No shortcuts to creating value, only better maps

A little while ago, James Whalley and I were chatting about incentives that drive behaviour and the impact that this can have on founders. 

We’ve worked together for over ten years and have had lots of discussions, but the key insight from this conversation was that most participants in the tech ecosystem are focussed on trying to invest in or provide services to companies, rather than on creating value for the founders. 

Through our experience investing in and advising so many companies over the years, we’ve seen some founders sell too early, others hold on too long and some make tactical errors which inevitably cost them later.

As James and I reflected more deeply on our work over the last few years, we realised that we’d had the most fun and rewarding experiences working with the founders of companies like Hipages and Mwave. These were situations where we were able to work with the founders to grow the value of their equity, help them get liquidity over time and put in place a board to support the founders for the long term success of the company. 

In conversation with James, it became clear there was an opportunity to work with founders to pursue equity growth over the long term and to help founders get liquidity along the way. 

This was the kernel which led to the formation of FounderCo.

James and I have a shared vision at FounderCo to provide a range of tools, products and services that help create and realise life-changing value for founders. 

If we do our job well, hopefully we can help founders accelerate their success, create value for their community and help them become more financially secure.

Today is day one. We’re looking forward to sharing our journey as we move into game mode.