In the third episode of the Channel 4 Ventures series, I interview Tom Adeyoola, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Extended Ventures. We discuss his journey through the creative industries and his experiences in raising investments for his startup, Metail, where he secured £25 million. Our conversation delves into the challenges underrepresented founders face in sourcing investment, the emotional nature of early-stage funding decisions, and the importance of expanding the funnel to include diverse founders. This episode is ideal for course creators, membership owners, coaches, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of business investments.
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Transcript
Teresa:
Hello, and welcome back to this special series of the Your Dream Business podcast, where we are teaming up with Charmful Ventures I’m bringing you some phenomenal business owners [00:01:00] talking all about not only how did they create their businesses, but also what experience they’ve had in getting investment for their own businesses and the journey that they’ve gone on.
Today, I am interviewing Tom. Tom is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and board director across the creative industry companies, private and public. He grew his fashion technology startup, Metail, to exit raising 25 million pounds. Tom is also the co founder of Extended Ventures, which uses insights to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresentative founders, and now sits on various boards.
Boards, including Channel four and leading independent schools, St. Paul’s. He’s actively involved in investing and policy co-authoring a labor startup review. Can I be completely honest? I felt so stupid talking to Tom. This guy is so smart, right? And he. Like [00:02:00] the stuff he’s done, you know how some people are just serial entrepreneurs.
That’s what I got from him. I’m just looking at my notes and I literally have written fingers in many pies. He has done so much stuff. He’s involved with so many things. He has been in non profit. He sits on steering boards. He is a massive expert in this space. And, and I was like, I don’t know that I was intimidated by him because he’s such a nice guy, and the conversation was great.
And I have to say, if I’m being completely honest, this whole series that I’m doing is feeling very intimidating because it is an industry in an area that I don’t understand enough about, and I feel like I’m getting serious imposter syndrome of like, who am I to bring this to you because I don’t understand it well enough.
However, I think sometimes when it comes to, and I’ve told you guys this before, like if I’m interviewing someone on a subject, I don’t know, I become even better at [00:03:00] interviewing them because I am like, okay, no, explain this to me. And now I need, yeah. Like I really kind of delve deep because I’m coming from a place of, I don’t know what you’re talking about, or.
I need to understand this. So I hope that’s the way it’s going across, not, Therese doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But Tom was so smart, he’s such a nice guy, but it really was Like I said, he’s, he’s super smart. I felt a little bit intimidated by what he knows, the experience he’s had. And sometimes I fail like my little teeny tiny business over here is like laughable to what he might be doing, but you know, there’s scale in everything.
Like, and I’m sure Tom would look at someone who runs a multi billion pound company and think the same. So, you know, different people doing different things. But one thing that was super fascinating was we talked about how people go into business when their family doesn’t come from an entrepreneurial background.
His didn’t, obviously mine didn’t either. We talked about how he has two sides of him. So [00:04:00] interestingly, he went to Cambridge because he got a scholarship, but he does not fit in the white wealthy man box. And that was super interesting for him. And he said a couple of things in the interview where.
Because he went to Cambridge, people almost saw him as a white, wealthy man, which is really, really interesting. I’ve written here again, he was so smart and fascinating. And we talked about the fact that I assumed investment came from smart people who looked at facts, and it’s not an emotional thing or a connection thing.
But that’s exactly what he said it was. He said a lot of investment comes from connection and emotion, which is why there are very few people in underrepresented societies that are white. getting investment because the people who have got the money to invest are becoming connected with someone who is like them.
And then we talked about how he’s driving change in this space. It’s not about backing businesses that aren’t good enough, but being open to [00:05:00] businesses that wouldn’t normally get funding. It’s a really great conversation. I think you’re going to love it. Like I said, see how stupid I signed on. Hopefully I hold my own as an interviewer, but You’re really going to enjoy this episode.
Here is the awesome Tom. So Tom, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to have you on.
Tom:
Thank you for having me.
Teresa:
My pleasure. So let’s start because you’re, I feel like you have many things in many pies to do with what we’re doing here and this conversation. So let’s just start with you explaining to the listeners who you are and what you do today and kind of how you got there.
Tom:
Sure. So, so my name is Tom Adeyula. I’ve been in the sort of startup space around the creative industries for over 25 years now. So I’ve worked in various startups from sport to telco to film, TV, Pirate Jets. I even managed a friend’s band for a while as a, as a side hustle. And then I [00:06:00] ran my own fashion technology startup.
for 11 years, which was very sort of high IP focused around computer vision, but originally was inspired by some research work that was done around replicating antique ornate statues. And it was all around trying to solve the online clothing fit problem. So I, I, I’ve been in that space for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of things and fundamentally I’m inspired by trying to solve problems and disruptive innovation.
I sold that company in 2019 and subsequently I’ve invested in a few startups specifically trying to look into sort of, Climate change, positive society, overlooked spaces in terms of how I focused. I also co founded a non profit called Extend Ventures, which is about using insight to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresented founders.
I also sit on the steering board of the Startup Coalition, which is the voice for startups in [00:07:00] the UK. I co authored the Labour Startup Funding Review for Rachel Reeves, and I also now sit on the board of Channel 4.
Teresa:
Wow. I’ll just end with a wow, because that is crazy amount of stuff. Like, that is, to me, what that says is you are absolutely an expert in this space.
Like, you can’t and wouldn’t have done all the things that you’ve done if you weren’t very knowledgeable about this space. But I just want to go back really quickly, just for my own curiosity, how did you get started? In creative startups, like what? What did that look like? Did you come out of college and get a job or?
Were your families entrepreneurs? Like where, how did that happen?
Tom:
No, so both my parents were immigrants to this country. So my mom’s Norwegian, my dad’s Nigerian. I was sort of fortunate enough to get a scholarship to an independent school, was bursary funded through, my dad worked on the buses, my mom worked in day nurseries.
So there was no sort of entrepreneurial bent, if you [00:08:00] like, there. But I was, yeah, I was, a good student. I was really interested in lots of different things. And I, I, I sort of followed all the opportunities that was given to me at school. And I, I recognized that it was a real sort of privilege in the sense of my sister went to a comprehensive.
I ended up at an independent school. I went on to Cambridge. She didn’t do a level. She didn’t go into university. And I think. Like, going through school, in, most of the time I felt like I was a jack of all trades and a master of none and I envied people who had a singular passion about a specific topic, but I was interested in everything, I wanted to try everything.
Um, and I did economics at university and the gravy train would have been into banking and I did some internships, but I found it really boring, like, and I didn’t really see the sort of like societal value of just pushing paper about, and I wanted to do something a bit more interesting. I originally started as [00:09:00] a management consultant.
And it was very focused around pharmaceutical sector and I, I got a good grounding in how to do spreadsheets and analysis and all of that, that good stuff right at that time, the internet being was happening and there were lots of like really cool startups starting and it felt like it was a moment where.
you could get involved and it sort of didn’t matter who you were. And there was no sort of like fixed hierarchy or structure. And with a friend, we, we were getting meetings with potential investors as, as, as kids straight out of university. And it seemed a really exciting space in the end. We felt that what we were trying to do, we were too late to the party, but through the experience of, of getting involved in what was a really exciting sector, commercial director, a company called Sportal, which is a big sports internet portal at the time, um, he, he saw me and he, he sort of, Tried to hire me and [00:10:00] ended up joining that company and sort of working directly for him pre vetting deals and then running all of e commerce across the websites because we ran the websites for AC Milan football club, Juventus football club, which we ran Euro 2000 football championships.
We had run the websites for South Africa, rugby America, sorry, Australian rugby, et cetera. And it was early days, but a real sort of like world west type environment. And. It was still too early, but it was that thing where if you solved a problem, you were just given more. So it felt meritocratic. It felt exciting.
And it, it was, it was great for someone like me where I felt like I could do well and I was rewarded subsequently. So that, that, that got me sort of going in terms of the entrepreneurial types of companies.
Teresa:
I love it. One thing that’s really interesting about your story and fits so perfectly, hence probably why you’re doing what you’re doing today, is that [00:11:00] you almost had, when we think about the investment into businesses and the type of businesses that get investment, we, one of the things that came out in the report was the fact of the.
you know, predominantly white males were the people who were getting them and well educated white males. So, you know, people who were going to the likes of Cambridge and places like that. and mixing it. And it was almost like, and I guess I can say as a bit of a boy’s club, you know, if you’re in, you’re fine.
If you’re not getting in is really hard, but you had two sides to that, that coin almost, you had the side where you went to Cambridge, you had that kind of in, but also, you know, You have the side where you weren’t brought up and I can’t, and this, this isn’t the podcast for it, but I would be fascinated to see how you got on at Cambridge as a scholarship student and, you know, and, and, and, well, obviously at school and, and mixing when [00:12:00] your lifestyle didn’t necessarily match up with some of those other people’s, that would just be for my own interest.
So we won’t go to it today, but. You had the other side where you didn’t come from a hugely wealthy family, you know, you came from, I guess, a fairly working class family, you know, you, your family were immigrants, like, and that’s kind of the, the, the interesting part of this is that in one way you fit really well, and you would be like, tick the box, yes, you would be in that world, but in another way, you don’t fit well and you don’t fit in that world.
So how was it for you, I guess, coming into the world of venture capitalists, coming into the world of, you know, startup businesses and, and seeing both the sides of that coin.
Tom:
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that’s really interesting. Like if I think about my time at school in university, I would say that There were only ever two black kids in the school at any given time.
And yeah, whereas, so I didn’t have any black friends. Whereas my sister [00:13:00] did, cause you went to a comprehensive and it was actually way more mixed. And then when I went to university, it was the same. So, and I actually, one of the, the other black kids was also Norwegian, Nigerian, and he, he became a friend.
Fake IT person and is, you know, that his character is what the intranet at Channel 4 is named after in terms of Moss from the IT crowd. Yeah. And, and I went into IT proper. Um, but it, it was that sense of like, I was part of this network of privilege, if you like, and, and to some extent, I remember having a board meeting once with somebody in my startup and they said, Oh, yeah, that the problem with your management team is that you’re, you’re, you know, you’re white and middle class.
And I was like, that’s interesting. So that there’s a color blindness here. And you haven’t recognized as well that. My CTO went to Comprehensive in Bradford, um, is working class background to me. My CFO is from Hong Kong, but you’ve basically, because we speak well and highly educated, we’ve jumped into a sort of [00:14:00] different stratosphere in terms of how we’ve viewed.
Yeah. But even still, I would say that, you know, and I’m quite diplomatic. I would say I’ve got quite EQ so I can see and understand how things happen. And even so, like it was, It’s trouble for me to get money in the UK, I would say. So I went to sort of different avenues to try and raise money. I ended up raising about 25 million for my company, but more than 20 million of it came from Asia.
Like I went to where the money was very directly related to the problem. So trying to get people who are so motivated by the problem you’re trying to solve that it’s just a very straightforward conversation, which isn’t about, yeah, am I investing in. Yeah, they can see past the who you are, because I think the difficult thing always is like, can you generate some sort of relay relatability with the investor on the other side of the table in a conversation?
And what is unfortunately true is that the investor in a conversation when you’re meeting them [00:15:00] has made that decision where they’re going to invest in you or not within five minutes. So before you ever get out of the deck, so if you’re spending that first five minutes trying to relate and there’s no common ground, it’s, it’s very difficult to get past that.
So, and you’re going to have much shorter time to present ultimately is business because actually an investment in the early stages is an emotional decision, but that’s the bottom line. And as, as a business grows and you become. More established, it’s a decision based on metrics, financials, and so on and so forth, but in the early stages, people are investing in you, and the vision, and if they don’t connect to you, it’s not going to happen, and fundamentally, the, the sort of sphere of people who have money is, you know, biased in one particular area, and, Hence, where they’re looking for some sort of [00:16:00] person to work with, they’re sort of looking within a meritocracy, as you might call it, rather than anything else.
So what’s, what’s, what’s the way in which, which they can connect, connect. That’s not to say that there are people who are more open than that, but in general, the people are thinking about their own money. They’re trying, they’re going for the path of, you know, least resistance really. Yeah. Who am I going to be able to, you know, have a relationship with over five to 10 years?
Teresa:
Which was a super interesting conversation that I talked about with Sam on her interview where we talked about the fact of like, In my head, very simply having never gone through anything like this and probably never will, because my business is based on me as a personal person, and I can’t see how it would ever be that type of business.
And I’m not sure I’d want it to be that type of business. But one of the things we were talking about is I assumed that it was very factual, that these smart people were [00:17:00] looking at. stats and facts and maths and going, that makes a good business that doesn’t make a good business. And obviously, what is coming out in these conversations with you is it’s not done on that at all, or not to the degree it should be.
But also it’s that, Like you said, you know, they are looking for people who look like them. But the problem is, the people who aren’t getting the funding, they can’t find people who look like them to A, show them that it can be done, and B, go out and have those conversations with them. So, obviously, this is where Channel 4 have come from, and this is where their untapped has come from, in terms of like, okay, how can we help this?
But what’s your thoughts on that, in terms of that as a strategy? Like, you know, How well do you think it’s going to work? What do you think about it?
Tom:
Well, your point about the facts, I think the thing that people don’t realise is they think that people use facts to say yes. It’s not how it works. People use the facts as a reason to say no, whereas everything is about an [00:18:00] emotional connection to generate BS.
So that’s all about how you connect and how the vision is. So whenever I’m talking to founders about how they present themselves, it’s all about finding that story, that vulnerability and connecting as a person and making sure you can try and find that. And you’re, you’re looking, you know, do the research in advance about the investors, try and find that.
That, that personal hook, because it’s all about the emotion, say yes, in fact, all about why to say no, or that’s, that’s an important,
Teresa:
super interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom:
So, and then like flowing then through to the untapped thing. I mean, I think the, the thing here is about like, how do you, how do you open? The funnel.
So I’d say like going back to this idea of like currently a lot of investors, they, they’ve got, you know, they’re, they’re focused on warm connections and fuzzy feelings and, and, and narrow funnels of people reaching them. [00:19:00] And it’s, it’s, it’s sort of almost only in the business sphere that this happens, whereas you think in other talent related spheres, like music and sport, like football, you’ve got scouts who are going out to find talent.
And it’s way more focused on those minutiae of like, you know, where’s the skill, you know, but there are still elements of what the family like, will they be able to, do they have the resilience? Are they going to, you know, do they have all the attributes that are going to make them success and trying to find them wherever they may be in the business sector?
It doesn’t seem to work like it’s, it’s not doing the funnel approach of like, let’s reach out into communities, find the people with the right attributes. Uh, success and with the different types of ideas so that we’re not ends up happening in a sort of like sheep related type market, which is what happens often.
Right? So it would be like, ah, this is the newest flavor of the month thing. Let’s go and find a bunch of companies who look like that and have people who have got [00:20:00] the right universities, et cetera. And, and we’ll, we think could be successful. The thing I like about the Untucked program is that they’re going to make an attempt to effort and reach out into communities and surface more founders to basically widen the funnel.
So that’s the key thing to drive systemic change. And as an economist, it’s always like trying to understand the system and where, where are the parts of the system that aren’t working so well. And by changing bits of the system, how, how can I impact the rest? Therefore drive systemic change. And I think too many initiatives that I see are focused on sort of like point solutions, which don’t have a shelf life.
And they might be like, let’s ring fencer a fund. But if you ring fence a fund, you can have unintended consequences where you then just. all underrepresented, overlooked founders into that fund and don’t actually expose them to, to the full picture. And you’re sort of like basically putting a stigma [00:21:00] around them.
And it might well be that that fund goes down over time, whereas actually what you want is to make sure that you’ve got full representation. in everything you do every day.
Teresa:
Yeah. And, and this is not by, this strategy isn’t about backing businesses that aren’t good enough to be backed. This isn’t about, this is about, you know, making sure that it’s widely known that this is available to everyone.
as many open people as possible, you know, and, and they’re encouraging that diversity in, and specifically encouraging it in. However, you’ve still got to have a business that stands up to someone wanting to invest, haven’t you?
Tom:
And that’s my point about like, if you’re making the funnel, you don’t change the decision making, right?
The decision making about whether a company is good or bad stays the same, but you’re actually just growing the funnel. So you’re making sure enough businesses are fed through. It’s certainly when I think. About [00:22:00] just even my hiring process when i had me tell you would see that some of the hiring managers over time with over filter for background i would like do spot checks every now and then ago what about this cv why me included and there’s a story here that they’ve got something interesting to say actually let’s have a let’s have a conversation with them and actually my best high is typically being the people who otherwise would have been filtered out on straight forward cv.
Yeah. And it’s like, well, actually these, those people ended up being super hungry, super skilled. And it’s just something happened in their lives. Like they had to drop out of a university or something that happened in their own personal life or family. Another guy dropped out of work for two years because his father died.
The hardest person I’d ever met and ended up becoming a commercial director. It’s like, yeah. The, the, these are the, the things that we should be looking for. And I think that the, the nice thing about an organization like Channel four is that they [00:23:00] are there to reach out into, mm-hmm. Into the communities in terms of programming and to represent the uk.
So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a straightforward connection to if they can, if they find interesting companies that are doing. Consumer related businesses reaching specific communities, there’s a potential commercial advantage here that they can generate because they also know who those consumers are through their programming.
That’s what I mean about the program and how it could possibly be successful.
Teresa:
And from an outsider’s point of view, looking in, you know, when you think about Channel 4 as a brand, they are very inclusive, more inclusive than maybe lots of other channels that are out there or media companies that are out there.
So this feels to me like a perfect match for them as a brand anyway. to do this. You know, this doesn’t feel like, and we’ve all been there and we’ve all seen it within big companies and, and ventures of like a tick box [00:24:00] exercise of, Oh, look, we’re, you know, for a long time it was weird. Oh God, I can’t govern it like corporate governments or whatever it was.
Oh, look at, we did this thing. Well done us. Like. it, whereas this doesn’t feel like this at all. It feels absolutely like their heart and soul are behind it, which is, which is amazing. I’ve just got one question to ask you. It was a question that I thought about when I came to channel four and saw you guys present.
So a lot of the people that I deal with, uh, I guess what you would call, uh, like micro businesses. So one person, maybe with freelancers, maybe with a part time team member, how did they get from bringing in a good amount of money, but not one that was, when we talked about what the criteria was for Channel 4’s venture that they’re doing, they’re not hitting that?
How did they get from where they are today to understand what’s available to them. Because one of the reasons I, when I was first [00:25:00] approached to do these podcasts from channel four, I had to think like, is this going to fit with my audience? Are they going to get stuff from this? And I feel, My reasoning behind it is that lots of them wouldn’t even know that this was an opportunity for them or wouldn’t even know where to start.
So how do we go about as business owners or people who help small businesses, how do I go about helping them understand what might be available to them? How do we bring this conversation to them? further down the chain so that they might know if they get to certain points, this is what they can go for.
Tom:
I think that’s a really good question. And it’s one of those sort of hardcore challenges, because if you’re a business owner, especially if you’re a small business owner, you’re busy, right? Like every hour of the day, you’re working on your business. So there’s very little time for anything else. And I think certainly when I, Started me tell actually I, I started with the [00:26:00] discipline of having board meetings and having an external board person and having board meetings every month because I wanted the discipline of like taking a step out to have that bird’s eye view of like, what’s my strategy?
What am I trying to achieve? Where am I on my journey to then look at? Well, should I be trying to do something else? Or are we at the stage where we can now jump up a level, et cetera? And I think that’s the bit which is like really hard, uh, for small businesses, how to work out how to best use your time when you’ve got 99 problems to deal with, how do you basically decide that other activities are worth your time, be it.
You know, going to a networking event, you know, going to a business information events, et cetera, how, how do you basically delve into them? And I think maybe, you know, the possible routes are like, who are the fundamental service providers for small businesses? Can we do a better job through? Banking [00:27:00] services, et cetera, of alighting the opportunities to do something else because there will be generalized services that they’re using just to get their business done on a day to day basis.
So be it banking, be it paying their taxes, paying payroll, et cetera. So those are potential points of insertion of like, of like, here are things that are available to you that.
Teresa:
Yeah. Funnily enough, I had this conversation just yesterday, I was interviewed for a freelance journalist who’s putting some pieces out in various different places.
And he asked me what could the government do in terms of like empowering small businesses and helping them? And we talked about. the fact of, you know, there is funding, but it can be very difficult to get your hands on. It’s very specific. And you’ve got to feel like this form, which, you know, again, can be really tricky if that isn’t your skillset, which in lots of small businesses, that isn’t their skillset.
But also we talked about things like banks, they do put on advisors and that sort of stuff. [00:28:00] But in lots of cases, the advisors are employees of a bank and. Sometimes when they’re telling you, and I’m not like, I’m not dissing them, you know, I’m not saying that they don’t have value, but you always need another business owner to go, I know what this is like, this is really hard.
And I think for me, what’s so wonderful about you being involved in, this world that you’re involved in is you have, like I said, when you look back at your history, when you talk about how you got to do what you did today, you are, have been in this every step of the way. So, you know, what it’s like from every angle from wanting investment to giving investment to being on boards of things, you know, research and stuff.
So, you know, this inside out. You know, Channel 4 were very smart in bringing you in and having you involved in this project because, you know, you are obviously a great mind to have in it. So, Tom, I really, really appreciate you coming on. If someone wants to come and [00:29:00] find you and reach out to you, where do you hang out on social media?
Tom:
I only really hang out these days on LinkedIn, so you can find me there. So Tom, how do you search me and find me? And in general, it, to your point about, you know, how do you get up the ladder? And if I think back to my early days, certainly being at school in university and that sense of like, my parents came here.
I don’t have a network. Um, so networking felt like a big thing. Uh, a dirty word to me of, I felt like massively underpowered from that perspective, but as a consequence, I’ve learned that it’s just like the networks, what you make of it. So reputation going out to things, and I have a basic rule, which is if I go to an event, I just have to have two conversations, interesting conversations, and then I can leave.
And one of those conversations can be with a member of the bar staff. It’s just, it has to be, it just has to be an interesting conversation. So you remember each other.
Teresa:
Yeah,
Tom:
it’s all that matters. You’re not trying to find the most important person in the room. You’re just trying to have an interesting conversation and you sort of add them up.
And I [00:30:00] think from that perspective, I try and make myself. As open as possible, if people reach out to me and write something, which is meaningful, I would always try and write back because it’s trying to pass on a bit of advice to the, to the next group. And I think that’s the bit where, certainly after the internet era, we didn’t have many who’d been successful to, to sort of create that virtual circle.
And our virtual circle is way delayed. In comparison to the U. S. where they’ve had a constant stream of businesses coming through and passing it down to the next group. And you’re right in terms of like, we’ve, we’ve got laser bankers and stuff who want to sell services, but there aren’t as many people who are just willing to pay it forward.
Yeah. Yeah.
Teresa:
No, that’s amazing. Thank you so much, Tom. It’s been a pleasure to have you on.
Tom:
Okay. Take care. Thank you for having me.
