Dan Chaplin is a Partner at Dawn Capital.

Dawn Capital is one of Europe’s leading specialist B2B software investors, announcing a $700m fund in September 2023 to invest in the next generation of global software leaders.

Dan leads on all things fintech with a particular interest in payments, credit, digital assets and infrastructure platforms and has subsequently led on investments including open banking leader Tink, digital assets infrastructure platform Copper, as well as Cover Genius, Elwood, Billie, Access Fintech and OpenGamma.

This episode really drills into fintech where we discuss:

• Whether it's becoming more of a value sector
• Whether Dan prefers products that have broad market appeal at low margins, vs those narrower market appeal and much higher margins
• Profitability expectations
• Unit economics across a company’s lifecycle
• Fragmentation across the US and Europe
• Regulation
• Board learnings

Ertan Can is the Founder of Multiple Capital.

Multiple Capital invests in micro and seed-stage venture capital funds globally with a focus on European managers, frequently solo fund managers in niche geographies and verticals that are often overlooked.

The firm has backed Nathan Beniach’s Air Street Capital, which recently raised its second fund of $121m and Angular Ventures, the deep tech fund backing companies out of Tel Aviv and London.

Subsequently, their euros have been invested into category-defining companies such as UiPath and Sorare, $43bn and $4.3bn enterprise value companies respectively.

We discuss:

• What is an 'emerging manager' and when does a manager move from emerging to established?
• Preferred portfolio construction
• Why does backing emerging managers matter when venture tends to favour those who have already been successful?
• What does an investable / great emerging manager look like?
• What signs does Ertan look out for to decide when to stop investing in an emerging manager?
• The different challenges a manager has to face as he/she moves from 1st fund to 2nd fund to 3rd fund and so on
• The parallels between emerging/established GPs and emerging/established LPs

Marc Cohen is a Solo GP at unbundled vc.

unbundled is a single FO deal-by-deal vehicle that co-invests 50-200k alongside leading VCs into early-stage digital tech companies and has backed the likes of Magrathea and Runna.

We discuss:

• Founder or market in early-stage investing
• The switch from algorithmic trading to VC
• The investments of Runna and Magrathea
• Is it best to be ownership-sensitive or sensible?
• Why a fund is the natural next step, LP strategy and points of differentiation
• Portfolio construction

Laura McGinnis is an investor at Balderton Capital.

Balderton is a tier-one venture capital firm that has been investing in Europe for more than 20 years backing companies like Revolut, Depop, Dream Games, Contentful and The Hut Group, spurred by two funds, early and growth, and the ability to write checks up to $60M.

Laura focuses her time on early-stage Retail, Climate, Cyber Security, and Crypto investments and is passionate about youth education and wealth equity having previously worked as an early consultant for The Fifteen Percent Pledge, a non-profit organisation creating sustainable ecosystems for Black-owned businesses.

We discuss:

• Getting airtime for consumer at Balderton
• What characterises one of the world's leading VC funds
• Forming defensibility around consumer propositions
• How operational experience has improved Laura’s outlook on being an investor
• The ideal marketing mix for consumer propositions
• Diversity in VC & entrepreneurship. What needs to change

This week's guests are Dan Marcus, CEO at Ramp and Paul Lehair, Investment Director at Albion VC.

Ramp is a UK-based predictive analytics start-up. The team provide executive and FP&A teams with valuable insights and accurate forecasts to make informed, data-driven decisions boasting a customer base that includes major players like FRVR, Pixel, and Space Ape Games. Albion led Ramp's $5m seed round in March this year with Eurazeo & Triple Point.

We discuss:

• Dan’s journey before forecasting
• Paul’s value add of being a seasoned operator in VC
• Turning forecasting into a science rather than an art; driving an environment which is 100% data-driven
• Why every fintech investor is also an AI investor
• Proving out the product in gaming before moving on to other sectors
• Building a business in South Africa; a 101 on how to navigate the talent pool
• Dealing with founders who are overly bullish and optimistic from a runway and cash perspective

This week's episode is awesome. Guests are Babs Ogundeyi, Founder at Kuda and Dr. Ricardo Schäfer, Partner at Target Global.

Kuda is the money app for Africans around the world, giving a better alternative to traditional finance by delivering free money transfers, smart budgeting, investments and instant access to credit. Target came in at what was the largest African Fintech seed round in history before going on to raise from the likes of Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures.

We discuss:

• The eureka moment of Kuda; how Nigerian financial services impacted the making of Kuda
• Building trust in consumers early to now serve over $4bn worth of transactions every month and over 5m users
• Why legacy banks will always be behind the innovation curve
• Aligning revenue model to current economic conditions
• Key barriers to entry expanding and investing across Africa
• Queuing in Nairobi's airport

This week's episode is with Carmen Alfonso Rico, an in-house VC at Cocoa.

Cocoa is a $17m European pre-seed/seed fund backed by tech founders, designed to not lead rounds, not argue over stakes and not get in the way of other investors.

Previously, Carmen was a Partner at Series A fund Blossom and a very active angel, deploying angel tickets into 20+ companies, including being the first investor in Hopin.

We discuss:

• Why founders need a killer instinct and a heart
• Founder or market; the trade-off cost of missing awesome founders for investing in a TAM which is not typically classed as ‘venture backable’
• The story of Hopin: first cheque, a $6.7bn valuation & an exit
• Aligning founder proposition to your fund model; deciding size, stake, reserve allocation
• Tips for raising a first-time fund

This week's episode is with Nic Hourcard, Co-founder & CEO of QuestDB

QuestDB is an open-source database for time-series data unlocking more performance; higher ingestion throughput, fast queries, compression, downsampling the data, and much more.

The company recently reached the 11,000-star mark on GitHub with an impressive number of monthly active databases and a 2000+ strong community on Slack.

The company participated in the first remote cohort of Y Combinator and has since announced a $12m Series A in November 2021 at an $80m valuation, led by 468 Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures and a list of industry angels, including the co-founder of Reddit.

We discuss:

• The ins & outs of Y Combinator
• Battling between building bespoke features for first users and true scalability
• Fundraising in the US vs UK
• Monetising open-source propositions
• Reflecting on board leadership