Apr 20, 2021
Dear SaasCo is the new DSW Ventures blog series focused on founders and board members of start-ups and scale-ups. In the first edition, Keith Benson discusses the importance of being prepared for exit – even in early-stage companies. To: founder@saasco.co.uk Cc:... 
Apr 7, 2021
One Utility Bill, the Newcastle-based business which simplifies the utilities experience for consumers, landlords and letting agents – has raised a further £1.6m. The follow-on investment round was led by incumbent investors DSW Ventures, the venture capital... 
Mar 3, 2021
An events booking platform which has found a new line of business delivering afternoon teas during the pandemic is celebrating its 5,000th booking. Poptop – which is backed by DSW Ventures – has been helping people throughout the country to celebrate special... 
Feb 23, 2021
“This round is valued at £6m pre-money. That’s because the last round closed at £3m. Back then, it was just me. Now there are two of us.” Back to valuations and pricing. This post is a brief journey around some of the arguments about why venture and angel... 
Feb 16, 2021
After a stretch of fairly cold technical posts, we’re now turning to look at a more human issue – how hard should you, the investor, push your due diligence questioning? Most founders have a visionary streak. They see success as close at-hand, more so than the rest of... 
Jan 26, 2021
DSW Ventures first invested in Poptop in December 2018 alongside existing investor Northstar Ventures. Two years on and (hopefully) almost one pandemic later, we spoke to CEO and Co-Founder Eugene Shestopal to hear about the Poptop journey and his experience raising... 
Jan 26, 2021
We have previously run through some of the principles involved in negotiating vesting provisions for founder shares and employee share options. In this post, we’re looking at some of the more detailed choices facing management and investors, about vesting and some... Jan 14, 2021
Poptop – the Newcastle-based events booking platform – has raised a further £440,000 to pursue its global expansion plans. The funding comes from existing investors DSW Ventures and NorthStar Ventures, which was investing from the North East Innovation Fund supported... 
Dec 15, 2020
We focus a lot in this series on the tougher aspects of a venture investment. You might think this reflects deep negativity or anxiety. It is absolutely the opposite. Scope out any problems at the start. Then fix them. Move on. Succeed. Warranties are... 
Dec 1, 2020
Managers in a scale-up business need to be incentivised by having a meaningful stake in the company they run. Often they don’t. This is a big problem which may well be a serious long-term valuation drag. But it can be fixed… A recurring theme in our series is that... 