Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·Mar 9How to identify unicorn founders earlyAs a VC at Episode 1 and co-host of Riding Unicorns, I’ve had the privilege of meeting over 25 unicorn founders as well as around 75 ‘soonicorn’ founders. Along the way, I’ve learnt about building great company culture, hiring world-class talent, launching in new geographies and raising hundreds of millions…Startup4 min readStartup4 min read
Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·May 6, 2021The definitive guide to raising a blockbuster seed round by leveraging FOMO.One of the things I find most fascinating is the psychology behind early-stage investing. Over the past couple of years investing at Episode 1 and from founding The Seed Stage, I’ve become somewhat specialised in helping companies optimise their rounds. There’ve been some interesting discoveries along the way. The first…Seed Investment7 min readSeed Investment7 min read
Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·Sep 7, 2020How founders raise VC could be about to change. Learn how.Raising money for a startup is hard. Raising a great VC round requires a combination of the art of storytelling and the science of a rigorous process (to pin down meetings and build fomo amongst investors). The process is very important, but it’s also boring and hard. …Venture Capital4 min readVenture Capital4 min read
Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·Apr 16, 2020Should VCs invest in young or old founders? Using hard data, we find out.19, 26 and 21. These are the ages at which Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Evan Spiegel (Snapchat) and Steve Jobs (Apple) started their companies, respectively. There’s a common belief that successful founders start their businesses in their twenties. Paul Graham, co-founder of YCombinator (a successful US startup accelerator and investor) said…Investing3 min readInvesting3 min read
Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·Mar 16, 2020Where can founders find six VCs in one place? The Seed Stage.Earlier this week we held the tongue-twisting, inaugural, bi-annual, multi-fund office hours, The Seed Stage: a joint effort by six of the best early-stage venture capital funds in the UK, and Wayra — Telefonica’s start-up accelerator. Episode 1 — True — Playfair — Fuel — Ascension — JamJar — Wayra …Investing3 min readInvesting3 min read
Mar 13, 2020How to use psychology to profit in a downturn.People’s response to bad news is usually more extreme than to good news, which provides an opportunity. What this is saying is that people are more upset about a 5% decrease in one-day than they are happy about a 5% increase, causing a partly irrational sell-off. This reflects a kind…Coronavirus3 min readCoronavirus3 min read
Published inEpisode 1 Ventures·Jan 23, 2020What’s it like being a VC? The good and the bad.I remember when I first downloaded Uber, it was seen as the poster-child of the startup ecosystem and I was blown away mostly by its user experience. The payment screen was so effortless that I honestly thought I was being scammed — I thought it couldn’t be so easy to…Venture Capital4 min readVenture Capital4 min read
Nov 28, 2019What’s the best software for a VC?By Hector Mason An oft-debated topic in VC is that of what software to use to help us manage our portfolio and dealflow, find investments, and generally make our lives easier. So I thought I’d write a short piece on what we use and what we think of it. …Startup4 min readStartup4 min read
Nov 14, 2019Why (and how) to build a network in venture capitalBy Hector Mason I spent the week before last (at time of writing) in Croatia on boats with a bunch of European venture capitalists, courtesy of Draper Esprit, Partech and Episode1, who sent me. …Venture Capital5 min readVenture Capital5 min read
Oct 31, 2019Why we invested in WebinyBy Hector Mason Webiny is a CMS for serverless development. They are building an opensource platform on which developers can build apps and deploy them to serverless infrastructure, AWS’s fastest-growing division. I first came across Webiny a few months ago and was intrigued by what they were doing so decided…Serverless3 min readServerless3 min read
