Latest / Founders and Funding / Ep 13 - Oscar Williams - Angel & VC Investor

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Ep 13 - Oscar Williams - Angel & VC Investor · Founders and Funding

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Hi, welcome to the founders and funded podcast.
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I'm your host, Philip Smith. On the podcast, I'll be
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interviewing founders, investors, startup advisors on
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how to fund the journey of your startup and some tips and advice
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they have for you along the way. This podcast is sponsored by
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Perfect Technologies. Enjoy the episode I ask you
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Welcome to the founders and Fun in podcast.
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Thanks a lot, Phil. Great to be here.
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It's really it's my pleasure to have you here, Oscar.
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Just so listeners know who's on, could you please state your name
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and your role? Yeah, absolutely.
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So I kind of have a few roles at the moment, which I'm sure we'll
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dig into, but I'm Oscar Williams.
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So I've been a VC investor, Angel investor.
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I'm a ambassador for Climate Connection events here as well,
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and a mentor for early stage deep tech startups.
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Fantastic. And to ask, how did you get into
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that? Yeah, absolutely.
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It's been a long and winding path, so I won't bore you with
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all of the details. But basically for the last, my
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whole professional life, I've kind of danced around early
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stage innovation, mainly on the climate side of things, all the
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way from policy to corporate R&D to academic research, start up
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work, consulting. And the kind of golden thread
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was, I think venture is a great space to propel innovation.
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I think innovation's a great thing to better our societies
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and people need money. So I went into the investing
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sides and yeah, that's kind of the short version of it.
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Well, look, it's great that LED you, LED you here.
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And I suppose tell me a bit more about Climate Connection as a as
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a company. Yeah, absolutely.
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So it's umm, one of the biggest, uh, UK based, uh, climate
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events, kind of, uh, team, umm, they run regular monthly kind
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of, umm, meetings between that bring together investors, early
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stage founders and everyone policy makers, everyone working
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in early stage primarily kind of precede to Series A series B
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maybe and beyond sometimes, but largely in that kind of sweet
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spot, people working in the ecosystem brings them together.
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And the whole point is, can we make that kind of ecosystem
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better? They've recently kind of
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launched a connection studio, which is not climate specific as
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well, which kind of takes it beyond that and helps founders
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basically get good stuff done. So yeah, definitely check it
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out. Absolutely.
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That sounds, that sounds very cool actually.
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And and what does an average day look like right now?
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Yeah, I mean, the pithy answer to that is there is no average
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day. I think in anything that kind of
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involves early stage deep tech, average day is a bit of a myth
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and I like it that way. But currently right now for me,
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I'm doing quite a few different roles.
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So I kind of mentioned I'm doing a bit of investing, I'm doing
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freelance kind of consulting, I'm setting up an advisory with
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a couple of my mates to help early stage founders, and I'm
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doing this ambassador role for Climate Connection.
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So really I set my own structure most days, you know, might
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include speaking to a founder. That's what I love to do.
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I love writing. So I also carve out a writing
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block and they'll be the kind of the usual habitual things that
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we will try and do, you know, exercise, spend time with loved
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ones, all of that stuff. But it's kind of all around what
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can I be putting my energy into to help early stage investors on
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that day? Whether that's a consulting gig,
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whether that's a mentoring gig that I do off my back, whether
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it's helping map out non dilutive funding for climate
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connection, that's what I'm doing right now with that.
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It's so across the board. It's all sorts of things,
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really. Yeah, but that's part of it is
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just trying to the different ways you can showcase your
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expertise and how different ways you can help people.
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Are you looking at that? So I know you're the mentor of
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the University of Oxford as well.
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Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Yeah.
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With the the kind of newly set up climate ventures cohort that
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they've got there, which is recently come to a close,
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actually their first sort of cohort.
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So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun to be part of that and help kind
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of give back to the community a little bit and feed into this
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beautiful flywheel of venture ecosystem that we have.
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Yeah, that I really like that, especially those, you know, the,
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the, the students starting that, that your journey and how much
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you can shape how that goes for them.
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And you're an investor as well with the Hustle Fund.
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Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
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So the Hustle funds, yeah, that's, they've ran kind of
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great sort of transparent cohorts that lets people with
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minimal investment often a kind of look into their VC process.
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So I've been there as an Angel investor and a kind of observer
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for a few years now. I kind of used it as one of the
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springboards to get into venture capital investing and to learn
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about it, and I've stayed kind of a member as part of that.
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So, yeah, they're American based, but they have a great
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process. They get involved with some
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really good investments. It's a bit broader than kind of
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the climate tech and deep tech things that I usually focus on,
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but it's, yeah, really kind of vibrant community and an
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excellent initiative that they set up there.
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Yeah. It's really interesting to look
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at the invest, you know, kind of earlier the proceed even which
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is, which is very, very interesting to me.
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And I suppose looking at some of the, you know, could you talk to
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me about some of the startups you've invested in and why you
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invested into those startups? Yeah.
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So I'll kind of focus on the climate hard tech kind of niche
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that I've found myself in. And probably the best lens to
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look at after is the most recent VC fund that I was with, which
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is Visionaries tomorrow. So short headline about them.
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They are early stage, so precede and seed Berlin based industrial
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deep tech fund. So primarily do hardware, but
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they also do a little bit of software.
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So yeah, a couple of kind of interesting ones that I can run
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you past. I think one of the biggest
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tickets that they've done and one of the kind of most high
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profile tickets that they've done is Proxima Fusion.
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So they're basically Europe's shot at a sovereign fusion
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fusion champion for clean energy generation.
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I mean, I've always thought fusion is cool.
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It's basically free energy or if you get it working at commercial
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scale and that's super kind of attractive.
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But they have a real kind of amazing combination of Max
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Planck Institute. So this kind of hundreds of
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years old research institution with decades of stellarator
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heritage. So stellarator is the type of
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kind of technology that they use to produce the fusion and to
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kind of magnetically confine the plasma and a really kind of
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robust commercial road map from simulation to hardware and a
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strong view of kind of fusion as a base load infrastructure to
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plug into real industrial loads. So it's kind of making this
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fantastical, amazing vision and dream of fusion much more
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tangible and kind of risk mitigated as we go.
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So it's it's kind of yeah, that really appealed to me.
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Another one. Oh yeah.
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I don't know if you want me to carry on, but I can talk about a
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couple of others if you want. Oh, please do.
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Amazing, amazing. So yeah.
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And then less energy specific, but energy adjacent hour ago was
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another one. It's basically optical
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computing. So that's looking at this kind
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of trend of Moore's law reaching it's kind of thermodynamic
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limits of electric kind of transistors getting smaller and
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smaller year on year. That's going to keep going for a
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while, but it will hit a limit and that is based on kind of
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noise that's at the sort of almost quantum level and that
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will kind of produce a physical limit on electronics.
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So one way to get around this, there are quite a few different
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potential ways is can we use light instead of electricity?
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So we've all heard about AI and the kind of the kind of
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inference kind of computations that they need to do.
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And that's just exponentially increasing like crazy.
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And we know about the energy drain on that as well.
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And as we need to do ever more kind of complex matrix
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multiplications, which is the kind of primary computation that
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underpins that type of work that they do, we'll need smaller and
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smaller kit and we'll need to be more and more energy efficient.
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So light is 1 potential way to do that.
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And again, ergo have an incredible team.
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And basically light does the linear, linear algebra
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essentially for free in terms of latency and energy, not quite
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for free, but much cheaper in terms of energy wastage than
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electronics. So another kind of moon shot
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that sounds like it should be in a sci-fi film.
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Yeah. But they also again have clear
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roots kind of commercialization and it's and it's amazing, you
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know, just for reference, we already do some things in
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optical like so fibre optics, we all know about that.
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That's what probably brings your broadband to your house that's
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transmitted with light. And this is kind of the next
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evolution of that, doing computation within light, so
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within the optical domain, as they call it.
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So, yeah, those are the kind of bets that I really like.
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Big, bold, beautiful. I think that's what venture
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capital should be about. It's kind of how do we move that
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needle? How do we get returns that seem
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outrageously outsized compared to what we put into it?
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So yeah, bring on the future. Yeah, but that's what's exciting
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about, you know, entrepreneurship on that
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approach, you play this like you want to see startups that can
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change the world and change people's lives.
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You know, that that's what makes it so exciting.
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And on the investment side, you want to be able to invest and
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startup has so much potential that there are wise, you know,
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crazy or seems, you know, insane.
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That's, you know, that's, I think you're in a really good
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space and industry to to achieve both of those things and to look
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at, you know, you know, I suppose a bit broader than
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Oscar. What is the best way to fund a
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startup's journey in your opinion?
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Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's a great
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question. I mean most recently I've been
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with VC, but I've been in quite a few different roles throughout
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my kind of decade long, so also career.
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So I've seen quite a lot of areas of innovation kind of
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funding. And I would say while VC can be
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great, it's it is a tool and I always kind of try and look at
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it from the founder, the people you know, who are actually
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building the stuff, doing the good work.
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I would say it's a tool, not a religion.
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So especially when I'm looking at deep tech and hard tech, the
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right funding stack really depends on the type of risk that
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you're looking at the product cycle that you're doing.
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So for things like I mentioned like fusion or like advanced
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manufacturing water materials, you really want a mixed capital
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capital stack. I wouldn't say that VC is the
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only answer and it might be a part of the answer.
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It might not be a part of the answer depending on the stage
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that you're at. What you also want to want to
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involve in the mix are non dilutive grants.
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So currently with my volunteer work with the Climate Connection
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as an ambassador, we're mapping out UK kind of non dilutive
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grants and seeing what's out there and helping to kind of
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make sense of the different governmental structures that we
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have and how innovation can get money.
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But there's also other kind of ways like working with
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corporates to develop contracts and joint ventures, strategic
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kind of piloting kind of endeavours with those sort of
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type of corporations. And yeah, really with
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institutional VC, I would say to a founder, you need to make sure
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that there's a line of sight to kind of repeatable deployments.
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And that's kind of this recurring revenue that VCs kind
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of look for. And I can speak more about that.
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But on the climate kind of side of things, we're seeing more
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infrastructure kind of shaped models and kind of what I mean
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by that is can you basically act as like an independent power
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provider IPP style? That's kind of yes, yeah, like
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vehicles for heat, water storage or process upgrades.
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So like basically you have like a special purpose vehicle of
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funding for a project that rages raises like project finance that
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pays the start up like via long term offtake or equipment leases
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and things like that. We're seeing more and more of
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these kind of more inventive ways to get around the valley of
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death for like hardware kind of. And how do you mitigate those
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guests, those kind of risks earlier and kind of secure these
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kind of lines to more long term funding, which then future
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funding backers like banks and things like that will see as
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very positive signals? Obviously, if we look at the
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software side of things, that's quite different.
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But I guess my kind of niche is usually on the hardware type of
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things. So yeah, it's super exciting.
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And I, I think we'll see a lot of very interesting different
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funding vehicles emerging as we move forwards and I think that's
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a great thing. Yeah, like it's certainly it's
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still such a change in space and there are all those different,
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there's so many options now to get fun.
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And as as you mentioned, I think particularly interesting there
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was was orchestrating kind of joint ventures and partnerships
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and pilots. I think that's a really great
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thing because it gives companies a chance to, you know, actually,
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you know, secure their first clients in revenue, but be able
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to put it out into the field and, and show your customers
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what their product can do, which is really important to look at
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the founding team a bit. Then are there certain skills
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you you think founders should possess?
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Or, you know, like what? What do you look for in founders
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that would make you want to invest in their startup?
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Yeah, I love, I mean, I spend a lot of time thinking about this.
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And obviously, especially with early stage venture, when you're
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investing into that, you're investing into the people, the
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idea might change quite a few different times.
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Ideally, they will pivot and they will listen to the market.
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I mean, of course, yeah, it'd be great if you could get the
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perfect idea from the beginning, but it's so rare that that
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happens. So, yeah, I mean, I think there
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are a few traits that I kind of overweight usually I guess when
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I look at deep tech specifically and kind of maybe an overarching
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sort of lens that I try and look at it through.
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So the baseline for that would be technical credibility.
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So and then the differentiator is translation.
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So the founders who stand out for me can move fluently between
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whiteboard equations, getting really technical nitty gritty,
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talking about plant manager kind of constraints and things like
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that, and then moving into investor economics, you know,
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without breaking a sweat and making it all sound like a kind
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of coherent narrative. We often positioned ourselves
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previously as like tech translators, as VCs because we
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had technical mindsets that we could help founders translate
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their ideas into more investment friendly kind of language that
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makes sense for people. For example, I think founders
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who can tell that narrative, that's always a great signal.
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And then yeah, in terms of maybe more specific kind of traits
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that I look at, I think this is good for any type of founder
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intellectual honesty. So how clearly do they talk
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about unknowns and failure modes?
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Because it'll be complete BS if we all, if we all think that we
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have all the answers from the offset.
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And yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to fall into that trap
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because you want to make a perfect slide deck that it has
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your route to 1 trillion, you know, Tam or whatever it is.
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And that's just not how it works for me in reality.
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If you can talk about here are we, here's where we expect to
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fail, here are what we don't know, and here's how we're going
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to figure that out and mitigate those risks as we go.
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I think that's so much better than selling me ABS narrative
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basically. Yeah, that's a really good
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point. Like I think, you know, that's a
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really, really strong piece of advice I think for instead of
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founders. And when they pitch, because
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they do, they do paint this kind of perfect world and perfect
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picture where and you know and they know and the investor knows
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that that's not the case. And if you think you understand
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the challenges, how to circumvent them, I think that's
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a lot more attractive. And from the start up side, how
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can those companies attract investors more effectively?
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Yeah. And I would just to add to your
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previous point as well, add to that kind of point we just
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discussed as well, which feeds into this.
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It does depend on the type of investor you're looking, you're
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kind of speaking to. So I'm coming with a technical
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mindset and I have to, I have to caveat what I've said with that
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because I know what it's like to make stuff.
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I know what it's like to spend 90% of my PhD fixing broken lab
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equipment. And I know how that translates
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into commercial as well. You know, it doesn't the
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problems don't go away. But yeah, you know, so, yeah,
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just to make sure that that's clear, because for some
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investors, you do want to lean into the BSA little bit more.
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But yeah, that, that varies. So there's a balance to to go
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for, but yeah. So how can companies attract
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investors more effectively? Just returning to that, I would
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say that the most effective fundraising that I've seen from
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thousands of companies that I've looked at, it's less like a
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roadshow and more like a gravity well, if that makes sense.
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So a company that's obviously doing the work, they have some
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traction, whether that's these joint ventures that we've talked
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about, whether it's pilots running, whether it's letters of
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intent, regulatory conversations in progress.
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They are kind of creating an ecosystem that makes them
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indispensable within that space, that attracts investors and that
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attracts attention and it is super exciting at that point.
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So of course, you know, things like networks really matter.
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Warming and Audreys matter, of course.
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But I would say the strongest signal isn't how many investors
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you've met. It's like, how can you turn
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those conversations into sharper hypotheses?
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How can you use everything that you're doing as part of your
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process to improve on your business model, on your idea?
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So. If I have a chat with the
20:06
founder and we have some pain points that we discuss or
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whatever, and then the next meeting we have, there's been no
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change to the deck or the road map.
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I'm not going to say that I have all the answers, but I will say
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why. If we were kind of all nodding
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and agreeing and saying all these are issues, why hasn't
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anything changed? So it's kind of that coach
20:25
ability side of things, I think. Yeah, being open to speak and
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realizing that it's a partnership that's a long term
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kind of investment from both sides.
20:36
It's a marriage, right? It's yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Not to kind of speak too much in cliches, but yeah, it's yeah,
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it's kind of having that holistic view and trying not to
20:49
see, trying to make funding work for you and that process work
20:55
for you and better your kind of whole journey.
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I think that's a really effective way of doing it and
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much more effective than kind of just seeing fundraising as like
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a time sink which doesn't add any value, which it's very easy
21:07
to see it like that. I get it.
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Yeah, Yeah. I think that you've probably
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probably answer my next question ask in terms of what, like what,
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what what is one key piece of advice to share and fund a
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startup? Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah. So yeah, I would say yeah, it's
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kind of bats that marriage point.
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It's, it's a marriage, not a fling.
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So it's long term relationships and gains and like who do you
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want to kind of enter a marriage with?
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Like, So what does that BC bring to the table for you?
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It's, it's very difficult when there are of course there isn't
21:45
really a symmetrical system here, right, where there are a
21:51
lot more startups looking for money and the VCs kind of have
21:55
that power, but you want partners who will not abuse that
22:02
kind of power dynamic and they will bring things to the table
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for you as well. I would say returning to our
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mixed capital stack where we're talking about grants and JVS and
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other kind of structures as well, make VC compete with other
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capital. If you can say that VC brings
22:20
you something tangible to your kind of system.
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If all you need is money and that's also understandable, but
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do it with eyes wide open because it's easy to jump into
22:30
bed with someone. It's a very different matter
22:32
kind of entering into a long term marriage, right.
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Not to overuse that kind of metaphor too much, but yeah,
22:42
yeah. So I'd see I'd say treat treat
22:44
fundraising as an architecture, not as just a single one off
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event. Yeah, I think that's a good
22:51
finisher for a lot of really good advice.
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Like it's it certainly is that the cliche isn't wrong.
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Like it certainly is like a marriage.
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And I think so many founders to kind of rush into it for, you
23:02
know, the money rather than, you know, all the other things that
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go that like the the character and investor or the industry
23:07
they're in, what expertise they can share and so on.
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So there's a lot more to it. And Oscar, thanks so much for
23:13
coming to the podcast. That was a really nice
23:15
conversation. You shared a lot there, I think,
23:18
and obviously with the cloudy tech industry, but I think even
23:21
brought a lot for founders and investors even to take away.
23:26
Thanks a lot, Phil Yeah, it was a real pleasure.
23:27
And yeah, hopefully it's a bit of help for people.
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Would love people to reach out and always happy to chat and
23:36
share more ideas as well. But yeah, thanks again for
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inviting me along. Cheers.
23:40
Thanks, Oscar. Hi, thanks for listening to this
23:44
weeks episode of the Founders and Funding podcast.
23:47
If you'd like to be a guest or have a guest suggestion, please
23:50
get in touch. Thank you.