Episode 342: Be My Angel Fund Supporting Female Entrepreneurs with Emma Sinclair MBE
Did you know that women-led businesses receive only 1.8% of venture capital funding? This disparity persists despite numerous initiatives to promote gender equality in funding. Emma Sinclair is passionate about addressing this gender funding gap in entrepreneurship.
In this episode, Adam Stott interviews Emma Sinclair MBE, a pioneering entrepreneur who made history by taking a company public at just 29. Emma discusses her journey from playing “Guess the Share Price” with her father as a child to becoming a successful entrepreneur. She underscores the importance of a strong work ethic and its role in her success.
Emma Sinclair is a highly accomplished entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and CEO of EnterpriseAlumni, a global software company that offers solutions for large corporations. Emma is also a passionate advocate for female entrepreneurship and is actively working to bridge the gender funding gap through her “Be My Angel” campaign.
Show Highlights:
- Emma’s journey into entrepreneurship began at a young age with her father sparking her interest in the stock market.
- Taking a company public at the age of 29, made Emma the youngest person to achieve this milestone.
- Importance of a strong work ethic and the value of hard work in achieving success.
- Addressing the gender funding gap through her “Be My Angel” campaign.
- How crowdfunding can be a powerful tool for small businesses and individuals to raise funds and build a community of supporters.
Links Mentioned:
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: There we go. You’re good. Brilliant. Come and grab a seat. That’s for you, yeah, for sure. Hi
[00:00:07] Emma Sinclair: everybody. Wow. I’ve been instructed to speak into this like a rapper. And I’m not sure whether I’m going to be asked to rap, but I really have to say, heads up, it’s not part of my it’s not part of what I’m going to be able to offer today.
[00:00:19] Adam Stott: Well, look, you know, I was just given a big intro there. You’ve achieved some amazing things. I’ve took that straight off the telegraph, actually. That’s true.
[00:00:26] Emma Sinclair: That picture is a little while ago. Oh, how weird. I’m wearing the same top. I just want to confirm I’ve actually owned more than one item of clothing.
[00:00:36] Well, as if by magic. Yes, I wanted to make sure people could recognize me, so I wore the same thing today.
[00:00:42] Adam Stott: Which is brilliant. And look, I think that achieved some amazing things. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I didn’t want to give too much about what we, away, about what we just spoke about, because I think you got a really important message actually today around female entrepreneurship in Britain, and so much more.
[00:00:58] But you took a company public at 29, which is incredible. Give a big round of applause for that, right? Huge success. What got you to that point, Emma? How did we build towards taking a Why were you, youngest person ever, to take a company public? How did we get there? What was that journey like? First of
[00:01:16] Emma Sinclair: all, I can tell I’m going to feel very good about myself by the time I leave.
[00:01:18] So for having me today. I’m having a very long day already. A long Monday, so thank you. I mean, look, When people hear that, that have never met me if it was the other way around, I would, and I’m not saying I am, I’m just saying I would think, Oh, she must, I don’t know, have been a whiz kid, done something amazing about economics at university.
[00:01:37] Just for the avoidance of doubt, it’s none of those things. Not that I didn’t pay attention in school ish and get some good grades, but the actual reason that I started my Professional entrepreneurship journey on the stock exchanges merely because it was actually all I knew or all I understood at that point as to how you raise money.
[00:01:53] My, my dad I’m the first of my family’s go to university. My family come from Eastern Europe. I’m, you know, my, my father worked very hard to give me the opportunities that I have. And on the way to school every day from the age of four, my dad and I used to play a game, well we used to play lots of games, right, we played what’s the capital city, and how many red cars can you see, and all the games, if anyone has kids they need to keep busy, tend to play.
[00:02:17] But we also used to play, Guess the share price. This is 1000 percent true. And sometimes people think I’m joking, but it’s 100. It’s really is totally true. And my dad bought, you know, a couple of 100 worth of shares, some of the privatizations in the nineties and companies actually don’t exist today.
[00:02:33] And he had a couple of shares. And on the way to school in the morning, we would get we’d have a copy of the paper that got dropped off in the house because back in the day, that’s how you got that. And My early memories of my school journey are opening up the financial times and it being really big and flopping in my face and taking about 10 minutes to just get the paper open.
[00:02:51] And I think clearly this is just how my dad kept me busy for 35 minutes on the way to school every day. But the long story short, it kind of transpired into I got to university. And it was the first year that they offered student loans. So I took out my student loans and traded them on the stock market.
[00:03:08] I had two and a half grand in a bank account. I didn’t know about that. My grandparents and my family always put things like birthday money and all that sort of stuff, like through the course of my life. And I went into Barclays bank in the third week of university, having just had my student loan and was told, Oh yes, of course, if you’re over 18 with your passport, you can access that.
[00:03:27] So I had that too. So actually the way I got started in life was playing that with my dad, trading student loans at university and getting internships in my first year to large city institutions I’d read about in the newspaper because I sent them a copy of my trading sheet. From from my trading in my first year of college.
[00:03:45] So that gives us a long story short, but it gives a tiny bit of context. I just was like, well, the stock market is how you do stuff. And it wasn’t an ivory tower. Cause it’s a thing that I just did with my dad every day. So when I first thought about setting up a cash shell, aggregating some businesses, acquiring some stuff, I’m like how might one do that?
[00:04:04] Well, obviously one floats a company on the stock exchange when I look back now at the chutzpah that I had, you know, I think if I had been better informed, I definitely wouldn’t have done it. But I just thought that was the way you do it. So I did.
[00:04:18] Adam Stott: I mean, Pretty incredible and actually really good lesson for Children.
[00:04:22] Actually, isn’t it? If anyone
[00:04:24] Emma Sinclair: does this with their Children and loses money, I’m taking no responsibility for it. So do not get me in trouble.
[00:04:29] Adam Stott: Financial advice, right? Correct. But I think that what a great lesson to be able to Educate your children about financial and financial times and things like that.
[00:04:42] I mean, who finds reading the financial times now difficult?
[00:04:47] Emma Sinclair: Well, you wouldn’t read the FT now, right? I mean, reading the FT then was probably the same as going on your iPhone now and picking out an app that you quite like to use for learning something about finance or business or whatever else it was.
[00:04:59] Right. My dad used to say to me, I don’t know whether anyone does or did ever read the AFT, but on the back page, there’s something called the Lex column. And my dad used to say to me, this is the gossip column about companies. So, you know, my mum would read some crappy thing at the airport with, I don’t know, Pillow magazine or something or other.
[00:05:16] And my dad would be like, well, that’s the gossip pages for businesses. So, I mean, you know, in many ways, that’s just kind of what there was. I’m obviously, you know, far younger than I look. But back in the day, that was, you know, that was really the place in the morning that you could get that information.
[00:05:30] We didn’t have an iPhone. We didn’t have a car phone. So I think now there’s infinitesimally more ways to digest this. And these days, you know, I look with my daughter who really likes Roblox, and they IPO’d recently. And she obviously wants to spend all her money on crappy, fluffy toys, which obviously she has plenty of.
[00:05:47] But I’m like, there’s only so many you need. So now I can show her how to buy, you know, five bucks worth of stock without it costing fifty pounds in fees and stuff. So, actually the world today is infinitely, it’s infinitely easier to educate yourself, I think, to get advice, to find your crowd to learn how to do things.
[00:06:04] But, you know, when I first set up my business, it wasn’t even that long ago, but there weren’t really, there wasn’t the same information, sites, apps. I mean, you know, anybody, I know lots of people here either have their own business thinking about setting one up or have been doing it for a while. You know, the dearth of information you can get now at your fingertips is incredible.
[00:06:27] Adam Stott: Absolutely. So in terms of you then taking that and turning it into a business, what were the steps from having that early stuff to actually going out and building a business for you, Emma? How did it transpire from there?
[00:06:40] Emma Sinclair: Look, over the years, I’ve learned to tell a long story short. So, long story short, I watched my dad build a business.
[00:06:47] I mean, my father always told us that we kind of, you know, had to, he really believed in learning to teach us to kind of, teaching us that we should roll our sleeves up. So, I mean, I had a job from 16 at our local Boots, and then for an extra 20p an hour, I went to McDonald’s, got to university,
[00:07:04] To be honest, I don’t know, but yeah, probably is on there.
[00:07:07] And then there was an extra 40p when I worked for All Bar One. So, you know, I mean, I’ve always worked. And I’ve always, I think, really been attracted to the concept of entrepreneurship. My family came here from, my father’s side of the family came here from Ukraine. And my grandpa, my great grandpa was used to say to my grandpa and to my dad, so these things get passed down to you that if you work for someone else, you’re always a week away from being fired.
[00:07:30] And you know, that particularly resonated for my family because they were, you know, they were, from a very persecuted group and running from hate. So obviously being a bit of independence made that a little bit safer back in the day. But I think the kind of concept of entrepreneurship was just always around in our house.
[00:07:47] And you know, if your dad reads you the FT at the age of four and you’re talking about share prices, business is just what we talk about at our sort of family table. I mean, we all get together. That’s what we all talk about. My dad is 80, and he took over a small cash shell 10 days ago, because he’s decided he’d like to do it one more time.
[00:08:05] So, I mean, you can imagine the kind of family that I have exposure to. He just took
[00:08:09] Adam Stott: over a small?
[00:08:10] Emma Sinclair: Small listed vehicle.
[00:08:12] Adam Stott: Oh, really? Yeah,
[00:08:13] Emma Sinclair: Moor Group or something. Smallest cash shell on AIM. He’s decided. He’d like to do it again. And I’m like, that’s actually probably just gives people a sense of what I’ve grown up with.
[00:08:22] My dad is always like, keep your mind busy, have a really good go. If you work hard, good things will come to you, you know, nowhere to stop if good things aren’t happening. So I mean, you know, how did I get here is a really big question, but I’ve been working really hard for a very long time. And I guess every time I do something or kind of cash in a business for the next one, it gets a bit, Bigger and better and bigger and better.
[00:08:46] And now obviously the, well, not obviously, sorry, the software company that I run now is, you know, we’re global. We’ve got customers all over the world. And you know, if you’d said that to me when I was starting my journey years ago, that. Some of the things that I’d done, some of the people I would have met, would have been what happened, I wouldn’t have believed you, but I don’t know, it all started with reading the share prices and learning to earn a living, and my dad saying, if you want a car, then I’ll get you a third hand car, but you’ve got, I’ll double what you earn at McDonald’s, so.
[00:09:13] You know, I’ve got a real work ethic, I guess.
[00:09:15] Adam Stott: Absolutely, and that first business, what was it? Give it a big round of applause. That’s very nice, thank you.
[00:09:20] Emma Sinclair: What a nice bunch of people. I’ve had a very long weekend and a very long day, so this is very well received. Thank you. I know clearly I’m going to be asked for a lot of favors on the way out as a result.
[00:09:30] Adam Stott: The first business you started, the first one that you took public at 29, what was that business?
[00:09:35] Emma Sinclair: So, actually what I did was I took over a cash shell, which is, for those that don’t know, is effectively like buying a box that you can put companies into, but it happens to be on the stock market. When now raising money is something I’m infinitesimally more familiar with.
[00:09:50] But when I first decided that I started my professional life, so post McDonald’s, post all bar one, post waitressing, post call centering, post all those sorts of things. My first proper job was in an investment bank doing mergers and acquisitions. So lots I learned there very different skills.
[00:10:08] And when I was Heading in for my first business, the only way I knew that I could go and buy companies and pay for it, as far as I was concerned, was I needed to have something on the stock exchange, so that people who bought shares could buy shares in my company, so that I’d have enough cash in the company to buy shares.
[00:10:24] I mean, literally as simple as that. I mean, I, it’s easy to paraphrase a story 30 years later, but really that was essentially the concept and it’d be no different now. So I went about looking for a cash shell. I mean, that, that is, that I was like, well, that’s what I need to do. So that’s. Essentially is a short story is what I did wasn’t quite as easy as that found some bad ones found some badly behaved people Had some mixed experiences raised the money to take over a cash shell the night before About 20 percent of the funding never came through so I had to find you know hundreds of thousands by the next day Which was not something at the best of times anyone really wants to find themselves with so We haven’t got all day here, but just for the avoidance of doubt, it was an absolute nightmare.
[00:11:08] And there were hundreds of obstacles and hurdles, but you know, it did happen. That was business number one. What
[00:11:13] Adam Stott: was interesting that you said that you worked in a court center first. I
[00:11:18] Emma Sinclair: have done so many jobs at different stages of my career to earn extra money. I did that at night. I’ve had, I’m sure like lots of people here.
[00:11:25] I had day jobs and then night jobs sometimes because I wanted to earn more money. Or, you know, I mean, my first year of uni, my first, last year of school, I worked in McDonald’s. My first year of uni, I worked in all by one principally. My first summer holidays of my first year of university when everyone was working in fairly crappy jobs.
[00:11:47] I decided a couple of months before summer started that I just didn’t want to work in McDonald’s or in a bar. And I’d been reading, so, along with reading, doing guess the share price and trading shares, I must also admit to having been quite a bad student at university. I wasn’t terribly good at attending, but I have Many failings, many things I’m terrible at, but I’m going to just sweep all of those under the carpet and talk about all the things I’m good at today.
[00:12:12] And I’ve got a really good memory. So generally, if I read a book or hear something, I generally remember it pretty quickly. So I didn’t do much attending. So every day at university, I didn’t really get up very early. I met my friends for lunch at the student union, read the FT, was the only person that bought the FT from the student union newsagent, the newsagent used to get it for me, and then I played Street Fighter for most of the afternoon, which if anyone knows that or has kids that plays computer games.
[00:12:36] So that was essentially my that was essentially it, but I, we was reading the FT every day, so I wrote 12 letters to 12 banks to ask them for an internship in my first year of summer. And I remember going to the university career service, who I’ve had many bad experiences with. I can remember.
[00:12:51] And one of them was, I remember asking them, you know, for some advice about how I could get an internship in the city of London in finance. And they said, well, you definitely can’t do that till you’ve got a degree. Now, I mean, I was much shyer, much more reserved when I was younger. I was not what you see before you now, but I don’t think no ever really worked terribly well for me then.
[00:13:10] So I just wrote 12 banks and I attached my trading sheets. Now, I’d only been trading a small number of shares, because I didn’t have a lot of money, but I was trading things like Pizza Express, which I knew, which at the time was traded, and I knew really well, because I’m allergic to milk and eggs, and they actually, if anyone here has an allergy, you may know they’re really good at handling allergies.
[00:13:28] So all my life, if I’m going out with my friends or, When I was at university when I didn’t have any money and, you know, a fancy night out was Pizza Express. I knew every Pizza Express in the country because that’s where I’d been eating for years. So, for example, that was like one of my major holdings. So I sent my CV, my trading sheet, and a cover letter to like 12 heads of banks I’d read about in the newspaper.
[00:13:51] So the way I kind of got started from a city perspective was I got offered jobs. So that was really how I got started. And you know, they offered three hundred and fifty, I always remember, three hundred and fifty pounds a week. To work and all my friends like going into railing on all this stuff or working in, you know Bailing hay in their local village or something and I was like, I really honestly thought I had made the big time at that point So, I mean I started my city career essentially then but in between all of that when you’re at college or I studied abroad You know, I had to earn a living so I had call centers.
[00:14:25] I worked in the Virgin Megastore in Paris stacking CDs you name it and I always say, and I say to my kids that, you know, that’s the stuff that probably explains the resilience I have as an entrepreneur.
[00:14:38] Adam Stott: That’s why I asked the question, because of the resilience that can be built in a call center when you get told to go away constantly all day long.
[00:14:47] I think it’s actually a good thing for a business owner to actually have been through that level of rejection to toughen them up, right?
[00:14:55] Emma Sinclair: We are all a product of our experiences. That was a product of that experience for me and I am very persistent and very resilient and that certainly did help. The other things that helped in those times though was all the people, a little bit like today, you know, for me the best thing about those experiences, or even now, I was saying to your colleague before I came in, you know, the best things for me are having gangs of people that understand what I’m going through.
[00:15:16] You know, I’ve got WhatsApp groups of female founders that are building global SAS companies. We all totally get it. And we can all explain that. And again, at the call center, you know, I met people I’m still friends with that were sending an amazing lady who’s currently building wells across Kenya, but at the time lived here and was sending money back home.
[00:15:33] So she worked nights while she was studying. So actually I met amazing people. I’m still in touch with some of the people from McDonald’s that I work with. And yeah, I mean, look, we We all come to wherever we are. It’s not exactly a profound statement. We all come to the experiences that we, where we are from the experience that we’ve had.
[00:15:49] And I guess I just don’t mind rolling my sleeves up. But that has downsides. You know, sometimes I’m not the best at divesting things.
[00:15:56] Adam Stott: A really key point. How much do you think the work ethic plays a part in business success? And obviously we’ve got lots of business owners in the room. Lots of business owners that different.
[00:16:06] We’ve got some really success people to crash, crushing it. Got people that are starting out people in the middle. We’ve got lots of different things. How much would you say work ethic plays a part in the success of the business?
[00:16:18] Emma Sinclair: No one size fits all. I’m like, I’m there’s times a stereotype and times not to.
[00:16:23] Sometimes you ride a wave. Sometimes you’re really lucky, you know, so I don’t know that there’s any recipe, but I do know that if you work really hard and you’ve got something good going on, then you’re going to do better than the person next to you that doesn’t work as hard. Or rather, that’s how I’ve carried myself.
[00:16:39] I will say that’s not necessarily the right way to approach it because I am often completely exhausted. Don’t spend enough time with my family and a bunch of other stuff. So I don’t know that’s even necessarily the right way. It’s just the way that I’ve done things and all I can do today is speak about myself and my journey.
[00:16:55] I work really hard all of the time. But then again it’s normal to me. I’ll tell you a few years ago I went, I dropped my dad off at home on a Sunday afternoon and he said to me, I am, I’m going to go write a paper. It’s like a Sunday, right? And he likes a bit of golf. And I, and it suddenly, that was the moment where everything twigged about the way that I work.
[00:17:14] Cause that’s, I mean, it’s completely normal for, I said to my dad, take some time off, have a break, you know, watch some telly. It’s like, no, I’ve got work to do. And I realized actually, so there’s, The kind of what surrounds me is that is how my family works. So that is how I work. But as I say, it’s not necessarily the right way.
[00:17:31] And as I get older, I often think to myself,
[00:17:33] Adam Stott: could have done it differently. Yeah.
[00:17:35] Emma Sinclair: Are there better ways to do it? What does success mean? And What am I racing towards? So, I just want to temper what I do with flagging that if other people don’t necessarily do that, or don’t believe in working all hours of the day, then quite frankly, you’re probably infinitesimally more sensible than me, and should be up here talking to me about how to work.
[00:17:54] Adam Stott: Great stuff. And what we’ve got launching for you, what you’ve got launching over the next few days, you said, big daily mail spread. I think there’s some really important info about female entrepreneurship. And obviously having been a very successful female entrepreneur, Somebody that is very young, taking companies public had some amazing results.
[00:18:13] You’ve got some really good stuff to share around that. And obviously we’ve got a lot of female entrepreneurs. Where are my female entrepreneurs? Loads of them in the room, right? Sorry,
[00:18:21] Emma Sinclair: boys. Well, look, I’m unaccustomed to speaking to rooms full of lots of women, to be honest with you, apart from my close friends, because it’s generally not the place that I find myself.
[00:18:32] Yeah, I mean, happy to share a little bit about what I’m doing, which might at the very least resonate with them and resonate with the men, too, because the issue for there’s a lot of issues around female funding, female entrepreneurship and female equity, which are not a woman problem. If you’ve got sisters, mothers, Children, grandchildren, you name it.
[00:18:49] So I’ve lived a life where I’ve raised quite a lot of money in different ways, right? Stock market, private. I now have a company that’s kind of we’ve raised not the hugest, but Depends what huge is, but in the context of a sort of B to B tech company, we’ve raised about 25 million. Some from funds some
[00:19:07] Adam Stott: of that
[00:19:09] Emma Sinclair: comes at a price.
[00:19:10] Everybody, everything comes at a price. So, I’m sure I don’t know anything about, has anyone here raised any money for their business? Has anyone here planning on raising any money for their business? So, look, wherever we are in the world and whatever we all do, we all need some financing. I mean, raising money for your business, frankly, is asking your mom, your dad, your brother, or some overdrafts, as far as I’m concerned.
[00:19:32] So, that’s the beginning of a raising money journey. And it’s not always the right way to do things, but I run a software company where we service huge companies and we have massive costs to do so. So, I certainly, to cash flow, to My business on an annual basis is very expensive, and I certainly from day one couldn’t do that myself.
[00:19:50] But a lived experience for female entrepreneurs is is that 1. 8 percent of the money that goes to that goes from venture capital into businesses in the world goes to women. So 98. 2 percent of money from financial institutions like venture capital goes into male led business and mixed teams and 1.
[00:20:09] 8% It’s gone up from 1. 2 percent and lots of people are pleased about that and I find that very irritating. Paces of change are often glacial. I think that might be sort of even whatever’s less than glacial might be what that statistic is. So amongst my friends who are growing businesses, some are raising money, raising, software companies typically they’re raising money from angels.
[00:20:31] Lots of us don’t feel disadvantaged or like we can’t walk into a room. But if a man is 48 times more likely to raise money, and that has been the case year on year on year, I have to admit to myself that I’m walking into a room disadvantaged. The odds are stacked against me before I start and for every other woman.
[00:20:49] I’ve been watching this for a long time, and the top down change hasn’t really come. Whether it’s for a business like mine or for anything anyone does here, I’ve There have been task forces and government movements and signing up to codes of conduct. And it’s really, everyone’s really clear what the problem is.
[00:21:04] There just hasn’t been a solution. And I every couple of years get a bit cross about something and in a moment of madness, because I’ve got too much to do anyway, decide to just have a go at doing something to try and change what’s going on. So, I did something last, about two years ago focused on, on refugees when the Ukrainian war broke out that was to do with getting jobs, and I thought, I’m not ever doing anything like that again because I’m a day job and a family.
[00:21:28] Anyway, this morning I launched something called Be My Angel. Essentially, the only way that I believe that funding is going to get sold, particularly for women, is ground up. bottom up. It’s clearly not getting solved. Top down. I have a disproportionate amount of angel investors in my business. So that’s individuals.
[00:21:45] So do a lot of the women I know. And I think people often think that angel investment is a bit dragon’s den. You’ve got to have hundreds of thousands or millions, but huge checks in and that’s how you can fund a business. But it’s actually not the case at all. Anyone can kind of be an angel investor.
[00:21:59] And you know, in my business, in order to get 50 50 male female gender balance on my shareholder base, which I’ve done, I’ve had to get crowds of women together and then one man writes a check quite often because women don’t invest like men, even if they’ve got the money. So the be my angel campaign that I’ve launched is really to activate normal people to become angel investors.
[00:22:21] And it’s why for this week in the next five weeks, I’m talking to audiences that are outside. What I do all day long, because what I want to highlight is number one, you might be thinking of raising some money at some point. And number two, probably everyone here puts a tiny little bit away for a pension or a tiny little bit away for savings or a little tiny bit in the stock market or a bit with an IFA, and none of that gets to female founders.
[00:22:44] So pension fund money doesn’t get to female founders. The funds that you’ll invest in won’t reach female founders. And incidentally, women on a lower cash base typically make more revenue and exit for more money. So we’re a really great investment, generally speaking. So effectively, the campaign, along with lots of other people,
[00:22:59] Adam Stott: The Stats are typically that are invested in produce outsized returns. Is that the stats?
[00:23:03] Emma Sinclair: Correct. Wow. Yeah. I mean, there’s like, there’s stats everywhere. I mean, if anyone needs, I’ve got stats coming out of my ears about women outperforming. So, essentially, I want everyone to think about that, because either you might want to do that with a little bit of your cash, maybe you’ve got a daughter that you want to, Puts a bit of savings aside.
[00:23:21] You know, crowdfunding is typically something that’s done for B2C businesses, things that reach retailers, a bank, something everybody knows, a pizza restaurant. It’s just not something that B2B, so corporate businesses typically do. We’re all advised not to do it. It’s not of stature. I’ve got a business that’s of scale, not sort of a tiny start up.
[00:23:39] It’s very un me to do something like that. But I figure if I can do a slice of my fundraise as a crowdfund, anybody else can. So I’m starting it off by, I am doing a slice of my next big institution round as a crowdfund on Crowdcube. I’m partnering with them. One woman a month is going to do a part of their raise for the next year on Crowdcube.
[00:23:57] We all have track records.
[00:24:00] Adam Stott: I will do. That’d be great.
[00:24:02] Emma Sinclair: Yeah. Well, does anyone here not know what crowdfunding is? And please put your hand up and don’t feel embarrassed. Thank you. So crowdfunding is the old school concepts is if you were living in a town or a village and you really needed everyone to chip in for something or crowdfunding is if you were in the office and someone’s leaving and you say, we’re going to buy them all a pot of chocolate.
[00:24:19] Could everyone put a pound in? That’s basically the principle of crowdfunding. Lots of consumer facing companies, Challenger banks, pizza brands. I’m just thinking what I’ve seen recently. Effectively try and raise money from the crowd. So instead of going to a venture capital or private equity or IPO ing a company because it doesn’t make sense, they say to themselves, I’m making something I believe people want.
[00:24:41] Maybe I can go and get people in increments of ten pounds, a hundred pounds, a thousand pounds to invest in my company. As opposed to, typically if people angel invest directly in my company, check sizes are usually about a hundred thousand pounds or more. So crowdfunding is essentially rumbling the crowd and saying, do you want a tiny stake in my business?
[00:24:58] No problem. You can do it for as small as 10 pounds or a hundred pounds or a thousand pounds. Now, why am I doing that when it’s not really going to make a dent in the kind of fundraise that I need to do in the summer? I really want to activate people who’ve not thought about doing this before to do it.
[00:25:13] Typically also women are minority angel investors and it’s not about the money they have. It’s because women typically keep their money in real estate or in the bank. typically invest it more prolifically. So my thought process is if I can get people to do 10 pounds, a hundred pounds, a thousand pounds, because my, you know, my business is credible.
[00:25:33] We’ve got really good contracts. Well, you know, we’re not a sort of startup that has no business and I’ve done this before. If I can activate people to do that, even their first angel investment that’s small, if it’s a hundred pounds this year, maybe they’ll do a thousand pounds in someone else next year.
[00:25:45] And 10, 000 pounds in 10 years than someone else. So effectively, I know that women need to find more pools of capital, and it’s not coming from up here. So it needs to come from down here. Now, the journey may help people here, because for example, I run a global B2B tech company, right? And that’s one type of thing.
[00:26:03] But what happens if you’re doing I was using an example yesterday. What happens if you’re doing something, a local shop in Brighton, and you want to you need some money for the rent, you’ve got a really great business idea, lots of people want to support you, but it’s all in small amounts. You know, you really want to get people to club together, so it’s a little bit community based.
[00:26:20] So, so yeah, so essentially, I am doing that. Very unconventional, given I’ve IPO’d a company to do a small crowdfund. But I’m hoping that what I can do is get people to think to themselves I’d like to have a little tiny bit of Emma Sinclair’s effort to build an empire. And that maybe that gets them thinking, Okay, now I can be an investor.
[00:26:39] I’m receiving updates, so that’s interesting. I can see it growing. Maybe I’ll put five percent of my pension into this. Maybe I’ll put my pocket money into this. Maybe I’ll put my Starbucks money for six months into this. Maybe I’ll put what I’d usually bet on the Grand National. You know, it doesn’t have to be huge chunks.
[00:26:55] So effectively I’m hoping that, I like a big challenge, I’m hoping that over time and lots of people are getting on board to help me with this. That we can be the first place to really solve the female funding challenge by activating everybody to think about doing this. I like a big, hairy, audacious goal.
[00:27:10] I’m not really sure when it’s going to get to, but about 5, 000 people have signed up already and lots of people are going to start doing breakfasts and events and you know, you never know. You might have a Be My Angel event in a year where there’s a pitch competition for a bunch of people wanting to raise money.
[00:27:23] Yeah, I love
[00:27:23] Adam Stott: it. And I think that the, you know, one of the reasons I really wanted you to be here, Emma, is because this is a way that small business doesn’t think. A lot of the time small business says, can’t go and get that premises. You know, or, oh, you know what, I don’t know how I could raise that money, or, you know, I can’t go and do that thing, or I can’t expand my team.
[00:27:45] Well, actually, if you went out, you spread the message, you crowdfunded, you can solve most problems. Financial challenges. And isn’t it funny? Maybe. Maybe,
[00:27:53] Emma Sinclair: right? The point is maybe, right? Maybe you’ve got a hundred friends that you can ask for a hundred pounds. And maybe that’s a good way to get started.
[00:28:00] Maybe you’ve got a hundred friends you can ask for a hundred thousand pounds, right? There’s no limit. But, you know, so the point being, it’s just like, it’s a concept that generally people don’t really do or people do if they’ve got a massive retail brand. And I’m like, actually I know tons of people. Why can’t I do a slice of my round that way?
[00:28:15] The other thing to think about is, you know, years ago, all the tech companies and high growth companies used to IPO. They used to go on the stock exchange, used to be able to buy shares in them. Now, generally speaking, you can’t invest in any of those things unless you’re invested in a very complex fund that basically, unless anyone here is ultra high net worth, no one will have access to.
[00:28:35] So I also believe there’s some democracy in saying, well, let’s have a little piece of the pie of these businesses. So, You know, it is tied to my day job. I’m doing that. It is part of a larger fundraiser. I’m doing to raise money for my business this year, but also I’m like, if I can do it if I can reach audiences, I wouldn’t usually express the mail.
[00:28:52] The whole bunch of people I wouldn’t usually go to talk about my business. Then then hopefully good things will come from it
[00:28:59] Adam Stott: now. But I think it’s a fantastic concept. And and something that, you know, there’s so many people in this room that do need extra money to build their businesses and kick it on to the next level.
[00:29:10] And they can absolutely do that, couldn’t they, right? And also, sometimes, like, like, MSC’s getting involved for the first time. You know, doing it and understanding how it works. Going through that process with somebody else, like you said, heightens your awareness.
[00:29:24] Emma Sinclair: I might teach you something about your own business too.
[00:29:26] Yeah, absolutely. I’m like, I’ve been receiving updates about shares and stocks that I own for years. I don’t know, maybe I’ve learned something from it. It’s probably helped me write my investor updates because I’ve read about 20, 000 now. I’ve been doing it since I was four. But you know, I think there’s a lot to be learned.
[00:29:42] But it’s also about how you invest your hard earned money. And almost like being part of a club. I think which again is part of clearly what’s happening here, right? I’m presuming a really great part of today is the lunch, or afterwards, where everyone, well, not for the food, before anybody starts complaining about what you ate.
[00:30:00] But you know, it’s just getting to chat to other people that are going through the same thing. I mean, you need a gang. I’ve got a tribe. I mean, I need a tribe. I’m presuming everyone else does here. A
[00:30:08] Adam Stott: hundred percent. We’re talking about that today, right? Community. And actually, it’s really interesting that this is another thing if you have community.
[00:30:17] It’s another way that you can leverage community as well, right? It’s interesting you just said that, especially as a bigger business. How important do you see community in business at the moment in terms of where things are going? How do you sort of see that where you are in the level that you’re at?
[00:30:32] Emma Sinclair: Well, I don’t know what we’re going to call my level, but I’m, again, I’m going to feel really good when I leave here. Thank you. Look, I certainly, I’ve got lots of friends that are building mid size and big businesses. And I’m sure we’ve all got friends that are doing all things at all levels. I do think that there’s a type of entrepreneur I know who thinks and does things differently.
[00:30:50] Where we really care about where we spend our money. If we raise money, we don’t hire tons of people only to fire 80 percent of them. If there’s a downturn where we care about the people who are our customers and our clients. So speaking for myself, I you know, I have lots of highs and then I also have lots of lows, bad days, things that go wrong, problems, you name it.
[00:31:10] And aside from my family, it is my tribe who high five me, lift me up, make an introduction, You know, I need to reach X or Y. Can you help? So for me, an absolutely enormous part. But you know, people work differently. But my, I’ve got in particular a couple of sort of, I was going to say gangs, but that sounds pretty, sounds like they wander around town.
[00:31:35] causing trouble. Although, to be honest, there is some truth in that, too, as you can probably tell from my slightly sneaky sense of humor. But you know, those are the people that really carry me a lot of the time and keep me going because there are so many times where, you know, if you’ve raised money, what I said to you, everything comes at price.
[00:31:51] It phrase money. If you’ve got, you know, very public goals or if you’ve got huge clients that are you know, put a lot of burden on you when you make that decision. You know, a relatively small business. You need people to tell you to keep going. So, for me, my friends that do that are absolutely crucial.
[00:32:09] And I’m sure that’s the same for lots of people here. You know, my, my husband he often says that when I, when we exit this business, he’s gonna write a book called Living with a Manic Depressive. But if you care to get him to explain on that, he’d say, you know, there are some times when I’m like, Come on, really killing it.
[00:32:27] And there are some times where it’s just like so hard. You know, we’ve had Covid. We’ve had a pandemic. We’ve had a war. We’ve had a recession. We’ve had all kinds of things that happen on a regular basis that beyond the day job are really stressful. So, you know, he lives through lots of sort of times that I’m feeling really challenged.
[00:32:43] Lots of times where I’m like, come on. And and, you know, so, so family are really crucial to me in that regard.
[00:32:49] Adam Stott: Aboslutely. Massive, massive round of applause for Emma.