The Exchanges

Q And then, so did you pitch to them, um, Differently than you. Well, Alex obviously is more institutional, but did you pitch to the angels very differently to you than you did to the VCs?

A Yes. So with the angels, it was all about, here's the team, and at the time when we did the angel round, we didn't have revenue, we just had engagement metrics. So it was, here are some beta clients who are using Ametria, and they log in seven times a day, and they absolutely love it. Um, here's the team, here's my CTO, um, Al, who Has a PhD in machine learning and, um, in artificial intelligence. Um, here's our chief customer officer, James. Um, he's had a number of exits. He's been a tech entrepreneur for multiple decades. Um, you know, here's my co-founder, Jalal, that's, uh, together with me founded Innova Capital, but also has a finance and design background. So we were the four founders, and it was a combination of those founders plus the engagement on the platform That allowed me to close the angel round and get people excited about what we were doing. With the VCs, it was actually, um, really a chart of recurring, monthly recurring revenue that was just going up and to the right, and it was, it was going up like a hockey stick. That was evidence that the idea that we initially had a year prior to that, that the angels invested in, had been validated within the market, and all we needed now was some capital to speed things up.

AI assessment note: “Yes. So with the angels, it was all about, here's the team”

Q Is it a bridge round? I love the bridge round.

A The thing with the bridge round is actually, I'm not against calling it a bridge round because ultimately it is bridging us To the Series A, but it is significantly bigger than our previous round, and it is what once would have been called as, it's two and a half million dollars, so that would have certainly been a Series A a few years ago. The reality is these days, that's not enough to build the huge, scalable sales and marketing machine than one would need, and that's really what a Series A round is about. It's about building a, an expansive sales and marketing strategy. So this round was very much For us to take the team from 20 to 30 people to, um, to improve our product and hire even more engineers, and to, to make a, you know, to make a difference to sales and marketing, of course. I've doubled my sales team, but it's not quite a true Series A, which we're looking for next year, which will be double digit millions in dollars, and which will really allow us to set up offices internationally, and, and have the, the huge growth in terms of sales and marketing.

AI assessment note: “I'm not against calling it a bridge round because ultimately it is bridging us”

Q Is it a bridge round? I love the bridge round.

A The thing with the bridge round is actually, I'm not against calling it a bridge round because ultimately it is bridging us To the Series A, but it is significantly bigger than our previous round, and it is what once would have been called as, it's two and a half million dollars, so that would have certainly been a Series A a few years ago. The reality is these days, that's not enough to build the huge, scalable sales and marketing machine than one would need, and that's really what a Series A round is about. It's about building a, an expansive sales and marketing strategy. So this round was very much For us to take the team from 20 to 30 people to, um, to improve our product and hire even more engineers, and to, to make a, you know, to make a difference to sales and marketing, of course. I've doubled my sales team, but it's not quite a true Series A, which we're looking for next year, which will be double digit millions in dollars, and which will really allow us to set up offices internationally, and, and have the, the huge growth in terms of sales and marketing.

AI assessment note: “I'm not against calling it a bridge round because ultimately it is bridging us”

Q having operated in the environment now for a while, both as an investor and a founder, I'm always very interested in the barbell analogy of funding. And do you see a large cluster of funding at both the seed and series A, and then the larger growth rounds, and then much more concentrated funds in the B and C? Do you see that happening, or is that not so prominent?

A Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a bit of a one-sided barbell as well, though, because, um, there really is a huge amount of, uh, of funding available at the early, early, early stage. I mean, I, I, I'm a mentor of a few of the accelerators and You know, typically my, my advice is obviously fundraising is sort of 90% of the questions that you have during those conversations. Um, my advice is always that absolutely anyone can raise an SEIS round today. It is a case of working really hard at it. Um, it's a case of reaching out to potentially, you know, a thousand people, but to raise a 150,000 pounds where the government is pretty much underwriting that entire investment is possible for just about anyone with any idea, any slide deck. Um, and that's, that's pretty extreme, actually, because I have to say there, there are lots and lots of companies that are out there, and they are vying for the attention of the investors, for the eyeballs, for the, for the mind share of the investors, and that does actually make it very hard for, for some of the companies that are maybe, you know, better equipped, so they might have a better team or a better understanding of the market. It just makes it harder for them to get the attention that they need. Um, so that's the battle at the lower end, which is the heavy end, I guess, of the barbell. Um, certainly at the late stage, if you have your …

AI assessment note: “I think it's a, it's a bit of a one-sided barbell as well”

Q And then, so did you pitch to them, um, Differently than you. Well, Alex obviously is more institutional, but did you pitch to the angels very differently to you than you did to the VCs?

A Yes. So with the angels, it was all about, here's the team, and at the time when we did the angel round, we didn't have revenue, we just had engagement metrics. So it was, here are some beta clients who are using Ametria, and they log in seven times a day, and they absolutely love it. Um, here's the team, here's my CTO, um, Al, who Has a PhD in machine learning and, um, in artificial intelligence. Um, here's our chief customer officer, James. Um, he's had a number of exits. He's been a tech entrepreneur for multiple decades. Um, you know, here's my co-founder, Jalal, that's, uh, together with me founded Innova Capital, but also has a finance and design background. So we were the four founders, and it was a combination of those founders plus the engagement on the platform That allowed me to close the angel round and get people excited about what we were doing. With the VCs, it was actually, um, really a chart of recurring, monthly recurring revenue that was just going up and to the right, and it was, it was going up like a hockey stick. That was evidence that the idea that we initially had a year prior to that, that the angels invested in, had been validated within the market, and all we needed now was some capital to speed things up.

AI assessment note: “Yes. So with the angels, it was all about... With the VCs, it was”

Q Jason. Charlie bit my finger style. And then what's the career highlight for you?

A Um, do you know what? That's a really difficult one. I, I, I don't think it's quite a career highlight, but, um, There is a moment that I remember, and I think we'll remember forever, of, um, sitting in my boardroom when we just increased our board. We have some amazing advisors on our board. Um, our first investor director, Elizabeth Ling, was, um, at eBay, at PayPal, at TalkTalk. She then ran one of the largest online retailers in the UK. Um, she now heads up data science at Elsevier. Um, so she joined us. We have Dr. Mike Baxter, who'd started a number of e-commerce technology companies and consults companies like Google and Dell and Argos and so on. We've got Ali Mitchell, the, the founder and president of Huddle. Um, you know, we have this, we have Terry Parsons, the CTO of one nine two dot com. These are sort of bored. Um, and I remember sitting in that room, looking around these people, having a discussion about Ametria and how we can do it better. And I just, it dawned on me quite how far I'd managed to get within just a few years of, you know, making a few investments and thinking, you know, I want to start a tech company. To people sitting in a room of a company that I founded, that I was the CEO of, that, you know, I was surrounded by individuals that are 1020 years more experienced, much smarter than me, talking about how we can make this an amazing company. And tha…

AI assessment note: “that moment has stuck in my head, and that is definitely a highlight”

Q And it's very interesting that you started off then as an investor and then became the founder of a tech company. We often hear the, the alternative being that you obviously found a tech company and then move into the investment side. How do you think then that founding the company after investing helped you?

A So I, I actually, I took a very, uh, structured approach to it, and I wrote a blog post many, many years ago, which is still up on my blog as, um, my approach to investment. Um, which quite literally talks about the fact that my dream for all of this is to build a truly world leading technology company. Um, but that I, I accept the fact that I don't have the experience and that it is a very, very competitive industry in that only the best people become technology founders. Um, and so I knew I had to learn. And if you think about it, there's only a number of ways that you can learn. You can learn from, from books and by reading and, you know, there's some amazing blogs and I'm sure we'll have a chance to sort of talk about them later. Um, and, and you can learn from, from people, and I love reading biographies. At the moment, I'm reading biography of John D. Rockefeller, um, but actually getting involved in some way with the people that were at the forefront of the technology scene in London seemed to be the, the best way of learning, and so I, I realized that by making investments, um, I, I would be able to be on the inside of some of the best companies led by the, The smartest people who've already had the experience and therefore were most likely to succeed. Um, and then I actually stopped and thought about, well, you know, how much capital am I going to be able to allocate t…

AI assessment note: “by making investments, um, I, I would be able to be on the inside”

Q Talking futuristically then now about E commerce of the space. Where do you see the future of then technology integrating with retail? I mean, will we see an end to the bricks and mortar stores, or do you think they'll always remain? What are your thoughts?

A I think bricks and mortar stores will definitely always remain. I think people don't want to live in a fully virtual world. I mean, I have to say, I would love to, to be able to do things like shopping in an entirely virtual environment, because it seems like a waste of time to actually go to a physical shop. But I think I'm, I'm in the minority there. In reality, you know, my, my wife is a fashion blogger. She would never accept that as a way of shopping. That would just never, never work. Um, I think it's changing entirely that, um, if you go into Topshop now, one of the things they promote is the ability to go in store, go on their website, buy something and have it delivered to your house. So effectively it's no different to sitting at home on your computer, but you're being encouraged to come into the store to look around and discover new things, but then to make the full transaction through the e-commerce Way of, of, of shopping and to obviously the sort of the delivery and logistics that match that. Um, so I think there's a huge change into what, in what's happening with offline retail, but I don't think stores will ever go away. I do think one big thing will happen, which is that there will be a new e-commerce platform developed within the coming years that is based entirely around personalization. At the moment, you have to plug in a personalization provider and an add…

AI assessment note: “I think bricks and mortar stores will definitely always remain.”

Q Hello ladies, yeah. And then what are the next five years for you and Ametria look like?

A So five years are definitely with Ametria. We've got such a cool journey ahead of us. We're nowhere near ready to, to start thinking about, you know, finishing it. Um, we're sort of three years into probably a 10 year journey, but if, you know, if we can do it in eight, that works as well. Um, realistically, we've got a step by step process. We've, um, we've, we've launched the, the final version of our marketing automation platform recently. That's going to be sold within the UK market for the next 12 months to get us to the point that we can do a series A, and then we're going to hit international expansion. So really, for me, that means I'm going to get an amazing team of, uh, of, of VPs. I can hire people with experience. I can hire people that can really help me take this to another level, um, above and beyond. I mean, I've got some great friends already that are running amazing businesses, um, uh, you know, on behalf of, of other founders. And the things that I've learned from them, I'd love to have people like that in my organization. And on a slightly personal level, I got married a year ago, and, um, you know, I really, I am, I'm hoping to, at some point, start my own family, definitely within the next five years, um, and be able to balance that with, um, with, with what I'm doing at Emetria. So Phil Wilkinson and I often have sort of jokes because he, um, he doesn't w…

AI assessment note: “We've launched the final version of our marketing automation platform recently.”

Q And it's very interesting that you started off then as an investor and then became the founder of a tech company. We often hear the, the alternative being that you obviously found a tech company and then move into the investment side. How do you think then that founding the company after investing helped you?

A So I, I actually, I took a very, uh, structured approach to it, and I wrote a blog post many, many years ago, which is still up on my blog as, um, my approach to investment. Um, which quite literally talks about the fact that my dream for all of this is to build a truly world leading technology company. Um, but that I, I accept the fact that I don't have the experience and that it is a very, very competitive industry in that only the best people become technology founders. Um, and so I knew I had to learn. And if you think about it, there's only a number of ways that you can learn. You can learn from, from books and by reading and, you know, there's some amazing blogs and I'm sure we'll have a chance to sort of talk about them later. Um, and, and you can learn from, from people, and I love reading biographies. At the moment, I'm reading biography of John D. Rockefeller, um, but actually getting involved in some way with the people that were at the forefront of the technology scene in London seemed to be the, the best way of learning, and so I, I realized that by making investments, um, I, I would be able to be on the inside of some of the best companies led by the, The smartest people who've already had the experience and therefore were most likely to succeed. Um, and then I actually stopped and thought about, well, you know, how much capital am I going to be able to allocate t…

AI assessment note: “by making investments, um, I, I would be able to be on the inside”

Q having operated in the environment now for a while, both as an investor and a founder, I'm always very interested in the barbell analogy of funding. And do you see a large cluster of funding at both the seed and series A, and then the larger growth rounds, and then much more concentrated funds in the B and C? Do you see that happening, or is that not so prominent?

A Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a bit of a one-sided barbell as well, though, because, um, there really is a huge amount of, uh, of funding available at the early, early, early stage. I mean, I, I, I'm a mentor of a few of the accelerators and You know, typically my, my advice is obviously fundraising is sort of 90% of the questions that you have during those conversations. Um, my advice is always that absolutely anyone can raise an SEIS round today. It is a case of working really hard at it. Um, it's a case of reaching out to potentially, you know, a thousand people, but to raise a 150,000 pounds where the government is pretty much underwriting that entire investment is possible for just about anyone with any idea, any slide deck. Um, and that's, that's pretty extreme, actually, because I have to say there, there are lots and lots of companies that are out there, and they are vying for the attention of the investors, for the eyeballs, for the, for the mind share of the investors, and that does actually make it very hard for, for some of the companies that are maybe, you know, better equipped, so they might have a better team or a better understanding of the market. It just makes it harder for them to get the attention that they need. Um, so that's the battle at the lower end, which is the heavy end, I guess, of the barbell. Um, certainly at the late stage, if you have your …

AI assessment note: “I think it's a bit of a one-sided barbell as well”

Q Now, can you get the ball rolling today by telling us a little backstory of how you progressed from making thirty-plus investments to, to founding Emetria?

A Um, so, funny enough, I, basically, I'm, I'm Russian by birth. I was born in Moscow. My, my parents both had PhDs, and my mother brought me to the United Kingdom To study mathematics at Cambridge. Um, I was eight when she decided that for me, but, um, I, it took me 10 years, but I did end up studying maths at Cambridge, so I, I was a nerd. I was probably the geekiest person at, at all the schools I ever went to. Um, I was banned from using computers at two of my schools for, um, trying to sort of hack the network and all sorts of things. Um, and then I, I ended up starting my first company in a very non-geeky industry in, in property, because in, in the UK, that was what Was the biggest, most kind of publicly visible industry to get involved with as an entrepreneur. All the books, all the TV shows, all the media, that's what they were talking about. Property. And then, um, around the age of 26, 27, I found myself not really utilizing the, you know, the mathematics that I'd studied and all of the, the kind of, the nature that I had to be quite a sort of data-focused person. Um, and so I decided to, uh, leverage some of the proceeds from The, the company that, that I'd built in Nova Capital, which is a property development business, together with my, um, with my co-founder, my business partner, Jalal, um, and we started making angel investments into technology, just, just to lear…

AI assessment note: “within four years, I'd made 30 investments, um, I'd, um, stopped property development.”

Q And then, having raised both VC and angel money recently, how's that led you to view your own investing style? I mean, have you altered anything, having seen it from the founder's perspective? Is there anything you look at differently now you've experienced that?

A I guess I would have probably, the main learning, I would have probably waited a little bit longer to go out and speak to the VCs. I, I got a little bit overexcited because we, we were approached, um, inbound by a number of different funds that were very good. And, you know, we, we get approached quite a lot by the usual principles that reach out and just want to have a half hour chat and then just want to record it in the CRM. But this was much more than that. This was several funds saying, look, we really like your company. We'd like to put you through the entire process of, You know, of considering whether we should invest. Um, and they were some, some big names that, you know, that I really wanted to work with. And so at that time, we, we had sort of revenue in the single digits of, you know, thousands, monthly recurring revenue in pounds. It was, it was low. And I basically decided to carry on having the conversation, even though I kind of knew that we weren't really ready to raise at the valuation that, that we were expecting and that we ultimately ended up getting when we raised. And that ended up actually being a bit of a waste of time for both sides. Because although the company was good and everything else was good, you know, we hadn't moved far enough forward on the VC relevant metrics, which is basically the recurring revenue for us to have, have needed to have that…

AI assessment note: “the main learning, I would have probably waited a little bit longer to go out”

Q And then, having raised both VC and angel money recently, how's that led you to view your own investing style? I mean, have you altered anything, having seen it from the founder's perspective? Is there anything you look at differently now you've experienced that?

A I guess I would have probably, the main learning, I would have probably waited a little bit longer to go out and speak to the VCs. I, I got a little bit overexcited because we, we were approached, um, inbound by a number of different funds that were very good. And, you know, we, we get approached quite a lot by the usual principles that reach out and just want to have a half hour chat and then just want to record it in the CRM. But this was much more than that. This was several funds saying, look, we really like your company. We'd like to put you through the entire process of, You know, of considering whether we should invest. Um, and they were some, some big names that, you know, that I really wanted to work with. And so at that time, we, we had sort of revenue in the single digits of, you know, thousands, monthly recurring revenue in pounds. It was, it was low. And I basically decided to carry on having the conversation, even though I kind of knew that we weren't really ready to raise at the valuation that, that we were expecting and that we ultimately ended up getting when we raised. And that ended up actually being a bit of a waste of time for both sides. Because although the company was good and everything else was good, you know, we hadn't moved far enough forward on the VC relevant metrics, which is basically the recurring revenue for us to have, have needed to have that…

AI assessment note: “the main learning, I would have probably waited a little bit longer to go out”

Q And obviously, SaaS is a hugely hot, uh, sector at the moment. Everyone seems to be talking about SaaS and enterprise SaaS. Um, so do you think being in such a hot space has actually helped Emetria, or do you think it might have made it more difficult for you because VCs have higher expectations of ARR and MRR?

A Well, so do you know what? There's actually a, there's a, there's a slightly separate aspect, um, of, of hotness that I, I really experienced the Directly and, and personally, and that's the fact that we launched as an e-commerce analytics company. So my idea having come out of Cambridge for the second time, I wanted to apply data to a massive market. Um, e-commerce is a two to three trillion dollar market with retail being 10 times bigger than that. So it was clearly huge. Um, and I initially had the idea of Ametria being an e-commerce analytics company. And when we launched in 2013, analytics was one of the hottest things. So I remember funds being created. KPMG did a hundred million dollar fund just for analytics companies. Um, it was perfect. By the time two years later we came to raising our, our big round, um, it had transpired that one, analytics wasn't interesting or relevant to the market, but two, analytics wasn't even that interesting or relevant to the investors anymore. Um, and it really dissipated very quickly. There was an up and down within just a couple of years. And that really was fascinating to experience. Um, we actually learnt from the market that marketing was far more important, that retailers didn't want data, they wanted actions that drove engagement and revenue, and so Ametri is actually a marketing automation platform, a customer insight and marketin…

AI assessment note: “that has actually allowed us very much to expand quickly and get the numbers”

Q And obviously, SaaS is a hugely hot, uh, sector at the moment. Everyone seems to be talking about SaaS and enterprise SaaS. Um, so do you think being in such a hot space has actually helped Emetria, or do you think it might have made it more difficult for you because VCs have higher expectations of ARR and MRR?

A Well, so do you know what? There's actually a, there's a, there's a slightly separate aspect, um, of, of hotness that I, I really experienced the Directly and, and personally, and that's the fact that we launched as an e-commerce analytics company. So my idea having come out of Cambridge for the second time, I wanted to apply data to a massive market. Um, e-commerce is a two to three trillion dollar market with retail being 10 times bigger than that. So it was clearly huge. Um, and I initially had the idea of Ametria being an e-commerce analytics company. And when we launched in 2013, analytics was one of the hottest things. So I remember funds being created. KPMG did a hundred million dollar fund just for analytics companies. Um, it was perfect. By the time two years later we came to raising our, our big round, um, it had transpired that one, analytics wasn't interesting or relevant to the market, but two, analytics wasn't even that interesting or relevant to the investors anymore. Um, and it really dissipated very quickly. There was an up and down within just a couple of years. And that really was fascinating to experience. Um, we actually learnt from the market that marketing was far more important, that retailers didn't want data, they wanted actions that drove engagement and revenue, and so Ametri is actually a marketing automation platform, a customer insight and marketin…

AI assessment note: “There's actually a, there's a, there's a slightly separate aspect, um, of, of hotness”