Nick Telson-Sillett: From Design My Night to Angel Investing… and more!

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nick Telson-Sillett, a renowned entrepreneur, angel investor, and public speaker based in London. He has an impressive track record in the startup ecosystem and has made significant contributions to the industry.

Today, we will dive deep into Nick's journey as a startup founder, his role as an angel investor, and explore his latest project, trumpet. We'll discuss his strategies for evaluating investment opportunities, his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, and gain his insights on the current startup landscape.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

If you just look at the reservation market you’d think you find an open table at a restaurant, reserve the table, etc. We drilled in a bit further and found the niche of bars which you couldn’t book into in 2012. We went to the industry and pitched the idea of an app like Open Table that worked for bars, they and the customer base were positive about it and we went and built the software and signed up all of the best bars in the UK because there was no other app out there that was catering to them at the time.
Because we’d built such a flexible booking system for bars, there was a boom in casual dining which didn’t exist back in the day for experiential, different types of restaurants which needed the flexibility. We then made a play for that niche.
Early start-ups: Don’t get distracted. Focus is so important, everyone promises you the world, partnerships, sponsorships, all these things only add noise. Surround yourself with the work, 3 hours in front of my laptop is more worthwhile than going to a founders event. Becoming a founder has become a fashionable sport, people forget the being a founder is really hard work building your business and putting your head down.
I love the start up world, I was mentoring founders so Angel Investing was an obvious route to go down because I can help financially as well as mentoring or helping the companies that I’m financially invested in. A lot of founders I’ve met aren’t investor-ready, and the first thing I say to founders is have you thought what you want out of your business? If it’s just you and you don’t need to raise money, and if £3m is lifechanging to you, you can build a business worth £3m and you hold 100% of the equity and then you can sell it.

BEST MOMENTS

‘You can’t please everyone: If you build a product and you’re at the whim of your customers you’ll never have clarity or be able to build strategically, you’ll aways be chasing your tail.’

‘We were the first app to introduce putting your card down or pay a deposit because we found no-shows was a big problem.’

‘Sales is going to be the new engineering, finding great sales people that know what they’re doing is tough, determine your ICP (ideal customer profile) and go after them specifically.’

‘Learning to say no to people doesn’t have to be rude, it’s about preserving your time to drive your business forward.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Sillett is a London-based entrepreneur, investor, and public speaker. He is known for co-founding DesignMyNight, a B2C platform that attracted over 8 million views per month and a B2B platform with over 5,000 clients. DesignMyNight was acquired by The Access Group in November 2017 for $30 million.

After DesignMyNight's successful exit, Nick Telson-Sillett continued his entrepreneurial journey and co-founded Trumpet, a buyer enablement software solution.

He is also the founder of Horseplay Ventures, a venture arm that invests in startups, and has invested in over 55 startups as an angel investor.

Nick Telson-Sillett is actively involved in the startup community and has hosted his own podcast called Pitch Deck, where startup founders pitch their businesses to him and guest angel investors/mentors. They discuss the pitch, the business itself, and the investment opportunity.

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ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.