Off Balance #50

👋🏾 Hi friends!

And,,, we’re back!

Time flies when you’re having fun busier than you can imagine! Having returned back from Italy at the end of August, it turns out things seemed to be moving and shaking in the world of venture.

Last week I was on a panel with Mercia Ventures talking about the joys of bootstrapping (more on that below) and in a couple of weeks or so I’ll be talking at Niyo Fest where I’ll be talking about Levelling the Playing Field: The Gender Finance Gap - come join me in Birmingham for a celebration of technology, culture and community 💪🏾

I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance - The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance:

🎙️ Joe Seager-Dupuy from True on the podcast to talk venture, consumer and retail and his time at the Branson Family Office.
🥾 Some reflections on bootstrapping.

For the first episode of the new season of Nothing Ventured we spoke to Joe Seager-Dupuy, Investment Director in the VC Team at True., a consumer and retail focused investment and innovation advisory firm based in London with circa $1bn of assets under management.

True's VC Fund invests into Pre-Seed to Series A startups operating in the consumer and retail vertical, both B2C and B2B.

Prior to joining True, Joe was a Director of Corporate Strategy and Development at Virgin Management, the Branson family office, and had spent the early part of his career in strategy at WarnerMedia and OC&C Strategy Consultants.

In this episode, we talked about:

🐐 How there is something to be said to getting beasted pretty hard early in your career.
🤯 How Richard Branson has repeatedly done and created improbable things throughout his career.
❓ How family offices differ from VCs in how they invest in venture.
🌩️ How it’s been a perfect storm for consumer businesses.
🛍️ How 60% of the GDP of most western economies is consumer spending - 60 trillion globally, 15 trillion in Europe.
👖 Will AI agents be buying your clothes in the future?
⚽️ Joe’s contrarian opinion is that Ipswich will win the premiership in the next 10 years.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!

If you have any feedback on the podcast or the newsletter, just reply to this mail or ping me online!

If you like what I’m putting out, do give me a follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Off Balance” and, importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)

Now let’s get into it.