Olu Adedeji

Founder

Prelo

Update Coming Soon . . .

👉 Learn more @ https://www.prelo.io

On Deck

Founder Fellow (ODF14)

Consilience Ventures

I was invited by Kevin Monserrat to join the Consilience Ventures ecosystem in 2019 to support the business across its mission in helping to redefine startup acceleration. 

I'll be working with the Consilience Ventures Review committee, performing due diligence on Startups prior to investment as well as mentoring other Startups already in the Consilience Ventures ecosystem.

Consilience Ventures is a data driven venture capital ecosystem, using it's own digital currency (not a cryptocurrency) to invest in high growth b2b start-ups from pre-seed to Series A. 

It uses a combination of data and human-driven decision making to raise the probability of selecting the best start-ups to which Consilience Ventures offers unparalleled support to achieve massive growth

Expert | Advisory | Management Consultant

StayHired

Deep relationships are formed from meaningful conversations with the right people. Join StayHired 

We help Startups connect with awesome talent through conversations📞

StayHired is an ecosystem that provides a radically different hiring experience for Startups and Jobseekers!

📽 Video Interviews  
📞 Private Chats 
📈 Data Insights 
🤝 Relationship Building
🕥 Talent Sourcing 24 by 7 
✅ Zero Barriers

Snr. Project Manager - Analytics & Global Markets

Oneshoo

Oneshoo is an online, social marketplace designed to freely connect you with qualified trainers and health professionals.

With our platform, you will be able to access a dynamic community of trainers who specialise in weight loss, meal plans and other fitness programmes.

We have developed this solution to help you and your trainer(s) effectively manage your  appointments, fitness goals and progress.

Oneshoo is an all-encompassing health and wellness startup, enhancing your fitness experience by giving you the opportunity to meet and work with qualified health professionals.

Co Founder

Deutsche Bank

Snr. Project Manager - Global Transaction Banking (MiFiD II/MiFiR)

Barclays Investment Bank

Programme Lead responsible for the agile delivery of a risk aggregation regulatory project.
BCBS239, Credit Risk, Counterparty Risk, Capital and Impairment Reporting

I am a confident communicator working as a programme lead, responsible for the agile delivery of a global risk aggregation project. I manage a team of business analysts and developers and I am involved in mobilizing the Business Intelligence solution required to meet the challenges of a BCBS239 risk data aggregation.

Other skills include:
PRINCE2 Practitioner Qualified
Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certified
Certified Scrum Master
ISEB(BCS) Certification in Business Analysis 
ISEB(BCS) Requirements Engineering
CISI Derivatives Certification

Programme Lead (Risk Aggregation)

Technical PM/BA, Delivered Optimized Applications & Database Models & Architectecture in the Cross Product Business Area

Technical PM/BA (Cross Product Technology)

Royal Bank of Scotland Business

Worked in the Equity Derivatives business area as a Technical BA/database architect and an application developer.

Architect and Technical BA (Equity Derivatives)

$1.1 Trillion was raised by Startups in the last 12 months.

We make it easy for businesses & investors to research and connect with venture-backed Startups on LinkedIn. . .

😓 Tired of selling to companies with $0

💡 Discover 100 "ready customers" every week

🚀 Built in 3 weeks | Beta Tested in 4 weeks | Revenue Generating 4 weeks post launch

👉 Learn more @ https://www.prelo.io

Helping others achieve their goals will help you get to yours. . .

Getting to know Haley through Jeff embodies this for me 💯 

Last week, Haley took time out of her busy schedule to join me on "The Venture Podcast". We discussed everything venture, including deal sourcing for early stage VCs and how she became an investor at Hustle Fund.

Meet Haley ⬇️

Born in Boston 🍀 and studied in Virginia, she worked for Apple at the height of the iPhone frenzy. Here, she discovered a vibrant network of Startups, and was immediately drawn to this dynamic space.

Leaving Apple, Haley found herself in the world of recruitment marketing tech, working for a MarTech startup that ended up being acquired last year.

Her next opportunity came rather quickly, jumping straight into B2B SaaS as a COO and growing the Startup to several $$$ million in revenue. . .

It was here that Haley was approached by a co-worker who was building something new! 

With zero hesitation she cut her first check to Sacra, a private market research company. ✍️

Unbeknown to her at the time, cutting that first check turned out to be a career defining decision.

Investing in Sacra invariably unlocked 🔓 a hidden door that opened up a network she would not have had access to.

Through her investment in Sacra, Haley met Shiyan, Liz & Eric (Hustle Fund founders) and Brian (Angel Squad founder).

This serendipitous meeting paved the way for Haley to join them on a collaborative investment, with her dedicated work leaving a profound impact.

Today, Haley stands as a full-time investor at Hustle Fund VC, her journey embodying a blend of serendipity and hard work. 🚀

However, she is more than just an investor; she is a seasoned content marketer and startup growth specialist. Her strategic insight has allowed Hustle Fund to consistently review and respond to over 1000 startup deals every month, her keen eye always on the lookout for the next big thing.

I wasn't going to let her go without talking about Prelo's data-driven deal sourcing solution. 

We speculated its potential in changing the early-stage venture space, especially considering the looming generational wealth transfer of $85 trillion by 2045. 😮

As we wrapped up the podcast, I couldn't resist asking Haley about her investment criteria. 

True to herself, she shared invaluable insights that pre-seed and seed founders should leverage to secure an investor meeting with her.

Watch the 50-second video clip. 👇

Everything you need to get an investor meeting with Hustle Fund.

-- 

Want to be a guest speaker ? 

Send me a DM 🔔

Founder @ Prelo.io | Let's unleash the power of your network to build, scale and fund industry defining startups together🚀

From 4th grade teacher to Fintech VC, find out how ⬇️

Casey's journey into venture is an inspiration to women aspiring to break into vc. Last Tuesday, fresh from NYC Fintech Week, she dropped in for a chat on "The Venture Podcast". 🎙️

We discussed what VCs look for in early-stage Startups, and her unconventional journey to becoming a VC at Fenway Summer.

Meet Casey ⬇️

After her Bachelor's degree 🎓, she settled into a teaching career working with a non-profit organization in Oklahoma.

A year in the classroom was enough for Casey to experience many of the funding challenges faced by non-profits in education.

Intent on making a change, she took on a Masters degree in Public Policy. (a professional graduate degree similar to the MBA). 

As you can imagine, obtaining this qualification opened more opportunities for Casey in the non-profit sector.

Leaving education for a family foundation that was connecting small businesses with capital, her career path was about to change. 

The family foundation partnered 🤝 with Kiva, a crowdfunding platform for borrowers to find lenders and secure micro-loans, and that was Casey's first venture into Fintech! 

An English major for whom numbers were a foreign language, Casey would never have considered fintech as a natural career path.

Gaining experience at Kiva propelled her to work at Wells Fargo where she met Raj Date, Managing Partner at Fenway Summer.

Recognizing Casey's talent, Raj hired her to join him at Fenway Summer, a VC firm that invests in pre-seed & seed 🌱 FinTech Startups bridging innovation and financial policy.

Today, Casey is an investor at Fenway Summer, applying her vast experience in policy development to picking investable startups building Fintech solutions. 🚀

But as we drew the curtain on this episode, our conversation turned to data-driven deal sourcing and what we were building at Prelo. . . .

While Prelo was still a "work in progress", we discussed the challenges faced by early-stage VCs in picking winners from a high volume of low quality deals.

As always, I couldn't let Casey go without asking her for her most important investment criteria when assessing Fintech Startups at Fenway Summer. 💡

Watch the 50-second video clip. 👇

Everything you need to get an investor meeting with Fenway Summer.

--

Want to be a guest speaker ?

Send me a DM 🔔

90% of angel investors have an issue with one thing . . .

TIME 👈

💢 no time to get to know the founder
💢 no time to screen opportunities
💢 no time to deep-dive on deals 

Solo Angels simply don't have enough time each week to 'due diligence' all the startup opportunities and build a large, successful portfolio of companies.

This is why majority of angel investors I know only make a handful of investments a year.😢

I had a chance to catch up with one of the Angel Investing OGs , the founder of Fundingstack and Foundersuite.com. 

We "chopped it up" on everything deal flow, and got onto the topic of Angel Peer Groups (Syndicates). 

We discussed why more solo-angels should leverage peer groups as a solid strategy to : 

✅ improve participation in larger funding rounds
✅ increase access to Startups with higher growth potential
✅ distribute the workload of due diligence and deal evaluation

Remember that your deal flow is impacted by the volume, the quality and the competition for the deals you're exposed to. 

Getting involved in an angel syndicate and/or a peer group goes a long way to reducing the time it takes to find winners in a sea of opportunities. 🥇

-- 

Join me on The Venture Podcast 🔔

(Registration Link in comments)

I spent 30 hours talking with 20 early stage investors in the last 4 weeks and here are my take aways 👇

VCs and Angels love meeting early-stage founders with the 'potential' to build venture scale Startups.

But there's a problem . . . 😢

early stage fundraising is so saturated, most investors are buried under a mountain of 'terrible' pitch decks and underwhelming cold emails.

It's like scouting for Olympic athletes in a kindergarten gym class. Sure, there's raw talent and excitement, but the probability of nailing down future champions at such an early stage is less than 1%.

So for founders, it's worth remembering that at an early stage . . .an investor builds initial conviction based on 5 data points:

✅ 1st impression
✅ some traction 
✅ a track record.  
✅ ability to execute
✅ size of the market

Pitch decks and cold emails can't tell the whole story. That's why most investments are made to founders via warm intros. 🤝 

 . . . it's not the best solution, but it's all we have right now.

I've benefited from warm intros and I'm thankful for the connections, it's time to pay it forward.

Warm intros help investors speed up the search for exceptional founders, especially when the alternative is spending evenings and weekends reviewing decks. 😴

There just aren't enough hours in the day for investors to perform due diligence to a satisfactory level with so much volume and competition.

That's why Angel investors join syndicates and why early stage VCs build their networks of venture scouts or hire venture associates.

Unfortunately, this makes it impossible for first time founders without a network to get first investor meetings . . .

That's why I started The Venture Podcast 

We make it easy for investors to share their theses (investment criteria) so that I can connect them with amazing founders without a network.

--

Want to be a guest speaker on the venture podcast?

🔔 Send me a DM

Did you know that almost every angel investor struggles with this one issue? 

Over 200,000 angels in the US have full-time jobs outside of angel investing. 

As you can imagine, this makes it incredibly difficult for early stage investors to find time in the evenings and weekends to sift through enough data to gain conviction on investment opportunities.

This results in missed opportunities, a lot of wasted effort and disappointed founders. I've been one of those founders on many occasions. 🥺

That's why I reached out to Cheryl Kellond, co-founder of Play Money!. 

PlayMoney is a venture platform and community that helps angel investors build diversified startup portfolios without making investing a full-time job.

Cheryl is an Angel Investor, LP and a 2x Founder who built Apostrophe to $10M ARR before its acquisition in 2021.

Learn how angel investors can get time back with their family and friends by leveraging better deal sourcing strategies. 💡

-- 

🔔 Want to be a guest on the venture podcast? (link in comments)

How to kill your startup’s fundraising before it gets off the ground. 

Create a 25 page pitch deck . . . 😬

My first ever pitch deck had 27 slides, but that was 12 years ago.  

It's not uncommon for early-stage VCs to review 1000 pitch decks/month.

With just 2min to spare per deck, a 25 page deck goes straight into the trash folder. 🗑️

Unfortunately, this is exactly why most investors prefer warm intros. 

Warm intros cut through the noise and allow for more focus on building founder relationships.✅

While this is great for founders with a network, it's discouraging for founders without one. . . 

and that's exactly why I started the venture podcast. 

We make it easy for investors to share their theses (investment criteria) so that I can connect them with amazing founders without a network. 🚀

--

Want to be a guest speaker ?

🔔 Send me a DM

PS. I connected 3 investors to 2 founders this week

Female Founders and Investors in the DMV interested in joining Casey, deets in the post ⬇️

Fintech investor & operator, Fenway Summer. Angel investor in female founders. Co-lead, DC Startup Women.

Hi Linkedin! I'm hosting another dinner for female founders & funders in the DMV, this time focused on B2B & B2G business models - who should be on the invite list? 

Comment on this post or send me a message if you're interested in joining, and tag others who should join as well! Even if you aren't building or investing in this space, engaging with this post will help it reach the right audience. 

Kay Rodriguez Rachel Koretsky Seema Alexander Airen Washington DC Startup Week

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