A legal document that details the responsibilities and actions planned to be undertaken by a firm.

FinTech is a technology used for the delivery of financial products and services. Provided by: Sarah Williams-Gardener, Head of FinTech Wales

Ship Shape was part of the Emerging Tech Fest 2021 and were given the honour of hosting a panel of talented individuals. Our panellists were Juliette Souliman from MMC Ventures, Nick Sando from Octopus Ventures and Rafe Joseph from the Development Bank of Wales. As a start-up ourselves, we took the opportunity to ask our expert panel about the importance of finding the right investor. There was a great turnout of over 100 start-ups, with plenty of questions from the audience. It offered a chance for start-ups to get great answers to burning questions from time-poor investors. Words from Daniel Sawko, Ship Shape CEO: “It’s always a real treat to have such experienced investors in the room. Our panellists are individuals who get to see a wide and varied data set of entrepreneurial and investor experiences, it was brilliant to obtain insight from.” Key Takeaways Understanding investors is always difficult, but the onus on start-ups doing their research has increased due to a lack of physical networking. Despite physical and geographic restrictions, smaller businesses from a wide range of geographies are gaining a wider audience and market, traditionally closed investment networks are broadening their reach to find good start-ups further afield. 2. Investors and start-ups should clearly set out their desired vision for the company to ensure alignment. Investors invest in individuals just as much as the business itself. Therefore, aligning the vision and responsibilities of the business helps provide a clear scope of investment that showcases clarity and confidence, which are important characteristics that lead investors are looking for. This is even more prominent today as investors cannot physically interact with a startup as they would previously. An office tour, meeting the team and having biscuits and tea in the conference room are no longer common events. Establishing trust has always been important in the investor startup relationship. An investor must believe in the business but also understand the business. Aligning this understanding provides a uniformed goal that both parties want to achieve, which can deliver excellent results if a strategic investor can clear the path for the business. There Are Important Behaviours To Look Out For: What is an investor’s attitude towards good leaver/bad leaver clause? Are your investors seeking undue preferential treatment (e.g. rights of first refusal)? Key Tip: When negotiating with prospective investors: Agree both sides will track changes on the term sheet. The above comments are observations only, for deeper understanding you can watch the video. About Ship Shape Ship Shape Search provides actionable investor intelligence for start-ups, showing them the best individuals to engage with at Venture Capital firms. This saves start-ups many weeks of research and thousands of pounds. Contact Persons Daneil Sawko, CEO Email: daniel@shipshape.vc Bradley Evans, Marketing & PR Email: bradley@shipshape.vc Ship Shape Search: https://app.shipshape.vc/ Ship Shape Search Twitter https://twitter.com/VcShip Ship Shape Search LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ship-shape-vc/

An individual who is willing to offer financial backing or seed investment in return for a share in the company (Also known as an Angel Funder)

Ship Shape Search secures a £100,000 grant to democratise access to funding. The innovative technology firm secured funding from the Sustainable Innovation Fund with Innovate UK to build a scalable platform that allows start-up founders to identify the best individuals in the VC industry to fund their businesses. Ship Shape’s platform democratises access to funding by identifying investors most likely to be interested in a start-up, enabling start-ups to save many weeks of senior management research time. “We started Ship Shape to give good ideas the best chance of success. Our platform means you don’t need to be an expert in fundraising to identify the right potential investors for your business.” Miguel Neumann, one of the founders said. Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £191 million to fund single and collaborative research and development projects as part of the Sustainable Innovation Fund over the next two years. The aim of these competitions is to help all sectors of the UK rebuild after the effects of COVID-19. The Sustainable Innovation Fund is funding 1,103 projects, 1189 UK businesses and totalling over £130 million in support across the UK. Daniel Sawko, Ship Shape CEO said: “This grant award recognises the broader economic potential of Ship Shape’s platform at an important time for UK start-ups. It’s a vote of confidence in the vision and our commitment to democratise access to investment opportunities for the next generation.” Innovate UK Executive Chair Dr Ian Campbell said: “In these difficult times we have seen the best of British business innovation. The pandemic is not just a health emergency but one that impacts society and the economy. “Ship Shape Search, along with every initiative Innovate UK has supported through this fund, is an important step forward in driving sustainable economic development. Each one is also helping to realise the ambitions of hard-working people.” About Ship Shape Ship Shape Search provides actionable investor intelligence for start-ups, showing them the best individuals to engage with at Venture Capital firms. This saves start-ups many weeks of research and thousands of pounds. About Innovate UK Innovate UK drives productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas. Innovate UK connects businesses to the partners, customers and investors that can help them turn ideas into commercially successful products and services and business growth, funding business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation and drive business investment into R&D. Support is available to businesses across all economic sectors, value chains and UK regions. Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation. For more information visit www.innovateuk.ukri.org Contact Persons Miguel Neumann, co-founder Email: miguel@shipshape.vc Michelle Sawko, Marketing & PR Email: michelle@shipshape.vc Ship Shape Search LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ship-shape-vc Ship Shape Search Twitter https://twitter.com/VcShip

Where are you coming from? I’ve worked in the UK and Buenos Aires, but spent much of my adult life in Sydney. Most recently I’ve been COO of a successful start-up but behind that is over two decades business management experience. First in consulting, then into Project Management, then I made the leap into sales, and that combination allowed me to step up to Director and COO. I have broad experience and I think I’ve made enough mistakes to have learned a thing or two. Always more to learn though! Tell us more about your experience with working with startups. I’ve worked on both sides of the fence re: start-ups and funding. Had some eye-opening experiences working in Credit for a major bank through 2009-2010. Later in 2014 I moved back to the UK from Australia and started working in Caplin Systems, an SME in FX. At the time it was FX that was the drawer, not the fact that it was an SME. But I was quickly drawn in to the SME world, and had a front-row view of the transaction as Caplin exited (was sold to ION Capital Management). I enjoyed that and wanted more. Since then I’ve been Director at MarketFactory, a US start-up that successfully exited; I’ve helped several companies with their funding activities, before most recently being COO at a Regtech start-up TAINA Technology and completing the Series A raise. So why funding as the business idea? As COO, and in general drawing on over two decades of experience in business management, I know that funding is important and the time lost trying to fund is a drain to business success. Funding should not be as big a drain on resources as sales or product development, because at the end of the day they drive everything. And I love those driving activities, both being a salesman and also running product development particularly delivering IT product to a market. But at the end of the day funding is needed for everything to happen. If you remember the classic film “The Right Stuff” an engineer is asked what makes a plane fly. The engineer starts on a long-winded answer and the interlocutor cuts him off saying “Funding. Funding is what makes the plane fly. No bucks, no Buck Rogers”. How did you hear about Ship Shape? What made you interested in this work? I had worked with Daniel previously and knew that he was a smart cookie. He told me he was flirting with an idea, which of itself made it interesting to me. As we stayed in touch it became clear that the idea had legs and so we could commit fully to it, and Miguel was doing more also. I looked into it a little more and it ticked all my boxes: that it’s a great business idea, that the idea can be executed if the right skilled cohesive people are involved, and that we would be a great founding trio. That last part is the really important part to me, I admired and wanted to work in a start-up as part of a trio, single founder companies can move quickly to start with but the lack of diverse experience and opinion weighs them down after a while. Three, to quote De La Soul, is the magic number. And so together we founded the company. Why are you interested in Ship Shape’s business? The Ship Shape idea is a wonderful example of classic business disruption. And whilst it is based on its data and made available online, the fundamentals of why it’s a great idea aren’t new and it would be a good idea in whatever age. I love successful disruptive businesses, and I truly believe Ship Shape can be just that. Change one vital thing about their business, one part of the customer offering which really makes a difference, that is both novel and executable. If anyone already knows the classic example of Clarence Saunders and his Piggly-Wiggly stores, how he invented the modern supermarket in 1916, then skip a paragraph. For anyone that doesn’t Clarence changed only one thing, which was having his customers pick up their goods in a trolley and bring them to the clerk to checkout. To do this he got some chairs, stuck a basket on them, and added wheels. Initially the customers didn’t know what to do so he paid actors to wheel the trolleys about. Soon the idea caught on and Clarence was flying, selling more goods with less cost to serve. Soon he opened more stores, and though he exited the business in 1923 it continued to grow and had 3,500 stores in the 1930s. There are businesses that try to introduce too much change, and the customer and/or the supply chain and/or the technology to support it aren’t ready. Then there are copycat businesses that say they’re doing something different but really they aren’t. These are both businesses I’d like to avoid. The great growth businesses focus hard on the one vital change whilst making sure that the already understood and commoditised parts of the business are cleanly and efficiently executed. At Ship Shape we are introducing a vital change and we know the business area well in general, so I’m excited. Tell us an interesting fact about you? I’m a tango fanatic, it’s how I met my wife. Tango has been the passion of my life and I’ve danced all through Australia, NZ, US, France, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Germany, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, Belarus, Georgia, Cyprus. Tango showed me the world. What do you want to say to the readers of this article? That the UK needs to get its funding activities Ship Shape, full stop. We are entering into a period of COVID-19 recovery, and Brexit reality. The government is talking up investment, and interest rates aren’t going to skyrocket until there’s inflationary growth so there’ll be a lot of private money looking also for returns. Whilst individual VCs in isolation do a good job, we need to do better as a nation in supporting start-ups. Ship Shape will be part of that, and we all need to pitch in. Want to hear more? Feel free to collaborate with me via… Email: alistair@shipshape.vc LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bailliealistair