Mid-2025 Reflections on Founders, Pitching & Startups

I recently attended the K2MATCH investor lounge in Monaco for the 3rd time. The K2MATCH founders, Badr Moudden and Alexandros Dohn, have built a very impressive network of investors, startups and other stakeholders in the tech sector that meets regularly.

The startup and innovation network in Monaco is growing strongly, and it is always welcome to return and meet some very impressive members of the community who are based there, as well as nearby in France and Italy.

This time, I was asked to briefly share my thoughts about investing with the startups and participants attending the event. Also presenting were Sacha Preis and Poonam Baalan from Tact+Invest, a new climate and cleantech fund that has just been started with a very impressive pedigree in terms of partner experience and knowledge.

I’d like to share some impressions on my investment approach and on the presentations I heard, without attributing specific opinions to specific startups. Hopefully, this will be interesting in general, and also serves to illustrate how some decisions are made, at least some of the time. All opinions are my own.

Ethical / Impact Investing

One of the things founders tend to overlook is that there is a strong ethical component to startup investing. None of the investors I know want to support projects that are scams, pump and dump schemes or are questionable in terms of impact and fund use. Every investor I know is grounded in strong ethics and social responsibility, and is fundamentally investing to improve a business challenge or sector.

For those of us who have a fiduciary duty to client money or public funds that we manage or advise on, that responsibility is even higher.

What does this mean from the point of a startup founder? Well, if you are promoting what appears to be an impact investment:

• Don’t use your family members to market your fundraising as an ethical promise for a  better future.

• Especially if you are promising outrageous returns cloaked as a pseudo-impact investment.

This approach is radioactive. You should at least be as ethical as the approach you claim to support.

Funds Raised versus Funds Spent versus Funds Invested

If you are promising an impact investment, then you need to clearly delineate how much of the money that you are raising will go to growing the primary asset, and then how much will go to overheads and to shareholder returns.

Promoting a pseudo-impact or pseudo-ethical investment, and then cloaking this as the opportunity to “make a lot of money” is bizarre. This approach prompts distrust.

This is the classic trap many charities fall into: any contributor wants to know how much of the donations go to fancy headquarters and business class travel versus how much goes to actually feeding the children, buying the mosquito nets, or planting the trees.

If you, as a founder, have not documented the use of funds, then you aren’t showing you understand what investors are thinking about.  

Who Gives a Damn?

As a founder, remember to frame your argument in terms of what matters to investors. One startup framed its pitch in terms of a lady that bought a luxury handbag from another individual, only to find it was fake.

My mental response was: Who gives a damn?

If a customer wants to buy a genuine luxury product, it’s not rocket science.

If a brand wants to organize a secondary market for its products, it's also not rocket science.

The world has very pressing problems. Consider if the problem you are claiming to solve is actually the problem that counts.

Use of Funds and Additionality of Funds

If you are a founder who continues to raise small fund amounts, please consider your own credibility towards your investors. What is the dilutionary impact of constantly raising small amounts? What is the impact of raising funding that is outweighed by government grants? Are you keeping track of the use of funds?

If there is already money being spent in an industry, and your already claim to have a marketable MVP, why not simply get on with selling and developing using organic cash flow?

The more cooks in a kitchen, the greater the risk. Without closer attention to governance, cap tables, and other nuts-and-bolts issues, simply raising money here and there will eventually cause problems.

I would not invest in a startup that has sloppy and undefined investment management and sloppy cap tables. Yes, everyone needs capital. But your job is to prioritise your market entry and product development strategies to start generating organic cash flow. Especially in a field with no barrier to entry and lots of existing competitors.

Presentations, not “Performance”

One startup put three people on stage. Two of these were, despite their best efforts,  incomprehensible and didn’t seem to understand their own business. I can’t think of a more devastatingly negative performance.

There is nothing wrong with having a single presenter or a single founder make a presentation. Get to the point, fast. Pitch on the strength of your solution, not the number of people on stage.

A Fool and his Money are easily Parted

We’ve all heard the expression. In terms of startups, this translates into something really simple: If an investor can’t understand your business, how you make money and how your customers benefit, they probably won’t invest. Any kind of complex crypto schemes, or swap schemes, or a “stablecoin that isn’t a stablecoin because we can make lots of money off it” is just cheesy.

Raising Millions for Ready Products

One of the strangest presentations is one where there is an MVP which is already generating results and will “revolutionize an industry”, and then the startup asks for “two or three million” to improve it. Usually with AI. Right. Can you see the problem with this?

Money for Nothing

None of the startup pitches I recently saw had a clear starting valuation and a convincing investor equity share post money. But this is basic. If you can’t explain this, consider not presenting.

Establish Necessity

I sat through a presentation which was premised on a contradictions of trillions of dollars of daily value exchange that has been based on largely consistent market, regulatory and contractual principles over the past 50 years.

The startup didn’t bother to explain the core logic of why its “solution” was necessary. Let alone credible or realistic. A very strange place to start.

Smart versus Stupid Capital

The longer I work in this business, the more I reflect that there are two types of capital: Smart Capital and Stupid Capital.

Smart Capital invests around an investment thesis and understands what it is doing. Stupid Capital invests from fashion or fear of missing out.

Smart Capital challenges assumptions and structures dealflow incrementally based on results. Stupid Capital agrees with assumptions, even when it doesn’t understand them, and doesn’t check things.

Smart Capital implements a structured due diligence, including background checks on founders and other investors. Stupid Capital signs the cheque immediately.

If you are founder today, I strongly encourage you to act as if all your investors come from Smart Capital. It’s a sign of respect and a sign that you yourself have done your homework.

The more comprehensively you prepare, the greater your chances of success.

Looking forward to the next event.