We currently consider pre-seed & seed stage companies. Our model works best with Founders who have a early stage MVP that has an evidence of traction with limited revenue and needs support from our cross-functional team of experts in product, user design, strategy and technology in order to maximise the value it can provide its customers. For example we can add the significant value for startups with a small WordPress marketplace struggling with customer demands for new capabilities and missing opportunities to monetise due to innovation costs and technical debt. Alternatively, primarily offline businesses where technology could improve customer experience, remove the current limitations and drive efficiencies and new opportunities.

Our terms will vary on a deal-by-deal basis. However, you should expect to see some of the following. A board observer role which allows us to provide strategic & fundraising support. Information provision rights which give us access to quarterly management accounts and annual budget forecasts. An undertaking that typically 50% of the proceeds from the investment we provide must be used to fund the product and tech services provided by Founder + Lightning. Investor majority consent required for the following: declaring dividends, selling the company, issuing shares at a down-round price, altering the articles of association, winding up the company or making acquisitions. Finally, in addition to our investors’ equity, Founder + Lightning takes share options worth up to 5% of the shares outstanding.

Our investments are typically sector-agnostic. We focus instead on businesses that can demonstrate evidence of solving a real problem for their customers, whatever the industry, ideally via a B2B business model. If the investment is successful, we partner you with our venture studio team who have helped to create successful ventures in Proptech, RevTech, Martech and many others while also taking on challenging B2C projects in recruitment, dating, education and travel. Despite our investments now being focused on B2B businesses, all of this experience helps us build better businesses together.

We focus on niche but not 'trendy' high volume industries. We work with our Founders to understand the real problem they are solving and how technology can provide a solution. We always look for ways to design, build and launch a small but valuable product so that we can test live with users as quickly as possible and unfortunately in our experience, 'trendy' technologies are often high effort for little value to the end customer.

50% of the funds invested are typically utilised on tech and product services with Founder + Lightning. This will provide you with the team who will build your technology.

The majority of our portfolio are teams that do not have a CTO as our expert teams will provide equivalent services post-investment. Often pre-seed Founders think they need this role but often it's too early. Our expert teams are able to provide CTO level of support whilst also working day to day to deliver on your goals. We build our technology so that once your business is ready to take the CTO role in house, they are happy to take over! If you do have a CTO and feel we could still help we are happy to work together - our due diligence process allows us to work out how both teams will work together.

You own your tech. While we are working together, your development team will create new accounts with the services that support your platform and the chosen architecture - Heroku, Mixpanel and Webflow are good examples of these services. This means the team can use their experience to set everything up correctly, work efficiently together and then easily transfer ownership if/when our team scales down and your in-house team scales up! We also create new accounts so you can benefit from our startup discounts.

We will be providing investment to each successful company on a first-come-first-serve, rolling basis. We have the capacity to provide investment for 1-2 companies per month.