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Billy is part of the Active seed team where he spends his time unearthing the most exciting early-stage companies across the consumer landscape and meeting amazing founders. He also sits on the board of Active portfolio company, TravelLocal, an early-stage travel marketplace.
What’s your take on the fundraising landscape in 2023?
There is still money for great businesses
This is undoubtedly a challenging time for businesses, but there are still lots of opportunities for brilliant founders to access capital. Some of the best businesses were built in downturns, think of AirBnb and Uber.
However, investors will be putting more scrutiny on your unit economics and path to profitability and conducting more thorough due diligence than they would have in the bull markets of 2021. Our approach has always been to look for businesses that have a path to profitability (or are already profitable) underpinned by a profitable proposition at the unit level. We don’t have a grow-at-all-costs mentality, we support our businesses to accelerate sustainable growth.
Brands with high customer engagement will succeed
The current macro environment hasn’t fundamentally shifted our perspective or our investment hypothesis, as we always look for brands and businesses with a high level of engagement with consumers anchored in exceptional products and services, which is their point of differentiation.
As consumer investors, the areas where we’re getting excited about are underpinned by macro consumer trends of wellness, the future of work, conscious consumerism and generational shifts.
We’re seeing a rise in resale, repair, and circular economy solutions. Areas like gaming and innovative healthcare are also getting much bigger. And the creator economy is seeing interesting shifts in behaviour and solutions.
What advice would you share with founders who are looking to raise at the moment
Approach a targeted list of investors
Make sure they actually invest in your area before you reach out and be strategic about who you reach out to. Really highlight the why you and why now.
Investors want to know why you are the best person to solve the problem and why now is the right time to do it. What tailwinds of opportunity in the market are there that you are capitalising on?
Getting out to networking events is also a great way to meet investors in a more relaxed environment.
What’s one thing they could do to stand out to investors?
Having a well-crafted and polished pitch sounds obvious, but presentation is key, and making sure your narrative is compelling around the problem you’re solving is essential. The market opportunity and how you are differentiated from your competitors should be the crux of your pitch.
Make sure you really know your numbers – investors are going to dig deep into your numbers and it’s always impressive when a founder is all over them.
Passion and vision are another key way to stand out – we don’t expect you to know all the answers right now and that’s ok, but having the drive and vision to disrupt a whole industry or create a new category gets us excited.
Any tips for founders doing cold outreach?
Keep your initial outreach email succinct but compelling – back to the why you, why now question. Include a link to your pitch deck but include details around the size and scale of your business and how much you’re raising in the body of the email.
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