: Our founder was featured on the Zebras Unite Funding Panel (recording will be posted soon) and will be conducting sessions with Digital Catapult and London & Partners.

In the meantime, we are continuing to actively scout for more idea stage to pre-seed founders and startups! This year, we are going to heavily emphasise pretotyping (NOT prototyping) as our validation framework of choice, particularly among idea stage founders. At multiple startup events and panel talks, one frustrating point of emphasis was that angel investors and VCs were too vague in their standards and didn’t always give consistent analysis to founders. While there will always be a certain level of ambiguity, we wanted to ensure we had a concrete standard that (particularly) idea stage founders could try to reach with various pretotyping experiments (landing pages, etc.) and stand a higher chance of receiving funding.

In addition to this, we will continue to find unique ways to educate the UK/EU startup ecosystem about the mechanics of the Convertible Future Earnings Agreement. Our model is still extremely new in this region and founders here are not as used to the “Alt-VC” financing dynamics compared to the Bay Area. This being said, our model is very much needed here. Just like in the US pre-2018, entrepreneurs are very much frustrated by the lack of non-blitzscale options for funding sustainable and impact-first businesses. Through various opportunities to host sessions, workshops, be on different podcasts and panels, and in social media, our goal this year is for 80% of the early stage UK startup ecosystem to know who we are, what we do, and to understand that if they have a landing page with skin in the game metrics, they are good enough to apply for our investment.

We are excited to continue to serve you all and back legendary idea-stage founders, and commit to being the earliest cheque that exists in the UK and EU.

Best,

Horizan VC Squad

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