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Baltic Venture’s mission is to build a flagship early-stage tech accelerator in the Liverpool City Region and our Angel Syndicate plays a vital role in achieving this.
Each year the Baltic Ventures angel syndicate invest into our Accelerator’s cohort of game-changing founding teams, with each company receiving a £30,000 equity investment from the syndicate.
We were delighted to welcome Susanna Lawson to our angel syndicate for Accelerator 2024, and earlier this month our Programme Director Mo sat down with Susanna to find out more about what she looks for in companies she invests into, what it’s like being part of angel syndicate and why she is gravitating towards female-led and mission-driven businesses.
Susanna co-founded apprenticeship software company OneFile in a back bedroom in Manchester back in 2005, bootstrapping the business until its sale in October 2021 to Constellation Software, Canada’s second largest tech company.
Semi retirement didn’t go to plan
Her plans for “semi retirement” were short lived and Susanna went on to co-found an online word of mouth platform called the Circle of Trust. She has also made a handful of angel investments, including in Baltic Ventures alumni Gaia Learning and Financielle.
“It was never part of my plan to be an angel investor,” she laughed, explaining that concepts like angel investing or pitching to venture capital firms weren’t on her radar as a bootstrapped founder.
“I didn’t even know about tax relief schemes like SEIS or EIS and I certainly didn’t know much about syndicates.”
As someone who’s fairly early in their angel investing journey, Susanna says she hasn’t yet developed a water-tight thesis but has been gravitating towards female-led and mission-driven businesses so far, particularly in the edtech space.
“Being part of an angel syndicate is really useful – not only are you naturally spreading your risk but it opens your eyes to lots of types of businesses and opportunities that you might otherwise not have come across,” she said.
Dip your toes in
Angel investing is often seen as inaccessible or shrouded in mystery, but Susanna is keen to encourage people to dip their toes in the water, particularly through joining a syndicate.
“I would definitely recommend that people join a local or regional syndicate, especially if they don’t have first-hand experience listening to pitches and asking founders the right questions,” she says.
“Having the expertise of everyone else in the room and seeing opportunities outside your immediate network is really valuable.”
Resilience is arguably the most important trait
When assessing founders and deciding whether or not to invest, Susanna says resilience is arguably the most important trait, followed by conviction, passion and drive for the problem they’re solving.
“You can obviously spot a business opportunity and do incredible amounts of research on the market and your target customers, but founders who’ve lived through the pain they’re trying to solve are unrivalled,” she says.
“Oftentimes that might mean that they don’t have the sales and commercial acumen but that’s where the importance of a support network or accelerators come in, not to mention angels who can bring in value.”
