Hi, I'm David Langer. Welcome to my blog Freed from The Matrix, a collection of insights, interviews, hacks and other stuff that's relevant to young entrepreneurs. I'm the co-founder & CEO of GroupSpaces, Entrepreneurship Columnist for The Gateway newspaper and an aspiring triathlete. Thanks for reading!
We are very pleased to announce a new $1.3 million round of funding for GroupSpaces this week.
Mike Volpi (left), celebrating with the GroupSpaces team
We raised this investment to enable us to expand our engineering team and build many more features into our product to meet all the needs of our diverse and growing user-base of sports clubs, university societies, local interest groups and associations. We will also be using the money to expand our marketing teams in the UK and US, enabling us to bring GroupSpaces to a much wider audience.
The investment round was led by European Venture Capital firm Index Ventures, who has previously invested in Skype, Last.fm, MySQL and Betfair, amongst many other successful technology companies. We are glad to work with Index as they have a fantastic track record in helping early-stage Internet companies develop into global leaders. Index Ventures Partner, Mike Volpi (former Chief Strategy Officer for Cisco and above on the left, with the GroupSpaces team), joins us as a Director and you can read about why he led the investment in GroupSpaces on the Index Ventures blog.
You’ve got an ambitious business idea, done your initial research, started developing your product and you need some investment to finish building it and take it to market. This is a common situation for young entrepreneurs to find themselves in.
In this article, we’ll explore one potential solution: Angel Investors. These are usually wealthy entrepreneurs who are looking to invest their own money in early-stage businesses. In addition to offering your business money, they can also offer their advice, experience and knowledge.
[Note: my advice throughout this article is tailored towards raising money from UK-based Angel Investors, however many of the principles apply elsewhere]
Last week Joseph Ajilore (Founder, Your Hidden Potential) interviewed me for his young entrepreneur blog. He asked me about how to be a successful entrepreneur, why I rejected multiple corporate job offers in favour of pursuing GroupSpaces full-time and who I find inspiring. Following a lot of great feedback we’ve both received on the interview, Joseph’s kindly allowed me to re-publish it for the readers of Freed From the Matrix.
Can you quickly give us some background information about yourself?
I’m a 24 year-old Internet entrepreneur, born and bred in Wimbledon, currently based in Oxford having completed a Mathematics degree at Oxford University in 2007. In addition to working on my startup GroupSpaces, I also write for The Gateway newspaper as their Entrepreneurship Columnist and train for my current sporting passion: triathlons.
Last Thursday, I was invited by Tim Lambertstock to pitch GroupSpaces at an event entitled What’s Hot? held by Oxford’s branch of the British Computing Society at Oxford’s e-Research Centre that was looking for “A selection of Hot Technology ideas to change the world”. Along with GoNumber.com and a concept-stage idea for a communications gadget for tour groups, I had to talk for 5 minutes summarising GroupSpaces and then answer 5 minutes of questions from a panel including:
Having had a few months off being grilled since we were raising the angel investment I found it useful to polish my pitch and answer the usual questions about user acquisition, monetisation, team etc.
At the end of the evening, the audience had to vote on which idea they liked the most and I won by a small margin. This meant that I received the prize of £100 and duly purchased the first round of beers for everyone at the Lamb & Flag (St. Giles, Oxford) afterwards!
The other nice thing that came out of the evening was the opportunity to speak to lots of members of local groups around Oxford; it was very reassuring to hear that they all shared similar pain points to those I named in the pitch and they’ll hopefully start Beta testing our product once we extend the Beta outside the student market.
The judges also assessed the companies based on their business viability and the strength of their management team, and it’s going to be fantastic for Andy and my credibility now that we’ve successfully run this gauntlet.
Last week we publicly announced that GroupSpaces raised 6 figures of funding from a consortium of experienced Angel Investors including Avonmore Developments. From writing our Business Plan over July and August last year to closing the deal in January, the past 6 months have provided both an exciting journey and fantastic learning experience.
I thought it would be interesting to share our time-line throughout this process:
Earlier this week, Andy and I submitted our application for Web Mission 2008.
The event will see 20 UK Web 2.0 companies travel to San Francisco to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley. It will be showcasing innovative UK web talent, seek meaningful assistance for companies ready for expansion, and provide a platform for those involved to gain valuable media and business exposure.
Serial networker and entrepreneur Oli Barrett has joined forces with social impact facilitators Polecat to organise the event which runs from 19th-25th April.
Thinking of joining or founding a start-up? Want to get experience of working in a real start-up environment? Reckon you can design hot, sexy Web interfaces?
GroupSpaces are looking for a Graphic Designer to join us in our headquarters at the Oxford Centre for Innovation over the Easter Vacation (March/April). You’ll get to work directly with the founders (Andy Young and I) and your work will get seen and used by many of your friends and peers.
So, if you think you can make www.GroupSpaces.com look better, and are passionate about GroupSpaces and Web 2.0 in general, then we want to hear from you. Shoot me an e-mail at david@groupspaces.com for more info.
Hi, I'm David Langer. Welcome to my blog Freed from The Matrix, a collection of insights, interviews, hacks and other stuff that's relevant to young entrepreneurs. I'm the co-founder & CEO of 
You’ve got an ambitious business idea, done your initial research, started developing your product and you need some investment to finish building it and take it to market. This is a common situation for young entrepreneurs to find themselves in.
Last Thursday, I was invited by Tim Lambertstock to pitch 
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