Investing in high growth pre-seed startups. 

Dan heads up investments into new companies at Solid Bond which invests £150k-£500k into UK based pre-seed tech/ tech enabled startups.

Dan Dudley

What makes pre-seed such a difficult stage (and why so much of UK venture waits till seed) is the reality that the founders have to almost do everything.

You often don't have the money to spend it on ramping up tech, the founders have to fundraise, sell, account manage, track cash, find market fit and yes while all those things are easier in a smaller company, it can be so easy to lose pace or focus on making you need to go and close the next round of funding. 

Takes massive energy to do this well.

Pre-seed Investor at Solid Bond | Actively Investing | Finance and Commercial Director |

One of the key fractional hires to get in earlier than later for startups is a good CFO. 

A CFO is not your accountant or bookkeeper. I've seen way too many startups hire £100k+ FD's only to realise pretty soon that that FD also needs a bookkeeper/ management accountant to do the accounts work and all of a sudden you have a massive cost for a small business. 

When your business is still really simple, simple invoicing and costs then you can get by with a decent firm of accountants. 

A good fractional CFO will help you do some of the following:

- Cash flow management
- Financial modeling
- Margin analysis
- Build up your core finance team
- Review banking arrangements
- Support on securing more capital (equity/ debt)
- Prep for DD/ transactions

More businesses could do with a really commercially focused finance mind in as soon as they can afford it. I've seen it add tonnes of value, particually when the business is early enough to avoid painful mistakes later. 

#startups #venturecapital #preseed #fractionalCFO #founders

I'll be the first one to praise the UK for the SEIS and EIS investment schemes. They genuinely do more good than bad, particularly at attracting retail money into early stage companies. 

However, many SEIS rounds will close with the c. £250k limit but that often leaves them undercapitalised to make the progress needed to unlock the next wave of funding. If your £250k round doesn't get to launch and £250k ARR at least then it's easy to fall into this space. 

It leaves a lot of business in this awkward in-between stage. Not having enough runway to get the revenue traction to unlock seed investors, valuation expectation and lack of SEIS now precluding a lot of angels from joining certainly makes closing another round at pre-seed increasingly difficult. 

Makes it so important to plan how you get there with the funding you close at pre-seed. Raising another pre-seed might not be as easy as the 1st time you did it.

Seeing a lot of founders either using or pitching to raise using ASA's as their main instrument. We've even had a few at Solid Bond. that have closed with this as part of their round, so wanted to write a bit to explain when they are best to use. 

ASA is the UK's SAFE, with a couple of small differences.

In short it is a agreement to invest now and purchase equity in the future. It isn't debt, it is a structured agreement to buy equity in the next round, usually at a discount for coming in early. 

If you don't close enough in a priced round within a certain period of time then the investment converts at a pre-determined price for those ASA investors. 

If you are going to preserve S/EIS then HMRC dictates it needs to be issued into shares within 6 months of investment. This is the major issue with them - you cannot use them as a round, it pretty much reduces them essentially to a bridging instrument. You could use them outside of this is you are okay with the "backstop" valuation or the pre-agreed valuation but it isn't usually how people use them. 

I've found the most common use case is to close enough on an ASA to secure enough runway to close out the seed and you literally have to be running both processes at the same time. Can be a great tool if used right but it's important to know when they should be used.

Customer service is going to be one of the biggest disrupted industries because of AI. 

The number of startups we see now who are "AI Receptionist" or "AI Customer Service Agents" has grown loads over the last 6 months. 

The reality is some of their platforms are actually great as well. We will see an explosion of front line agents with high quality integrations to a few core systems in niche verticals. They can just serve their needs and build the workflows for that niche vertical so well. Not convinced they can all raise money but there are some ace bootstrapped businesses in this group that'll form over the next 12-18 months. 

One of Solid Bond.'s portfolio companies, Answer Ai has seen loads of it's retailers realise 90%+ support automation for Shopify ecommerce/ fashion retailers. It's a big market but you can see that AI, with great workflows built around it will literally end most customer service roles as we know them.

#startups #venturecapital #preseed

Having a super deep understanding of your market, the buyers, ICP (well thought through/ proven), budget holders, other systems in use, barriers, indirect competitors/ workarounds etc. adds massive credibility when you're raising money. 

So clear to see when someone knows this and and when they use some McKinsey top down market sizing stat. 

#Startups #Preseed #Founders #VentureCapital

Had a great conversation with one of Solid Bond.'s founders recently about the state of AI in 2026. Same message is what I am hearing across the industry as well.

The foundational models are genuinely good enough now and the issue now sits in the application layer. This has totally changed in the last 12 months and the realisation is that great product is what will drive the next wave of agents and deliver on the automation we thought we'd start to see. 

I am sure they'll be a lot of improvement in models to come with the sheer about of capital going into compute over the next 5 years, but right now for a lot of applications it is the product/ tuning of agents that is a big opportunity.

I'm vibe coding a data platform for Solid Bond. to massively speed up our investment process, deep research and IM writing linking our systems together and I can see when Replit is handing over to "sub-agents" like the "architect" to perform a specialist task and then use that output to continue. 

Building sub-agents and better product is what's needed now, not significant changes to the quality of the models.

Interested to know what some of the best use cases venture funds are seeing for AI in their internal process and what platforms are being used. 

Any insights? 

#venturecapital #startups #preseed #seriesA

Can't wait to try Claude CoWork (always last to come to Windows!!)

This year will be massive for AI chat apps becoming proper workflow tools.

I think we'll see a section in them - similar to how Projects work now - where you can build automations across desktop and cloud apps just by describing what you want in natural language.

This used to be reserved for RPA specialist software and businesses that could afford the implementation. But it's coming to everyone pretty soon.

The barrier to automating repetitive work is dropping. It'll be a precursor to being able to set outcome-based automations where the route to automating it won't be a rigid process.

Feels like this will live in your AI chat apps.

H2Origin Refills

Founder and Managing Director

Xerox

Working with corporate sector clients, harnessing leading technology together with Xerox' global capability in business process outsourcing. Supporting the document life cycle, in both digital and physical format.  

Our experience covers the following core services:

• Outbound Customer Communication 
• Content Management
• Digital Mailroom
• Workflow Automation
• Agile Workplace Solutions
• Managed Print Services

Business Development Manager

Hobs On-Site

Securing contracts for outsourced services. Comprising of classic on-site document services, marketing communications, outbound transactional communications, inbound scanning/indexing/data capture/workflow and management services within new clients.

Océ - A Canon Company

Uncovering and focussing upon problems areas within an organisation and creating financial, operational and strategic arguments to purchase or rent Océ systems (hardware and software).

Using elements of Huthwaites’s SPIN and MASS sales approach to navigate up or down within an organisation to establish the implications of the business process problems whilst gaining more support for change. 

Setting up national group contracts for Océ equipment. Scoping the preferred product type and agreeing service levels and pricing.

Establishing strong ties with resellers across the North of England, creating a two-way relationship based upon trust, and positioning Océ as their number one partner.

Senior Account Manager

Calco Gambia Limited

Managed a logistics firm operating throughout West Africa. Responsible for the creation of the company and its full day to day operation growing it from £0 to a £500K turnover in 12 months.

Director

Building disruptive businesses focused on reducing plastic waste and better utilising our planet’s resources.

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