Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
This podcast is also sponsored by ODEV Tech.
ODEV Tech is your premier software development
partner. Make sure you check them out at odev
.tech. The podcast is also sponsored by Notion
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thestoreofevents .co .uk, to read in the software.
Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Idires Mohamed.
Welcome to the podcast. Hi Ricardo, great to
meet you again. This time in a podcast setting,
so nice to see you. If you'd like to introduce
yourself to the audience, please. Yeah, my name
is Idris Mohammed. I am the CEO and founder of
Chainvest. Chainvest is a platform that connects
startups and investors seamlessly using AI matchmaking.
It's not white Tinder for investors. You're not
swiping left or right, but it's more of a chat
GPT style AI model where investors can go in
there and search up. whatever it is they're looking
for. It could be, I am looking for a fintech
startup, pre -revenue, post -MVP, free founders,
once exited, as niche as you like. And it kind
of show them almost like a crowdfunding style.
It will show them all different types of startups
and they can connect with them and contact them.
And a later one will be introducing the crowdfunding
side, which will be done through tokenization
of private shares. Interesting. And how did you
come up with this idea? Because it's quite revolutionary.
Do you know what? It's pretty interesting. Because
I went for an accelerator program back in July.
I finished it. There was one point where we was
talking about product market fit and then we
went into a much deeper conversation with the
team about how we actually came about starting
this. And for me, I always thought, you know,
I had a passion for startups. You know, I loved
watching anything to do with startups, Silicon
Valley, the history behind it, the history behind
venture capital. It's just something that I've
always loved. You know, but there's... seems
to be a much deeper reason for where I started.
And it goes back to when I was in my very early
20s, I used to invest in the AIM market, which
is the alternative index market. And it's really
penny stocks, right? And it's high risk, high
reward. And, you know, I didn't have such a great
time in there. There's a lot of, you know, small
companies, very small valuations, small market
caps, and you know, it can 10 times in a day
and maybe it might not. And, you know, so I always
knew there's a place out there in a strong community.
I made a lot of friends in that community that,
you know, want to invest at early stage. You
know, they don't want to invest. They don't want
to turn, you know, one pound into £1 .20. They
want to have the opportunity to turn £1 into
£10, which is what a lot of angel investors essentially
do. At the time, the AIM market left a bitter
taste in my mouth based on a lot of the companies
that were going down and whatnot. At the same
time, I was seeing quite a lot of companies that
privately making so much money is like, how comes
I can't invest in that if I mean, famously, Airbnb
struggled to raise, I think 150 grand. And it
was like, you know, they finally got the investment,
but if they had one person give them one, one
grand at that time and invested in that 150 grand,
I think that's worth like 3 million today. And
it's like, those are the opportunities that we
don't have. But we have, you know, these public
AIM market, especially if you're not a high net
worth individual who can't actually access startup
material. And so that is truly what kind of drove
my forward thinking and subconsciously probably
played a massive factor on why I built Chainvest
because it is just connecting really investors
with great startups. There's some really great
investors out there and we built this to begin
with more for them. And we learn a lot of what
we're building with our research from investors
that are investing in very niche companies. And
those are the ones that have the biggest problems,
you know, you're talking about FemTech, HealthTech.
You know, we've had some tell us that they get
up to 500 cold mills of emails, which is really
just, you know, time consuming, terrible, but
at the same time, They say without it, there's
no business. But then what do you do when you
go for 500? And, you know, 70 % of them are fintech
companies or just like they just don't even match
the criteria or what they invest in, let alone
being good enough opportunity. And so I think
this is where we kind of decided we need to kind
of cater more towards them and then start building
for the startups as well. And yeah, that's the
origins, shall I say. It's quite fascinating
because you're connecting the dots, isn't it?
I interview a lot of people and it's always...
A common thing between entrepreneurs is the ability
to connect the dots. And this was born out of
your frustration with investing in the stock
market, but then also how do I transform it and
take this to the startup world? How do I make
sure that people are able to find good startups,
invest in them when they're just getting started
because... Like you said, Airbnb, Uber, for example,
they are really, really struggling in the beginning
and it became hilarious how much they struggle
in the beginning. One of them, I'm not sure if
it's Uber or Airbnb or something else, but I
know he got to a moment in their story where
they ended up selling pizzas for a conference
because they were running out of money and they
made 10k that way. Yeah, I think Airbnb would
start selling cereals or something as well. That
was its cereals. That was its cereals, not pizzas.
Yeah. But he goes to show nowadays we would we
would jump on that opportunity. Hey, you don't
invest in every week. Yes, of course I want to
invest in Airbnb but at the time they didn't
have enough attention and now giving them a platform
to be able to do this and there's you know, I
talked with a lot of stars is there's tons of
great ideas out there. But the question is always
how do we get past the gatekeeper? How do we
make sure that someone reads our email? Someone
looks at our pitch deck. Someone even spent some
time with us. And that's always the hardest thing.
And yeah, it makes it makes a lot of sense where
you guys are building. And from your feedback
from the startups you're getting, what are they
saying? So the feedback so far has been great.
We've got quite a lot on our waitlist at the
moment as we plan to launch, hopefully, right
at the beginning of January. They're excited.
They're really excited about what we do as startups
to try and raise investment. There's a lot. you
know, of emails, as you know, you wait for opportunities,
sort of introductions, the fact that they can
actually list on our platform and potentially
just get emails saying, hey, I found you on here.
That gives them, you know, a bit more. We've
had some startups say if this goes how they hoped
it would, it allows them to build more and kind
of focus on building. And maybe, you know, they
can allow this platform to kind of do a lot of
the dirty work for them but you know hopefully
it won't be as simple as that of course everybody
knows but it gives them something to kind of
like sit back and kind of allow them to work
hard on everything else that they're building
and because as a startup founder myself you know
you've got to leverage different you've got to
kind of focus on where you put your time in you
know you have You'll be building, building, building.
You've got to stop sometimes in the middle of
that. You've got a meeting here, and a meeting
here, and a meeting there. And you've constantly
got to do that. And it's great. But at the same
time, if there is a way to kind of streamline
and take a bit of time away from what you're
doing, then that's pretty helpful for a startup.
But they're excited about the opportunity for
them to be discovered. And we've had a few conversations
with a few scouts, venture scouts and stuff like
that and how they would like to leverage our
product to kind of scout talent companies potentially
that match their, you know, program and grants
and stuff like that. I mean, it's actually really
amazing the opportunities that can come out of
this because one of the conversations we had
with the companies, you know, they offer grants
out to certain companies and maybe they can just
search around and see if they can find startups
that and reach out to them. And it's like, that
is, I wish something like that was around for
me a long time ago. Can you imagine getting an
email saying, Hey, why don't you try applying
for our grant? We think you match. I mean, that'll
be awesome because it's such a nightmare just
figuring out what grants are available. What's
the criteria? How do you even write the grant
application? There's a whole science to it. It's
not straightforward at all. Yeah. And is it even
worth the time and yeah exactly that so yeah
it's not very exciting. How are you finding like
I know you're building this and it's going well
but how are you finding managing all this you
know I'm sure you you also have a personal life
you also have friends and family that need your
attention how are you finding you know managing
that? Yeah I mean it's it's not easy but when
when you love it it can be you know, your passion
kind of takes over and you can kind of find a
way to balance it and it gives you the urge,
you know, when you get an idea and you decide
to wake up at 6 a .m. and start writing, you
know, it doesn't feel too much like you're working
and, you know, we have the opportunity to kind
of attend events or start up events and, you
know, meet new people all the time, you know.
Fortunately for me, my personal life is a little
bit low maintenance. You know, I do have my daughters
in school every day. My wife and yeah, we just,
you know, I try and lock off a little bit here
and there, but it's hard sometimes when the ideas
are flowing, when you're in it, when you've got
the creative juices going. For me, I can be locked
in for quite some time. When you don't, you know,
I'm not saying that I'll turn around and be like,
hey, I'm here now. But, you know, you kind of
leverage and you kind of use what kind of time
you have and you balance it out in a way that's
actually suitable, because there's going to be
days when you might feel a bit rough and, you
know, you know, you've got to look after yourself
mentally, physically. And yeah, just go. Is this
your first startup or you've done others in the
past? I've worked at others, but no, this is
my first startup and my co -founder actually
he's you know worked in other startups and he's
had his own startup that he's Worked in as well,
which is more of a hardware Side of things and
now you know for this round the initial round.
How much are you guys raising? We are making
this is public well, we've Yeah, so fortunately,
if you had interviewed me last week, I probably
would have said, hey, you've caught me off guard,
but we've opened up fundraising round. We ourselves
have SEIS, EIS Assurance, and we're raising 500k,
which is open at the moment. So people, if people
want to invest, it'll be easier for them to find
you and also take on this opportunity, just a
great opportunity. When you're planning the growth
of a startup, it's always hard because there's
an element of Accurate forecasting and an element
of luck when you're forecasting as well, because
you never know which way it's going to go. What
do you see as your main pain points right now
in order to grow the business? The fortunate
thing for us is that we're building something
that's a two -way market for investors and startups,
which is why we focused a lot on what the investors
needed. We did a lot of research on that. Because
on the startup side, I think we kind of understand
what it is and we was in an accelerator program,
we were speaking to other accelerators and it
was like, oh man, I wish there was something
that had this and we kind of understand the pain
points that we're doing is for us and we're just
kind of validating with other startups that are
with us. You know, we're currently dealing with
probably regulations, which is, you know, we've
got legal advisors on our team. Essentially,
you know, we know exactly what we need to do.
but we have to be really careful with some of
the, once we start going into eventually allowing
crowdfunding to happen on our platform, which
is in our roadmap. So the pain points, I'd say,
we understand the pain points and we go through
it ourselves and we see it and we try and see
how easily we could make things and kind of build
a product. that kind of helps startups, but really
matches the needs of investors who are important
users for us as well. Have you found it hard
to talk with investors, to reach out to investors?
Because I know it's always hit or miss when it's
an email, so how is that experience going? I
mean, we've got investors on our wait list, but
it was in a way... The funny thing is, you know,
we want investors on our wait list to join our
platform and it's a different kind of conversation
as you can imagine is we are open for fundraising
which in fact is an easier conversation than
we are fundraising so it's been actually pretty
good for us because you know you know like I
said we are solving something for them and we've
had a few of them come up and turn around and
become kind of like help us with give us advice
on what you know, they're looking for and how
to build it and what they actually pain points
really are and stuff like that. So, yeah, we've
had to be careful with our language as well,
because, you know, investors get an email from
a startup and it's like, oh, it's fundraising.
It's like, there's another code email, but it's
like, no, this is for you to, here we've got
products for you to use. Yeah, it's been, the
conversations were good. It's just completely
different from what we're used to, which is fundraising,
which will, what we'll be having soon. And, you
know, we kind of appreciate, you know, that level
of, you know, investors joining our waitlist
very early that we've never pushed any sort of
our own initial fundraise on them or anything.
And we've kind of treated it completely separate
to that based on the reason why they're joining
our waitlist is completely separate. And we don't
want to kind of actually overstep that kind of
boundary. And we just want to, you know, They've
joined our witness for one particular reason
now. How are you finding? You know, I don't when
you're building something. It's always yes It's
always hard to have hard moments. So when you
having a rough day me personally This is goodness.
All right, so I'm curious Yeah, you know, I always
like we're asking this type of questions and
I'll tell you why because we always look at entrepreneurs
as this Gods on earth that can do everything
and everything is you know easy to fix blah blah,
but in reality we also have really bad days and
Understanding and getting some tips from other
people and how to manage our bad days. I think
it's super valuable for the audience So that's
why I like asking this question Yeah, I've got
three. I've got three things. I do right one
of them is you know There's days where you've
got a lot of tasks. You know you need to do it,
but you just can't you're feeling rough or that
it's not there and you need to do it right. And
when it's that, I like to, I go on YouTube and
I play some very lo -fi, nice jazz sort of cozy
music. And it's kind of like that helps me work
and do all my tasks. And then there's, you know,
then there's when you actually need to do, you
know, you're not feeling like That's when you've
got tasks to do, right? To be honest with you,
that's just getting the motivation to do it.
Having getting motivation to actually start like,
you know, pushing yourself to start to push yourself,
I think is a completely different one. And for
that, like I like to listen to some really motivational
YouTube sort of videos. And these are really
intense stuff. And it's like really like, get
out of work, nobody's gonna save you. I think
you might have seen some of these motivational
ones. You gotta wake up at 4am, go to the gym.
I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna do that part, but
it's working. And then it's like, it's really
like, and there's this dramatic music playing
in the background. And you'd think, honestly,
like I've done like, there's times when I've
listened to that, and I've gone to the gym at
5am. And it's like, I'm gonna start my day like
this. Yeah, that's impressive. Two things getting
up that early and also for the gym to be open
at 5 a .m. because You know what you'd be surprised
because that these these type of things I think
they can for me personally works It's probably
not for everyone and and the third one for me
is something that you know My wife is kind of
helped me with and this one it goes on This one's
probably underrated in it Allow it embrace it
and be okay with it for the day or for all for
half the day just for that just for that day
not all the time but every now and then just
you know what today I will just allow myself
yeah I will and I'm gonna probably watch six
episodes of whatever in a row I'm not gonna do
this tomorrow but just today and not all the
time but I think that helps me tomorrow I'm a
completely different person honestly and it probably
does me more benefits and you know and and and
the important things to make your brain allow
yourself because you won't feel any weight of
you should be doing this while you're doing probably
eating junk or ever watching something like that
and it kind of does I wouldn't advise that all
the time once in a blue moon but I think that's
very that that one there is very important and
you should know your body and your mind and your
and mentally and be like okay you know this is
this is fine for today you know I do that every
once in a blue moon, which is I make sure that
taking a day off is part of my plans. Because
I realize actually, you know what, if I wanted
to work nine to five, I will be working nine
to five. But because I work a lot more than nine
to five, and I work two very late hours, it's
like some days it's okay to take a day off and
say, I'm just going to chill today. I'm just
going to relax, not do anything. will clear my
brain and then the next day I'm going to be beaming
with energy you know full of beans but today
I need to take a day off but it's hard isn't
it? Exactly so that's the part I think where
for me my wife kind of helped me with because
once you do a lot of people do that and the guilt
is there and they can't even enjoy the time they're
having you know off right because it's like I
should be doing this I should be doing this but
once you kind of align yourself and kind of accept
and be completely okay with this is the type
of day I'm gonna have you can actually enjoy
your day guilt free and it's much more you know
rewarding personally what you're doing then and
it's actually helpful for you then the next day
in that sense because like you said like you're
gonna some people are gonna do it regardless
because it's just not there today and what's
the point of not what's the point of going through
that kind of day anyway and trying to feel the
guilt and maybe trying to open up the laptop
for like 10 minutes and it's not just happening
and stuff like that just you know and the next
day that might actually you know transfer over
to the next day that same feeling as well if
so that's it I'm thinking one of my favorite
movies Top Gun right and there's two scenes which
are iconic in the movie or actually in both of
the movies are quite iconic and it's the the
volleyball scene in the first movie and American
football on the beach in the second movie and
you see these fighter pilots they're training
really really hard it's a super hard mission
and then they take a day off and they go to the
beach and they play whatever sports you know
first movie is the whole playing volleyball on
the beach with jeans which is really weird yeah
and then the second one is okay let's play American
football on the beach Tom Cruise is also wearing
jeans which continues being very weird but at
the same time Yeah, you need to take some time
off every once in a while, right? But just don't
do it in jeans on the beach with Sam. I'm sure
some entrepreneurs listening to this and they're
probably thinking, I should build some beach
jeans. Jeans you can take to the beach. Yeah,
jeans you're going to see in the next Top Gun
movie. Exactly. That was me. Where did you get
your motivation from? Yeah, they said it was
a good idea. Okay, let me build that fabric and
that design and you know ways of clearing up
the sand just Be when you watch the next Top
Gun movie We need to keep a look out and see
what kind of jeans you're wearing because we
might have motivated the idea I think so. I think
we should start asking for some copywriting rights
or something. I'll pass it right now That could
be a good way. But it's going back to the business
side of things. I'm always fascinated with accelerators
and the knowledge they give you. How impactful
was the accelerator for you, you know, starting
out and actually being able to launch the business
afterwards? Did you actually learn a lot of stuff?
Yeah. I learned an awful lot. I was at Blocklojo
and you know, the team there, they have a great
group of mentors. You know, we actually did mentor
speed dating, which they had like so many mentors,
too many. And, you know, they had a few minutes
with each one and, and they all had completely
different backgrounds, you know, some of them
exited founders, UI, UX, products, legal, you
know, and some of them, when I talk about impactful,
you know, one of my legal advisors I speak to
till now, you know, beyond the, he's still mentoring,
he's not advising, he's still mentoring, you
kind of create that kind of a relationship with
some of the mentors and you some of them are
going to be very crucial to you in the long run
and you never know some of them might be with
you till the end and then you've got obviously
what you learn there you know as a startup founder
you think you know quite a lot until they're
kind of like it's like you know they strip you
down and and build you up properly not not not
literally but Emotionally, do you find it hard
for that process to happen? Yeah, I think for
me to be honest with you I've always had a passion
for like the startups like so for me I Was like
one of the ones that was in a little bit early.
I have this kind of fascination with like the
history behind the Silicon Valley and startups
and that's kind of like really like even before
way before like during covid and my wife would
tell me that I used to mess up the YouTube algorithm
she's like why is this like it's like how a rich
how a poor kid from here built the biggest you
know just constantly like I used to be obsessed
with that kind of stuff and still I'm in a degree
so for me it was very like it was like almost
like being in that incubator sort of setting
was like it sounds strange but like it was like
a really something that I wish wanted to do for
a very long time so but the part that gets you
probably that can mentally drain you as well
is a lot of the assumptions that you had when
it comes to building and stuff like you know
you really learned that you know it's not nothing
is what you thought you know to do a proper product
market fit Can make you question your entire
idea, you know When you start doing proper research,
which you didn't actually in fact take into account
when you had an idea Can actually make you question
Your entire business, you know like completely
and we've seen that happen with certain startups
and it's like this person You know, they've been
on it for a year and they've come through there
and they realize that they don't actually have
a good They're not building the realization,
but they kind of pivot into stuff, you know what's
necessary and they help you kind of find that
but you know the theory side of things I think
is very important when it comes to startups you
know and it's not just about how to write your
pitch deck how to do a financial model there's
the entire like the product market fit the MVP
testing research, going out there, speaking to
customers, speaking to users, potential users,
clients, and, and yeah, just just even, you know,
then there is the side of like the MVP and the
financial model and pitch and how you speak to
investors and whatnot. That side of things, obviously,
is very, very valuable for me, though I took
what I took the most out of these programs is,
you know, the theory side of, you know, I Probably
say like, you know what? I thought I knew I didn't
really know In a sense when it comes to startups
here What advice would you if you could go back
in time and advise yourself a year back? What
advice would you give to yourself knowing what
you know now? I would say see if see if what
you're building is needed because I Think an
idea is great, right? But you could take the
idea so far until you find out that this is just
a great idea. It's not actually feasible. It's
not actually necessary, really. And how much
time and money have you spent? And the thing
is, I would say, do not be afraid to accept that
that's a possibility. Because you can fall in
love with an ideal and you know love you know
we love our children we love our family we love
our mothers and stuff like that and you know
no matter what we would do everything to hold
on to them and when you talk about falling in
love with an idea it can honestly be the same
and it's like nobody can ever tell you that it's
never going to work or it's not bad or maybe
you should pivot to this or change in that there
might be core concepts that actually are really
really good but there's probably certain elements
that need tweaking and it's like be open to that
you know Be open to that completely. For me,
even a brand, people will fall in love with a
brand and a name. It's like, hey, it's fine.
Don't fall in love with it. Fall in love with
it, but don't fall in love with it. But think
before you ask. Love the process. As we're reaching
the end of the podcast, if people want to reach
out to you, how can they do so? Yeah, you can
find me on linkedin you can find chain vest .io.
That's chain and vest You know not an actual
vest made of chains, but chain vest. It's spelt
the same way. I know you can find me on linkedin
Idris Mohammed at chain vest you could probably
find and yeah reach out to me if your startup
looking to kind of match with investors platform
you know, go on chainvest .io, reach out to me
and yeah, we're building some for startups. And
if you're an investor, we are building our weightless
as well. This is a platform that we built specifically
for you guys, especially if you're like looking
for like niche stuff that you know exactly what
you're looking for, you know, tired of the cold
mills and everything. It's time to, you know,
search exactly like you, what you wouldn't want,
like you would in chat GPT and get options like
you would on a crowdfunding platform. and reach
out to them, founders like that. Well, this is
taking so much of your time. I really appreciate
it. Appreciate it as well. Talk to you soon.
Bye. The podcast is also sponsored by Notion
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