When I started in this job 5 years ago, I hit on some of my London Venture Capitalist contacts. Then, they said that they would rather get on a plane to Berlin than a train to Brighton. This attitude started changing a year or so ago. Last year, we ran a ‘Pitch the VC’ day at the FuseBox with ten interested companies taking turns to pitch to Ingenious, the VC behind – amongst others - Andy Murray and the Pop Idol producer 19 Management.
Afterwards Ingenious' investor newsletter said:
‘Brighton was perhaps our best discovery. The overall standard was very high. Flocks of talented technologists had migrated to the coast, built interesting products and were eager for investment.’
That day led to them investing in Scramboo, so congrats to Murdo and his team!
Today, we were chatting to MMC Ventures who were in town. VC investment is not for everybody (and a good guide to understanding and accessing kind of investment can be found in Guy Kawasaki’s book The Art of the Start), but for those that do, it’s interesting that they are now prepared to get on the train to Brighton as well as the plane to Berlin!