After reading a Wired article which struck a chord, I felt like getting out the fountain pen for UK Founders, we’re apparently too posh.

Let’s start from the beginning…

My father was a Japanese shipping clerk turned manager who earned a modest £40k until retirement, my mother worked in the probation service and NHS on not much less. I’m from Huyton in Liverpool, (a savvy part of the city 😉) Comprehensively schooled, before Art college with a childhood ambition to become an architect and design buildings.

My entrepreneurial journey started subliminally before A Level. My mother was called in by the head of school and warned “Carl has lots of ability, but we will have to refuse entry unless he chooses 5 subjects with us”. I didn’t want to waste ‘time’, my idea was Art, Sculpture and Architecture.

So I did some Googling before Google existed and requested to split my A Levels with a 2D AutoCAD course at night collage, where I’d be sitting amongst a room full of receding middle aged Architects at 16, learning how to technically draw buildings in 2D, on a big ugly computer. I eventually received a YES from my Head Teacher and that was my first experience of entrepreneurial negotiation, creating my own career path away from the expected lineal education. Apparently I was the first kid in my school to be bold and ask to do something differently. I enjoyed being the black sheep.

Fast Forward 15 years, tons of coffee and all nighters later.

To get any notable level of validation, traction or funding when launching a startup without being ‘posh and connected’ in London is hard, very hard. If you’re outside of London and where I’m from it’s impossible. With no access to friends and family donations of £20k let alone £200k, here’s what I had to do as a Sole Founder.

I found myself across the table from an ‘investor’ (same age) whose dad gave him some cash to play with on crowdfunding. When attempting to put £100k on his ‘grocery card’  (yes literally)… I was told, “Carl you don’t need a salary, you’re the Founder who owns all the shares of your company”.
His lawyer looked at him wide eyed- “How is Carl going to sleep in London and buy a pint of milk?
The response “Oh, okay, you can have £40k salary, but if you don’t get a million downloads in 6 months, you will drop to £30k.”

I excused myself for a toilet break, staring at the mirror I drowned my face in cold water thinking:
WHAT THE F*CK am I getting myself in too. In any other circumstance I would have stood up and left. There was no bank of mum and dad to call, I had to make sacrifices.

Six months after that delightful meeting, I was invited to present Version 1.0 of my product to Accel Partners, the big dogs. That same fellow then attempted to block new investments to franchise my business and demanded 30% equity, become a Group CEO to show his friends he’d made it!
I was told “You should never have mentioned Accel”. We then lost 8 months of my roadmap wrestling over email, I became homeless and broke trying to keep things moving.

Prior to that baptism of fire ‘investor’ meeting, I’d spent 18 months building my Beta doing the nightly 8pm to 1am shift with two developers, alongside working long hours as an Architect.
My £35k salary in London and Net take home barely escaping the overdraft, but I scraped together £5k. And still, my close circle and network were risk averse from limited exposure to entrepreneurship and dreaming BIG. I was told to focus on the day job.

I listened to them for all of five minutes and instead took out a £12,000 bank loan, quit my job and 8-year university marathon, a first class Master’s degree and architecture career to launch miPic. Just four months after getting Chartered at an award winning UK practice, lunatic! 

The loan gave me 5 months of survival money to turn the Platform on from the kitchen table in Clapham surrounded by 4 housemates. By month 5 we had Users in 30 countries and I was standing in Richard Branson’s house in Oxford presenting to him and 4 other Dragons in a garden marquee to 200 people. I had 90 seconds to change my life and it was televised live, ‘don’t f*ck this up now Carl’.

“I won a national pitch competition presenting to the ultimate entrepreneur Richard Branson! ”

The main reason I was on that stage in the first place, wasn’t down to me being any good, posh or lucky at all. Six weeks prior to Rich’s house I refused to leave Virgin HQ reception following a cancelled 9am business plan Founder event, it was pi**ing down with rain outside. 

“I’ve come all this way to Paddington, I’m not leaving and getting soaked until I see someone”

before the very fun receptionist from Brixton asked what I did staring at my business card. She shouted;

“MyyyyPiccc… They are gonna luv it bruv! Go upstairs and sit in the canteen”.

After an hour of people watching in the lounge, I ended up having a two hour one on one with Virgin’s finance manager who invited me to enter the competition alongside 300 other applicants. Refusing to be told no, is the reason why I won.

With my tail up after wooing the judges, I took a further £35,000 Virgin Startup Founder Loan to advance, with a plan for larger investment and no clue where it would arrive from. Following the Virgin Pitch to Rich seal of approval, this finally enabled me to raise enough eyebrows and door openings to land a board room seat at a Private Equity firm. At the top of The Shard on Xmas eve, joined by my app developer (no. Alan Sugar wasn’t there).

We received an offer of £150k from an investment fund for 25% equity in the company, plus a bill of £12k due diligence and £1k management fee per month thereafter.

I felt like a rockstar for a minute, but, No Thank You, I politely declined the money without a Plan B. I continued my door to door flogging for months and met some absolute sharks at pitch events in London which steered me nicely towards a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. I closed miPic’s first seed investment round of £170k… Wait for it:

Thirty months, after I started the Beta!

I’d attended most startup events or conferences in London and even flew to San Francisco for Tech Crunch whilst dead on my feet, pitching to everyone in the room looking for that break through or next partnership. I watched Dhiraj Muckherjee, the Founder of Shazam on stage at Startup Grind present to 1000 people his startup story, for him to then miraculously appear standing next to me on a rush hour train three months later at Waterloo.

I chased him down the carriage like a mad conductor tapping his shoulder and spontaneously pitched avoiding the weird looks. He saw something in me and my product enough to invite me for coffee and became an informal mentor who encouraged me (without investment) to overcome the toughest of obstacles building a tech company as a solo founder.

This nostalgic memoir is by no means a gripe wishing I was ‘posh and connected’ or schooled in Oxbridge, but more about ‘time’ and how long things actually take when you have to bootstrap and hustle hard dealing with scammers to obtain any proven investor attention.

In my case, architecture gave me a solid foundation of persistance, a tolerance for criticism and all nighters coming into an industry with zero contacts or leg ups. I’ve had to make ridiculous sacrifices along the way, lost a girlfriend demanding children and been homeless twice to earn my stripes. But still, I thrive amongst ups and the downs and enjoy every minute of it.

We’ve since gone on to close $2m investment from  ‘the Crowd, Angels and lead investor of Starling Bank Family Office building a custom E-Commerce print platform as a Solo Founder , a platform strong enough to be a huge disruptor in this space. I’ve managed dev and product teams big and small in Argentina, the Middle East, London and Canada and learnt far more stuff as a Founder & CEO than I ever cared to know.

The Platform and App has Users in 200+ countries generating six figure revenues, with happy customers in 80 countries continent and Artists/Sellers earning thousands in passive income before Digital Marketing spend has begun. Organic global revenue before marketing spend, I must be crazy!

I meet founders who raise millions from a pitch deck, with no mileage on the clock, no product or users. Connected friends and family rounds on a £10-20m valuation.

And genuinely a massive good luck to them – I’d bite anyone’s arm off to be dealt that hand, so would you. I’ve met others who’ve spent £5 million on marketing like it was 50 quid on huge customer acquisition campaigns with no qualms about the funding tap running dry.

In reality, for every ‘posh and connected’ founder out there burning cash there are thousands of founders taking the scenic route with no access to capital, serious hunger and undeniable ability who don’t make the cut. It takes huge effort, skill and most importantly ‘time’ getting into the starting blocks, but requires buckets of ‘speed’ and capital get out of them successfully.

I’ve witnessed first hand how investment ‘managers’ some less qualified than founders live or die making smart decisions and then interfere.

Investor behaviour and performance is never questioned, it should be. While Founders are scrutinised for our every move.

I recently asked for Pitch Deck feedback from someone who gets Founders in front of the right people. I was told – “it’s the best pitch deck I’ve seen, EVER!” Another Partner at a Central London Investment Fund told me this month I was one of the most impressive founders he’d met in 5 years and asked, ‘why I’d not raised £20m yet.’

Over the last 12 months I’ve presented the company confidently to a family member of the Saudi Bank who hinted at building us a factory in Riyadh, was offered millions from a UAE Royal Family investment office and watched an Abu Dhabi fund manager’s eyes roll in amazement when presenting, to be told to “pick a number 3, 5 or 7 million” like an episode of Bruce’s Price is Right.

To finish poignantly on something from Wireds article which prompted this post.I once received a compliment by an investor of supposed authority, ‘ You’ve created a regal product, this is a billion dollar company Carl if you give it to me.’
In a more recent meeting flanked by two shareholders, this same person spluttered;

“Maybe it’s your working class mentality from Liverpool of never knowing when to give up.
Maybe your next idea will be the big one.” 

This time, I left the meeting without flinching. Later that month, miPic was featured by Forbes, We were invited to meet Apple’s App Developer of the Year and now PE companies are knocking on the door about acquisitions before we’ve spend on marketing.

miPic achieved +550% revenue increases during the pandemic with zero CAC cost, spending just £1000 on marketing in a year and is now close to profitability.

Have I earned my stripes yet?

We’d like £100,000 a month for marketing to provide our Creators with the best possible rewards.

If you’re a founder reading this who is obsessively ambitious, skilled and don’t crumble under a challenge. Posh or Not, anyone can make things happen. One door will open from a hundred and most importantly don’t take the majority of negative noise seriously. It’s often the folks who’ve had things easy who really want to be seen as the ‘hustlers’, yet notoriously are the first to drop when things get tough.

The Tech industry over the last 10 years has enabled anyone from anywhere to create a business and there have never been so many routes for funding. In my case, it was the scenic route.

More should be done at secondary school and college level before Uni to provide entrepreneurs the crucial knowledge of writing business plans, company setup and access to genuine sponsorship without doing it blindfolded and stripping founders of 25% equity before getting to the starting line.

I’m from Huyton in Liverpool, statistics show I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, but I have. The chances of receiving investment from a Venture Office were less than 0.0000001%.

Hopefully by sharing my experience of not being so ‘posh and connected’ captures a new audience who might well want to connect and join our team. 

If you’re a founder and this post resonates with you in any way, please share and tell us your hurdles.