In today's episode we get more of a corporate finance perspective on venture capital, with two guests from PwC. Antonia Burridge co-founded the Raise team and John Baker is heavily involved in equity crowdfunding, so we get a perspective that extends right across the market.

We start we some background on the Raise Team. Antonia discusses founding a new operation within a such large organisation, what they had to do to get it going and how they think about bringing value to fundraising for both companies and investors. John talks about how equity crowdfunding has developed over the past few years.

We then discuss the current market in some detail. Antonia and John bring some interesting statistics to back up their observations as we talk about volumes and valuations. They bring insights into how founders and investors are adjusting to the new environment and what it takes to fundraise now.

Links

PwC for startups and scaleups information - https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/entrepreneurial-private-business/small-business-solutions.html

John's (non-PwC) Telegram group for ECF - https://t.me/joinchat/vTZKqkWSMmQwNDc0

Subscribe to the EIS Navigator podcast on most services here: https://the-eis-navigator.captivate.fm/listen

Suggested books

Founders at Work by Jessica Livingstone

How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith

Bios

Antonia Burridge is one of the Co-Founders of PwC Raise | Ventures, with a focus on helping high growth early stage tech companies to raise their Series A and B funding rounds. Before setting up the team she worked in the M&A modelling and analytics team, supporting Private Equity houses and portfolio companies both during and post deal with their Business Planning, Cash Flow forecasting, Reporting and Analytics. She is also a chartered accountant and the Co-Founder of an award winning Femtech startup.

John Baker has been working in deals and restructuring at PwC for nearly 20 years. In this time he has helped companies and management teams with a range of solutions to create value including performance improvement, cash control, managed services, stakeholder management and restructuring. He is currently speaking to a number of startups at the moment about cash focus, operations optimisation and back office efficiency, ESG and overall future funding and strategy. He is also an investor in a number of startups and regularly communicates with a group of 300+ early stage enthusiasts who share insights and intelligence.