Nick Telson

trumpet

Co-Founder

sequel

First Check Investor/Ideator

Horseplay Ventures

Horseplay Ventures is a Startup Playground for the new generation of startup founders. As recently exited founders we understand the pressures of being a founder and what it takes to scale and exit. Horseplay incorporates Pre-Seed/Seed Angel Investing, a free investor syndicate, a podcast and free tools for founders to use.

Co-Founder - Angel Investor

Pitch Deck - @pitchdeckpod

Pitch Deck:

- Top 10 Global Business Podcast
- Top 10 Global New Podcast
- Top 5 UK Career/Entrepreneurship Podcast 

Real investors, real founders, real pitches. In each episode, a startup founder has 10 minutes to pitch their business to Nick and guest Angel Investors/Mentors. They then all discuss the pitch and the business itself, asking questions an Investor would ask in a real pitch. The guest Angel and Nick then discuss what they make of the business and investment opportunity.

Podcaster

Proud Ventures

Member

London & Partners

Business Mentor

Virgin StartUp

Delighted to be an official mentor on the Virgin StartUp Programme; a not-for-profit organisation that exists to help founders start up and thrive.  

They provide funding, straight talk and useful advice to make the entrepreneurial road less bumpy and access to a supportive and dynamic community to help founders have some fun along the way.

Mentor

EMW Global | Sports & Entertainment

EMW Global is an international sports and entertainment marketing agency with offices in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and São Paulo. They matchmake top class rights holders and athletes with global brands and entertainment IP. Some clients include the Brasilian National Team, Clube Flamingo, Dani Alves, Douglas Costa, Emerson and Marco Materazzi.

Advisor

The Access Group

Co-Founder of DesignMyNight . Acquired by The Access Group in December 2017. Remaining at DesignMyNight.

Co-Founder DesignMyNight

WFL Media LTD | www.designmynight.com

I am co-founder of UKs fastest growing nightlife website www.designmynight.com. Receiving over 6.5 million monthly views and several industry leading B2B softwares including Tonic, our DesignMyNight ticket platform and Collins; the first booking and enquiry management software for casual dining restaurants, bars and pubs. DesignMyNight was acquired by The Access Group in 2017.

Founder DesignMyNight (Acquired '19) 🍹 | Co-Founder trumpet 🎺 | Investor in 55+ Startups (Currently not investing in new deals) 😇 | Podcaster 🎙️| 🏳️‍🌈

Hey!

I’m a London-based entrepreneur, angel investor, podcaster, startup mentor and public speaker, whose speciality lies in talking no-nonsense founder/investor advice and help. I'm currently co-founder of new B2B sales tool, trumpet, host of Pitch Deck podcast and co-founder of an angel investing venture-arm, Horseplay Ventures

I previously co-founded DesignMyNight, back in 2010 and managed to grow that over 7 years with minimal angel funding, to 100+ employees, 15,000 SaaS customers and 8m monthly uniques on the website. We exited to Access Group in 2017.

I live for the early stages of startups - building the brand, finding product market fit, iterating quickly and building out a team. Most of my content is centred around this, as well as tips from an angel investor. Even after exiting to financial freedom, I caught the founder bug again and have co-founded my next startup, trumpet, in 2022; looking to disrupt B2B sales and kill the sales pdf deck. Follow me on here while we build out this new journey in public.

Please feel free to ask for any advice or help, whether a founder, startup employee or investor and I will always endeavour to do what I can. I'm also a regular guest on podcasts, startup speaking gigs and webinars, so feel free to reach out to me if you are looking for guests/speakers. 

I do respectfully ask not to be pitched for investment in my Linkedin DMs and instead go through Horseplay Ventures. Hopefully my podcast is also a treasure trove of information for those looking to raise early-stage investment, thinking about it or just interested in it - search for Pitch Deck by Nick Telson.

Nick Telson-Sillett

When we hit $1M ARR at both my startups, I thought we’d made it. 
I was wrong.

That milestone didn’t feel like success, it actually felt like survival.
Everyone told us $1M was “product-market fit.”

But all I saw behind the scenes was a brittle system held together by caffeine and duct tape!

Our pricing didn’t match value.
Our ICP was fuzzy.
Our team was doing too much of everything and mastering nothing.

The truth?
$1M ARR isn’t validation. It’s the starting line of the real company.

That’s where you stop experimenting and start operationalizing.
If I could go back, I’d systemize earlier and faster.

Milestones don’t necessarily mean stability. 
They mean responsibility.
Time to step up.

Co-Founder trumpet 🎺 | Founder DesignMyNight (Acquired '19) 🍹 | Investor in 55+ Startups 🤑 🏳️‍🌈

One main metric I have definitely learnt to obsess over from Startup 1 now to Startup 2 (trumpet 🎺)

Most founders obsess over new logos.
The smart ones obsess over NRR.

Because new logos make you look healthy.
But Net Revenue Retention (NRR) proves you are healthy.

⚙️ What it actually means
NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion – Contraction – Churn) / Starting MRR

So:
Start with £100k MRR
£20k expansion
 – £5k churn
 = £115k → NRR = 115%

That number means your existing customers grew your revenue without you selling to anyone new.

That’s compounding built into your business.

💡 Why it matters

VCs, acquirers, and smart operators live and die by this number.

Because:
 ✅ It proves retention, adoption, and product-market fit.
 ✅ It means your revenue is scalable, not leaky.
 ✅ It signals a healthy post-sale motion - sales, CS, and product all in sync.

📊 For transparency trumpet’s NRR = 118%+

That tells us one thing:
Customers don’t just renew, they also expand. They may start with 20 seats, then roll out across other sales teams and the whole revenue stack.

🔧 How to push your NRR higher

1️⃣ Track usage like a hawk.
 If product usage dips, renewal risk rises. Simple.
2️⃣ Design the expansion path.
 Every customer should have an obvious way to grow their footprint.
3️⃣ Spot churn before it happens.
 Your CSMs should see signals 90 days before renewal, not after.
4️⃣ Double down on your champions.
 Your internal advocates drive 80% of expansions.
5️⃣ Show ROI in their language.
 They renew when they see business value, not when you say it.

NRR isn’t a finance metric.

It’s a truth serum for your product, sales, and success motion.

If your NRR’s healthy and going up, you’ve built something people can’t live without. If you're not obsessing over your NRR, start today.

Every founder says, “We’re product-led.”
Most aren’t.

They’re product-first. Which is not the same thing.

Product-first means: “We’ll build what we think is awesome and hope they come.”
Product-led means: “The product is the growth engine, not just the feature list.”

A truly product-led company designs moments where the user experiences success before a salesperson ever shows up.

That might be a personalized trial that nails the buyer’s use case or a dashboard that instantly quantifies value or a shareable artifact that helps your champion explain the ROI to their boss.

Those are the product-led mechanisms that sell for you while you sleep.

Because people don’t buy just products anymore, they buy internal momentum.

And your product should be the one creating it.

If your product can make someone feel the win before they buy, you’re already halfway to closing them.

AI drop #4 of our AI-Suite.
Let me introduce you to Spark AI.

Write. Re-write. Ask Anything.

This is not just the usual AI writing tool that says "make it more concise"

Built directly into every Pod, Spark AI helps teams create deal-ready content in seconds, without tab-hopping, rewrites, or guesswork.

Our AI doesn’t just write, it understands who you are and who you're writing for, adapting every message to the buyer, persona, and stage of the deal.

↳ Rewrites Pod content for any audience, from CFOs to Champions.
↳ Summarises, translates, and localises content instantly.
↳ 30+ pre-trained prompts for Sales and Success teams
↳ Refines messaging with live buyer context 
↳ Helps handle objections or strengthens ROI messaging in one click.
↳ Keeps tone and quality consistent across every buyer touchpoint.

Spark AI brings the context to make that the AI efficiency meaningful.

From follow-ups to onboarding plans, it helps every team speak with precision, confidence, and intent.

Context built in. Clarity guaranteed.

I speak to 100s of founders and "growth" is what they say they are searching. Few admit they’re addicted to motion instead.

In our early GTM days, I kept mistaking speed for progress.

We were testing every channel, hiring faster than our process could handle, rewriting the strategy too regularly.

Slack looked alive. The dashboards were busy. But we weren’t actually taking big steps forward; just sideways, very quickly.

Here’s what I eventually learned:

- Most GTM problems are focus problems wearing different clothes.
- Growth isn’t found in “what else can we do?” it’s in “what can we stop doing?”
- A bloated strategy doc usually signals insecurity, not ambition.
- The best teams don’t chase motion; they compound signal.

When we started cutting; clarity returned.

Deals closed faster. Messaging sharpened. The team felt lighter and more confident.

The sharpest GTMs aren’t the biggest. They’re the most precise.

8 Seconds 2 Connect

When C-Suite communicate, they need to send a message that is:

Simple
Impactful
Emotional
Resilient
Relateable
Actionable 
Motivating
Strategic
Risk-free
Scalable
Transferable

Most verbal communication, a presentation, a pitch, and public speaking are none of the above.

Yet, when leaders communicate with a combination 
visual + verbal.

The complex becomes simple without losing its power.



If you support your C-Suite with their public speaking. And your goal is to save time and increase impact, let's have a call.


I can share how I supported the C-Suite at 2 of the 3 BIG German car brands, 2 of the major luxury fashion brands and one of the BIG social media platforms.

Founder

ThisCityArt (TCA)

Ongoing art projects that are designed to create new work, host pop up shows and use social media to share ideas. #InvisibleExhibition

Graphic Artist

Mountains of Imagination (MoI)

Startup Pitch Training 1000’s of startups in China.
Chinaccelerator
Plug And Play China
Startup Grind Beijing
AngelHack 
Dulwich College Beijing Launchpad Entrepreneurship Competition

Pitch Consulting, content creation, content management & slide design for senior leadership.
Yodo1 Mobile Games C-Round Raise Deck
Ofo CEO conference speech
VW CMO conference talk.
Cartier China CEO
Dior China CEO
The VW Group board of directors
Audi A.I.R China 
Mercedes China HR C-Suite
Amazon China 
CTVS 
Dulwich College Beijing
Ivy Education Group 
Daystar Academy

Corporate presentation training how to restructure and simplify slide content and refine the message.
The NBA China
The VW Group China
Google SH
BMW
British Embassy Beijing
Districom
Brunswick PR

Higher education pitch training.
EF Education first
NYU Shanghai 
Tsinghua University Beijing
Schwarzman Scholar

Conferences & events speaker.
WeWork
British Chamber of Commerce Beijing
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
SDC The University Partnership Denmark & China

WheelsPlusWings

I am lucky enough to be in the founding group of awesome people who set up wheelspluswings and continue to help give children and their families improved access to mobility. 

Spend 2 mins and like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WheelsplusWings

Creative Director & Founding Member

 BACA / UAL

Teaching Chinese students graphic design & communication skills with group and individual projects using paper-pencil and smartphones

Lecturer Visual Communications Graphic Design

PAE Media

Branded Content Creative Director
VW Group Brand integration in Man Of Tai Chi feature film. 
VW group car placement and integration into Hollywood movie, pitching to movie executive producer and VW brand managers.

A Century with Cars.
Mercedes Benz branded content 12 episodes China TV show. Leading the research team and managing the regular client presentation updates.

VW lifestyle TV show, developing the concept and managing the regular client presentation updates.

Creative Director

BCTT

Gung Ho Pizza 
Pre-launch brand story presentation, working with co-founders to develop brand message and vision.

TEDxBeijing Speaker & Speaker coach
Coaching TedxBeijing speakers with the performance and story structure.

Pecha Kucha Speaker x2 

Be Open
Creative director and co-director of eight band-content online films for Peugeot China, for the car launch of the Peugeot 208cc, working with blind photographers.

Freelance Creative Director

Advertising creative director, within two months of working in advertising, I came up with the concept for a NIKE Olympic event, and I was leading the launch of a car. China provides wild opportunities.

Mercedes A Symphony of Ice and Snow, head of the post-production.

NIKE Basketball Beijing Olympics 2008, creative director, concept development and strategical alignment.

Peugeot 207 China launch creative director, concept development.

VW beetle ATL ad campaign creative director.

Creative director

Raffles Design Institute

Is how I arrived in Beijing and how I met and taught young Chinese students new design skills and creative approaches. 

I now know some of those students have gone on to own restaurant brands, become DJ/Promoters and work as part of the design teams at international schools, which is really exciting for China and world's future.

Teaching Graphic Design and Animation

Spiral Productions

Illustrator and animator, concept development, client pitches. 
Science museum London
Explore @Britisol 
Dubai Children's City
Singapore science centre
Imperial War Museum London

Designer / Illustrator / Animator

Is public speaking part of your BD strategy? I will make sure you are the best speaker at the event 🐊 More influence = more opportunities = more revenue 🤼‍♀️ Intentional communication 🐊 Certified Crocodile Wrestler

The CEO walked into the meeting room and stopped at the doorway.

He looked surprised

"This looks...different," he said.

He walked over to the whiteboard covered with bits of paper.

20 minutes before, I printed out six pages of the first version of his script. 

I cut out the paragraphs and shuffled them like a magician doing a magic trick. 

I then stuck them to the whiteboard.

He was now reading some of them out.

"I like this", he repeated. "I like this a lot."

Within a few minutes, he had 8-10 paper strips in his hand.

We sat down, and I made a new document.

I copied and pasted the sections he had selected into a second script version.

We then made this version 02 script flow in his words. 

In less than 30 minutes, we were done.

He leaned back and read the script out.

He smiled, satisfied.

"Email me a copy." 

He stood and headed to the door.

He paused on the way out, turned and said, "This was good; I've never worked like this before. Nice job"

________________

Common problem = C-Suite keynotes have too much education and not enough inspiration

Solution = Stories with emotion, stakes, drama and success 

________________

How to do this?

Trust the process
Bring a fresh perspective 
Make the time 

________________

I have written presentions for the head of HR at Mercedes China when they spoke to 2000 people 

Visualized the keynote for The VW China CMO when they spoke at a non-automotive conference 

Managed the presentation build for the Cartier CEO China when the management team headed to a global annual update meeting 

I have pitched creative to Hollywood A-listers 

Written the talks for Chinese tech CEOs speaking at APEC

Coached Tech CEOs on their product launches

Coached Tech CFOs on how to deal with different speaking opportunities

________________

The key to success starts with mindset 

🟥 Do you have a growth mindset?

🟧 What are your goals?

🟨 What message / story will reach the goals?

🟦 How do you perform?

🟩 Do you even need slides? 

________________

🟩

🟦 🟦

🟨 🟨 🟨

🟧 🟧 🟧 🟧

🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥

________________


Start with red not green.

 If you want public speaking to be your executive strength I can share more case studies on a call.







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Nick Telson-Sillett

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The Battle

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Martin Barnes

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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);}Nick Telson-Sillett's LinkedIn Performance

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