Investing in high growth pre-seed startups. 

Dan heads up investments into new companies at Solid Bond which invests £150k-£500k into UK based pre-seed tech/ tech enabled startups.

Dan Dudley

What makes pre-seed such a difficult stage (and why so much of UK venture waits till seed) is the reality that the founders have to almost do everything.

You often don't have the money to spend it on ramping up tech, the founders have to fundraise, sell, account manage, track cash, find market fit and yes while all those things are easier in a smaller company, it can be so easy to lose pace or focus on making you need to go and close the next round of funding. 

Takes massive energy to do this well.

Pre-seed Investor at Solid Bond | Actively Investing | Finance and Commercial Director |

One of the key fractional hires to get in earlier than later for startups is a good CFO. 

A CFO is not your accountant or bookkeeper. I've seen way too many startups hire £100k+ FD's only to realise pretty soon that that FD also needs a bookkeeper/ management accountant to do the accounts work and all of a sudden you have a massive cost for a small business. 

When your business is still really simple, simple invoicing and costs then you can get by with a decent firm of accountants. 

A good fractional CFO will help you do some of the following:

- Cash flow management
- Financial modeling
- Margin analysis
- Build up your core finance team
- Review banking arrangements
- Support on securing more capital (equity/ debt)
- Prep for DD/ transactions

More businesses could do with a really commercially focused finance mind in as soon as they can afford it. I've seen it add tonnes of value, particually when the business is early enough to avoid painful mistakes later. 

#startups #venturecapital #preseed #fractionalCFO #founders

I'll be the first one to praise the UK for the SEIS and EIS investment schemes. They genuinely do more good than bad, particularly at attracting retail money into early stage companies. 

However, many SEIS rounds will close with the c. £250k limit but that often leaves them undercapitalised to make the progress needed to unlock the next wave of funding. If your £250k round doesn't get to launch and £250k ARR at least then it's easy to fall into this space. 

It leaves a lot of business in this awkward in-between stage. Not having enough runway to get the revenue traction to unlock seed investors, valuation expectation and lack of SEIS now precluding a lot of angels from joining certainly makes closing another round at pre-seed increasingly difficult. 

Makes it so important to plan how you get there with the funding you close at pre-seed. Raising another pre-seed might not be as easy as the 1st time you did it.

Seeing a lot of founders either using or pitching to raise using ASA's as their main instrument. We've even had a few at Solid Bond. that have closed with this as part of their round, so wanted to write a bit to explain when they are best to use. 

ASA is the UK's SAFE, with a couple of small differences.

In short it is a agreement to invest now and purchase equity in the future. It isn't debt, it is a structured agreement to buy equity in the next round, usually at a discount for coming in early. 

If you don't close enough in a priced round within a certain period of time then the investment converts at a pre-determined price for those ASA investors. 

If you are going to preserve S/EIS then HMRC dictates it needs to be issued into shares within 6 months of investment. This is the major issue with them - you cannot use them as a round, it pretty much reduces them essentially to a bridging instrument. You could use them outside of this is you are okay with the "backstop" valuation or the pre-agreed valuation but it isn't usually how people use them. 

I've found the most common use case is to close enough on an ASA to secure enough runway to close out the seed and you literally have to be running both processes at the same time. Can be a great tool if used right but it's important to know when they should be used.

Customer service is going to be one of the biggest disrupted industries because of AI. 

The number of startups we see now who are "AI Receptionist" or "AI Customer Service Agents" has grown loads over the last 6 months. 

The reality is some of their platforms are actually great as well. We will see an explosion of front line agents with high quality integrations to a few core systems in niche verticals. They can just serve their needs and build the workflows for that niche vertical so well. Not convinced they can all raise money but there are some ace bootstrapped businesses in this group that'll form over the next 12-18 months. 

One of Solid Bond.'s portfolio companies, Answer Ai has seen loads of it's retailers realise 90%+ support automation for Shopify ecommerce/ fashion retailers. It's a big market but you can see that AI, with great workflows built around it will literally end most customer service roles as we know them.

#startups #venturecapital #preseed

Having a super deep understanding of your market, the buyers, ICP (well thought through/ proven), budget holders, other systems in use, barriers, indirect competitors/ workarounds etc. adds massive credibility when you're raising money. 

So clear to see when someone knows this and and when they use some McKinsey top down market sizing stat. 

#Startups #Preseed #Founders #VentureCapital

Had a great conversation with one of Solid Bond.'s founders recently about the state of AI in 2026. Same message is what I am hearing across the industry as well.

The foundational models are genuinely good enough now and the issue now sits in the application layer. This has totally changed in the last 12 months and the realisation is that great product is what will drive the next wave of agents and deliver on the automation we thought we'd start to see. 

I am sure they'll be a lot of improvement in models to come with the sheer about of capital going into compute over the next 5 years, but right now for a lot of applications it is the product/ tuning of agents that is a big opportunity.

I'm vibe coding a data platform for Solid Bond. to massively speed up our investment process, deep research and IM writing linking our systems together and I can see when Replit is handing over to "sub-agents" like the "architect" to perform a specialist task and then use that output to continue. 

Building sub-agents and better product is what's needed now, not significant changes to the quality of the models.

Interested to know what some of the best use cases venture funds are seeing for AI in their internal process and what platforms are being used. 

Any insights? 

#venturecapital #startups #preseed #seriesA

Can't wait to try Claude CoWork (always last to come to Windows!!)

This year will be massive for AI chat apps becoming proper workflow tools.

I think we'll see a section in them - similar to how Projects work now - where you can build automations across desktop and cloud apps just by describing what you want in natural language.

This used to be reserved for RPA specialist software and businesses that could afford the implementation. But it's coming to everyone pretty soon.

The barrier to automating repetitive work is dropping. It'll be a precursor to being able to set outcome-based automations where the route to automating it won't be a rigid process.

Feels like this will live in your AI chat apps.

Enterprising Barnsley

As a Launchpad Start Up Advisor, I worked with anyone who was looking at starting a business or has started one in the last three years. The process started with a meeting that allows me to fully understand the person, their drive & their current stage of planning. The support offered was tailored based on their needs. For prestart businesses, it was recommended that they attend the three core workshops. These covered off all the core skills someone would need to run a business. I worked with clients to build their ideas into a business plan using the Business Model Canvas, and then a more traditional business plan format if needed. Clients could then access a wide range of workshops covering specific topics as 'Creating Engaging Social Media Content' & 'Money Matters'. One to one support was ongoing during the support with Launchpad.

During my time at Enterprising Barnsley, I have also been involved with the running and management of the Digital Media Centre (DMC). The DMC is a flagship building in Barnsley and as a team, we have worked over the last five years to make it the hub for business in Barnsley. Through focusing on creating a community feel to the building, not just for the tenants, but for anyone who wants to come in, we've created a building that people see as the go-to place in Barnsley for business and increased the intangible value of offer we give to our clients.

Business Startup Advisor

JCI United Kingdom

As Immediate Past President (IPP) I acted as a mentor and point of reference for the National President who followed me. I was also the organisations Parlimentarian, making sure that the constitution was followed to at all times. I lead on creating the JCI UK Five Year Strategy for 2020 - 2024 (see the projects section of my profile for more information).

JCI UK Immediate Past President 2019 at JCI United Kingdom

As National President of JCI UK, I had two main objectives I wanted to achieve. Firstly, I wanted to make sure that I represented the members of the organisation. As we are a member lead organisation, and I was elected by the members to be National President, main responsibility was to be the figurehead for what we represent. Secondly, I wanted to leave JCI UK in a better place when I left the role than when I took it on. In recent years, we've seen growth and success and it was important to me to make sure that continued and we didn't lose ground in 2018. From speaking with members from around the UK, as well as members on an international level, I feel I have achieved both of these points.

As National President, I was responsible for setting the direction of travel for the year I was in office. This included recruiting and manage a National Board team that would lead on specific portfolios of work we needed to deliver. All these roles are voluntary so had an extra layer of complexity in terms of management and leadership. I was also the primary point of contact for all Local Presidents within JCI UK. Due to the Geographic Spread of membership in the UK, regular communication was key in keeping on top of both the National Board team as well as Local Presidents.

Another part of my role was to represent JCI UK on a global level as the organisation's voice at the General Assembly, the worldwide organisation's decision-making body. This meant working with other National Representatives to make sure what was past was the best for our members.

JCI UK National President 2018

The role of Deputy National President is to support the National President in enacting their plan. The other key element is preparing and planning for the following year when you will be taking on the role of National President.

JCI UK Deputy National President 2017

As the JCI UK Membership Director 2016, I sat on the national board team alongside the other national directors and the exec team. The main focus of the Membership Director is to work with local chambers to help them growth the membership through new sign-ups as well as retention of existing members. This is done via looking at the membership journey from initial interest to when a member decides they have grown as much as they can through JCI and decide to move on.

The aim for 2015 was to really streamline the process of membership sign up by removing bottlenecks in the process and making sure that every new member understands exactly what is available to them when they sign up and how to get the most out of their membership. This was achieved by introducing a new website with an easier signup page, an updated new welcome pack, and a clear programme of progression for members to follow if they wished.

JCI UK National Membership Director 2016

Enterprise Nation

As Head of the North, my role was to set up and run the Click Together accelerator Enterprise Nation had won the tender to deliver on behalf of Barnsley Council. The secondary objective was to grow the brand in the town and surrounding areas and increase the membership in the area.

Head of the North

Ben Hawley

Over several years, I have worked with a range of companies in the private sector at all stages of implementing a project. This has ranged from product scoping and viability and getting to a minimum viable product, all the way through to future improvements and learning reviews.

These have included a social media platform dedicated to a specific sporting niche, introducing new technology in traditional large scale Christmas decorations installations, as well as the delivery of multiple specialised used websites to compliment a companies existing products and services.

Freelance Marketing Specialist and Project Manager

During 2015 I was responsible for arranging the flagship event in JCI UK calendar, the National Convention. This is held in November each year, in a different location with different local chambers bidding to host the event. As Convention Organising Committee Director, I wrote and lead the bidding process to bring the event to Barnsley. Once secured, I lead a team of five to make sure the event was a success. We had to consider every element of the event, from budget and sales to marketing and the programme. The result was a highly successful event with high attendance numbers for an event of this type and had attendance from not just around the UK, but across Europe as well.

2015 National Convention Organising Committee Director 

JCI Barnsley

During my time as President of JCI Barnsley, I was responsible for making sure the chamber continued the good work it does with it's membership as well as in the local community. I lead a team of 8 council members and membership of 28 through a successful year where the chamber won awards for the charity programme it ran, as well as the contribution to the Yorkshire region as a whole. In addition, I also one the award for Most Outstanding President at the 2014 JCI UK Awards.

President

As Business Development Director for Barnsley JCI, I have the responsibility to develop relationships with business in the local area with the aim that both our members and the companies benefit from working together.

Business Development Director for Barnsley

As local deputy president, I was responsible for helping enact the current Presidents plan for the year, whilst developing my skills and ideas to make sure the following year when I would take over as president would also be a success.

Deputy President 2013

It's great seeing businesses start and grow, and that's what I help people achieve.

Over the last eight years, I've worked for Barnsley Councils' business support team, Enterprising Barnsley. My most recent role is leading the team at the DMCs to help provide a welcoming, inspiring, and energetic environment for businesses in the town. These range from people touching down for one day in our fabulous co-working space and sessional use of our meeting rooms, to the businesses who have their head offices here and call the buildings home.

I also manage a range of programmes that cover the entire South Yorkshire region, not just Barnsley. The latest one, Tech Welcome, provides a way for early-stage businesses to relocate or start in the region to be able to access the wonderful support network we have to help them accelerate their growth. 

I also love helping people with advice on how to start up and scale up. Whilst I no longer work on the fantastic Launchpad Programme, I'm more than happy to chat with anyone to talk through ideas, and problems, or act as a sounding board. The connections I have give me the ability to signpost and help introductions where they can make the most impact to a business.

I'm always up for a chat and to see how we can work with people and organisations to help build a solid and strong Tech Ecosystem for the entire of South Yorkshire. 

Hope to hear from you soon.

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Dan Dudley

Ben Hawley

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dan Dudley's LinkedIn Performance

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