Dockside Vaults

Ivory House, St Katharine's Way, London, E1W 1AT

TBrutal reality check from Chris Howard

It took me a day to recover 😅

On Tuesday, RareFounders - The London Startup Scene hosted its last #networking event for #founders and #investors this year. And, as always with us, it was an event with a twist 🌀.

We presented our new branding with the website. A website isn't something special, but for us, it is, as we have been operating without one for 10 months. Now, all our events are in one place 🌐.

We also introduced everyone to RareFounders #DemoDay, which we will be hosting in partnership with VCs in April 2024 (more on this later) 📅.

But the cherry on top of the cake 🍒🍰 was Chris Howard and his famous cold reads. Chris is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and psychologist. He went through a lot on his founder journey, and now he is happy to share his pearls of wisdom with other founders.

In the interview part, I asked him how to #fundraise if you don't have any investor network. He shared his story about how, in his early days as a founder, he creatively got into an investor conference in the US, where he met a bunch of investors being a founder (the event video will be available soon) 🎥. Being resourceful and having perseverance is what it takes to be an entrepreneur and to succeed. Either you have it, or you are looking for an excuse ✊.

12 brave founders submitted their pitch decks for Chris's review. Chris reviewed 6. He was brutally honest, but he was constructive. All the founders agreed with his feedback and said that it was useful. These are things that investors would never tell you, and it's unbelievable to see what's going on in the investors' head 🧠.

I was personally excited to see that the last deck was from Garmst. I met the founders a few months ago and really liked them, so I invited them to the event knowing that they are fundraising. When Chris told Jack Zuliani that he would like to meet him for a coffee to discuss his deck further for a potential #investment - I dropped a tear as I was so proud to see that our efforts can make a real difference in someone's founder journey 😢🌟.

We will be back with more events with Chris next year. Stay tuned 📣.

Big thank you to our sponsor Daniel Atherton and Dune Technology Ltd who can help you outsource your development teams and significantly decrease costs 💻🚀.

And a huge thank you to Dockside Vaults for hosting us again in their amazing venue. For any venue hires, contact Michael Nugent and Ben Gamble MBA 🏢👏.

Naim Mustafa Cynthia Kesington Luca Spiller Nikolay Gelovski Greg Mccallum I would not be able to do it without you all ❤️

Kenneth Kashif Thomas Bradley Hornby Tony Sarkis Ewan Moran Marta Jordan Ignas Galvelis Göksenin Korkmaz Rupert Holms Ivo Pires Meera Ahmadi Giovanni Milandri Fergus Leathem and many others, thank you for your continuous support!