Ideas Fest + The Right Money vs Any Money

The UK StartUp Awards national final was on Wednesday night at Ideas Fest. I wasn't in the room - I was pitching at London Demo Day at Imperial College London, as one of four ventures Queen Mary put forward. So I found out we'd won the national Rising Star Award at 8am on Thursday, from an Instagram DM. Four hours later I was on the Launch Pad stage at Ideas Fest talking about money.

Rising Star at the UK StartUp Awards, after winning the London title in June. A year after UK Global StartUp of the Year. Back-to-back national titles - I'll take that.

The panel was called The Right Money vs Any Money, with Simon Bullock, James Martin and Miia Paavola, moderated by Mark Nesbitt. I ended up defending a few things that don't usually get defended on startup stages.

The first is revenue-based funding - asset financing, loans, money you pay back. PLAYBACK is bootstrapped and cash-flow positive. We finance our cameras against the cameras themselves, so the lender is covered and nobody owns a piece of the company for it.

When we started, angel investors either thought it was too risky or wanted a valuation that had nothing to do with what we were building. A loan with a clear repayment schedule was the cheaper money, even when it didn't feel like it.

The second is building in public. The partnerships, the wins, the numbers - it all goes out. People assume that hands competitors an edge. In my experience it does the opposite. Clubs, partners and eventually investors come to you because they've watched you do it.

The third got the most pushback. Not every company needs funding. If you can't build the product without a lot of capital upfront, raise. But if you can sell something today, sell it first. Prove it works without anyone's help, and when you do raise, you raise on your terms.

Any money is easy to find once you've proven you don't need it. The right money is the money you take when you know exactly what it's for.

Thank you to Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE and the UK StartUp Awards team for the national title, and to Mark for chairing the panel.