Do you work with founders and want to help them to access early-stage investment?

Sign up for the 'How Early-Stage Investment Works' online course to learn everything you need to know about the investment ecosystem.

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Support your founders

You will complete the course with a full understanding of how the early-stage investment ecosystem works and be able to guide founders on their funding needs.

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Live and fully interactive 

Led and delivered live by an industry expert from the trade body for early-stage investing with all your questions answered.

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Explore the sources of investment

From Angel to VC and Grants, the course looks at all the major funding sources available to founders, how they work and how they co-exist. 

What will you get from this course?

This 5-hour course is designed for anyone who supports a community of entrepreneurs and wants to help them with raising investment. The course will guide you through the basics of early-stage investing and how it works.

From this course, you will have a better understanding of:

  • The broader investment ecosystem and how it fits in with the growth journey of a startup.
  • The different sources of investment and how they work, including Angel and VC.
  • What a startup should look like in order to attract funding.
  • The key practical steps a founder should take to attract investment.
  • Some practical signposts you can give founders to go and find the investors they need.
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Who is this course for?

Anyone that looks after a community of founders, or engages with founders on a regular basis, including:

  • Accelerator programme managers.

  • Councils or LEPs that operate founder-facing programmes.

  • Corporates that have a service offering for early stage founders.

  • Public-sector organisations that want a clearer understanding of early-stage equity.

Upcoming course dates

   TBC 2024

£595 plus VAT
(member discount available)

The course runs from 10 am to 4 pm, online via Zoom.

What the course covers

How the investment ecosystem works

  • What are the current market challenges and how they impact investment

  • How Angels differ from VCs and how they operate

  • The right funding sources to target based on a founder's stage

What investors look for in a founder

  • How to tell if a founder is right for equity investment

  • What makes an investment opportunity attractive

  • How valuations work for an early-stage investment round

How to secure investment 

  • The key documents needed to approach investors

  • Top tips for operating a funding campaign

  • Easy places for founders to go to find new investors
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Meet your tutor Roderick Beer

Roderick’s career spans over 19 years of managing, founding and growing angel groups and investment platforms that have collectively deployed over £100m of equity investment in more than 500 startup and scaleup businesses. ​

He started his career at Beer & Partners, one of the first and largest angel groups in the UK, and later helped form and grow a corporate finance firm as their COO. ​

He is now the Managing Director of the UK Business Angels Association, the trade body for angel and early-stage investing, representing over 200 organisations that collectively deploy over £2bn p.a. in early-stage, UK businesses.​

Course alumni

apcuk
dstl
napier
enterpriseenfield
homegrown
innovationsuper
fundinglondon
paragon
prospedia
rothamsted
raeng
ual
essex
icure