Doug Scott
Angel Investor, AngelList · Co-Founder, Ethic. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Doug Scott is an angel investor with an AngelList syndicate and early investments in Techstars, Ignite.io, and Entrepreneur First in Europe. He previously founded several UK-based internet companies, including carrentals.co.uk and discountvouchers.co.uk.
2shows
2appearances
20statements
5resolved
4supported
1contradicted
80%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything Doug Scott said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Scott: VCs who pitch value-add rarely deliver real value
“I hate to say it, but I think the venture investors that have to sell their value adder off are not the ones that are the value adder. The ones that are the value adder off are the people who have been builders before. The people who can empathize with the ear…”
Scott required Gleepost founders to drop out of university for funding
“If you look at Glee post, you know, I told the founders I would only invest if they quit university.”
Scott: Wealthtechs scale by helping advisors win clients, not migrating assets
“If you're serving this kind of client, especially investment management, it's very difficult to convince someone to invest millions of dollars with you when you don't have millions of dollars under management, right? Like this is just a chicken egg zero one cl…”
Scott killed offshore development teams to increase startup speed
“We've also, internally, we had a big team in the Ukraine and Poland, and we've almost killed most of our external dev, mainly because the speed of development.”
CashKaro is India's largest cashback site despite non-technical founders
“So, Kashkaroo is now the biggest cashback site in India, and I would, Swati and Rohan can't write any code.”
VCs should not run operations because they are financiers, not operators
“I prefer that they didn't be involved in how the operations of a company run is because most of them are financiers and not operators.”
Doug Scott: Finance is shifting toward transparency like the food industry
“That same thing is going to happen and is happening in financial services where the sort of increase in commoditization and product and products within products, you've lost connection with what you're actually investing in or whether those things are actually…”
Scott: 'Move fast and break things' does not work in asset management
“We can't go and do this sort of move fast and break things type software man's mindset because you can't do that in institutional capital management.”
Scott: Enterprise sales into wealth firms requires activating every organizational level
“If you want to have real success, you've actually got to activate each of these different levels. Like you have to make sure you're connected at the executive level.”
Scott: Tie fundraise timelines to operational milestones, not arbitrary dates
“Having a real timeline that's tied to operational milestones, right? You're like, I need to close this round because we are onboarding these customers. I need to ramp up a team by this therefore, and you can see it there. And that I think is very important bec…”
Scott seeks obsessive founders who have a chip on their shoulder
“I look for people who are obsessive, and they have, I suppose, a chip on their shoulder, actually. They have a reason to prove.”
Scott avoids startups raising £1M at £5M-£10M valuations
“I get approached a lot of times by people who want to raise it, you know, maybe you want to raise a million pound at a five, ten million valuation, and we don't sit anywhere in that space.”
Scott, Tim Jackson, and Gil Dibner lead Europe's top AngelList syndicates
“Yes, I think between, well, Myself, Tim Jackson, I would say Gil Dibner are probably the three.”
Startup capital is never truly committed until cash arrives
“Every one of the startups I've invested in, I said, you have to control the deal. You think the money's committed, but it's not. When it's, when they've given you the used notes and it's in your hand, it's the only time count on it being there.”
Scott: Index investing grew from 1% to 50% of AUM by 2015
“Index investing in 2000 was, you know, one percent of assets under management. You fast forward to 2015, it's approaching 50%, right? So it's almost half of all assets are invested in sort of passive or index-like products”
Scott: Ethic pitched over 100 investors to close its early rounds
“Oh, well over a hundred, and a very small portion of those ended up investing.”
Scott: Ethic grew from $5M to $250M AUM between 2017 and 2019
“Between 2017, we're a handful of million unmanaged at the end of 17. Fifty million, at the end of 2019, we're about two hundred fifty million.”
Scott's firm launched 40 internal products in one year
“We launched 40 businesses last year, internally. 40 products. And we probably have, we have two that are very, very interesting.”
Ethic distributes personalized portfolios exclusively through financial advisors as a sub-advisor
“It's all with financial institutions. So our customers are like a, an ideal sort of customer fit for us would be a registered investment advisor here in the year. So wealth advisor that's working with, let's say, a 150 clients managing a few billion dollars. T…”
The other half of the tape: Doug Scott's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Matt Lerner 2
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20VC 2
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Doug's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Angel Investor, AngelList | 1 | 10 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-Founder, Ethic | 1 | 10 | 50% 1/2 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |