Cyacomb

Background

This is how I look at an event like EIE. If the company is the rocket, and the investment is the rocket fuel, then EIE is the spaceport with a launch pad and a fuelling facility. In other words, without it, nothing gets off the ground.  

I attended the very first EIE in 2008, back when nobody knew what a start-up or a tech ecosystem were. Now, EIE is a vital part of the Scottish tech ecosystem. I first pitched our tech  in 2016, targeting two specific sets of investors. They were already aware of us and the added credibility of being one of the companies doing a proper pitch on the big stage with all the professional presentation that goes with it certainly lubricated the investment process.

Being realistic about what you’ll get out of EIE is important for companies interested in taking part. You don’t turn up at an event like this, do your pitch, and then have someone come up to you as you walk off stage, shake your hand and offer you money. It’s a process. It may be 6 months before an investor contacts you and even longer before they actually invest. For example, in 2021, Par Equity led a £5 million pound investment in Cyacomb but we came onto their radar when we first pitched in 2016.

The EIE team were brilliant in preparing us for our big pitch. Even the most confident people can find the experience of pitching at a big event like TechCrunch in London terrifying but the EIE team held our hand through the whole process, giving us lots of tips and advice and plenty of opportunities to practise. I know some of the companies who’ve applied for this year’s event are already benefitting from this level of enhanced support through the new Advanced Investor Readiness (or AIR) programme, and they will learn a huge amount from that. With the right coaching, there is no pitching forum in the world that you have to be afraid of.    

In terms of pitching, here’s my advice. You need to understand your audience and what they are looking to get out of the process. One of the mistakes some people make is they focus on the product and its development rather than on its potential impact and growth potential.

‍

Consider which of the two following pitches is likely to be most effective.

“I'm an academic and I've just finished researching a new technique, and it's going to be absolutely brilliant! We're just going to sell it and everybody in the world is going to want it. Any questions?”

‍

Or…

“This is our product, this is why it's going to work, it's a huge market, we've got a credible team and this is how we're going to do it. Come and talk to us.”

‍

Your pitch needs to be tailored for the audience you’re trying to reach, what they need to hear, and what the process of raising investment really looks like.  It helps focus expectations.  The aim isn’t to get an investor to put up their hand and say, “I'll back you now”. The aim is to get another meeting; the aim is to get somebody to give you their business card or connect with you on LinkedIn so you can follow up with them later. As I said, it’s a process.

Increasingly, investors are looking for companies that can make a meaningful societal impact. Personally, I've worked on a lot of different projects over the years, but the ones I’ve found most rewarding are the ones that genuinely change people's lives and create new possibilities. I have been involved in projects where we’ve done something really, really complicated and helped a really big company save 2% of some really enormous number and you go home feeling financially richer, but not enriched. The fact that Cyacomb is a business where we can measure success in terms of the number of child sex offenders prosecuted and children safeguarded from abuse as well as the positive numbers on the balance sheet is my driving motivation.

‍

Key Benefits

So how has EIE benefitted Cyacomb? Well, our latest round of investment raised £6.5 million and we've now got a team of 24 people having started with 4 just a few years ago.

We have a national contract to supply the Home Office on behalf of national policing and we work with about half of the UK’s police forces directly as well to provide them with more capacity. We've got customers across Europe and in India, and we're growing fast in the US with about 50 customers including some big names.

I’m proud of the success of our business, obviously, and also of the impact we have.  We get reports back from the front line of policing about children safeguarded or rescued from trafficking as a direct result of our technology. That’s the impact that matters most to me.

‍

Looking Ahead

So the question is not, why would you get involved in EIE? The question is, why wouldn’t you?