What is your origin story? - Andy Ayim (Angel Investing School)
In this episode we talk with Andy Ayim, an entrepreneur, EdTech investor and founder of the Angel Investing School in the UK.
Meet the EdTech angel investor
I always try and position myself as that core and that person to speak to when the metrics aren't looking as good, when the things aren't trending upwards, when you need to have honest conversations where you wanna sense check stuff before talking to the rest of the investors.
What’s new?
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The guest
Meet Andy Ayim, an entrepreneur, investor and founder of the Angel Investing School, based in the UK. He is coaching founders to help them achieve product market fit and is a leading voice for integrating diversity and inclusion into portfolios of investors. He has invested in over 17 startups including EdTech and also received the Order of the British Empire for his work in this field.
Listen in on his story in the 20th episode of the EdTech Founders podcast 🎧
Want to hear more business angels? Check out our previous episodes with Anette Andreassen (NO), Melody Lang (UK) & Erensah Ayanlar (UK).
Do you want to become a business angel? Join his Angel Investing School and get 10% off with the discount code EdTech10.
Episode summary
As an angel investor, he looks for startups solving real problems through founders' lived experiences. He emphasizes understanding customers and their problems over flashy technologies.
He provides capital, knowledge, and networks to support founders.
In today's investment climate, founders need stories of traction and monetization to appeal to risk-averse investors.
Andy encourages anchoring pitches in origin stories and customer problems over buzzwords.
Extracts
Long tail EdTech opportunities
Right now, there's so many niche skills that we can all learn, wherever you wanna learn. How to be, you know, a beautician from a beauty influencer. Or angel investing from someone like me. There's all these nuggets and gems of knowledge that we can now learn that doesn't neatly fit into, for example, a four year course at a university, and is a massive long tail opportunity for educating the majority of the world with these micro courses, cohort based courses and the like.
Impact investing
What happens at scale when we think about Ukraine and Russia's war? When AI is involved, when AI can control nukes, when AI, you know. And it is a scary world that can be painted.
That's where I think a lot around actually ethical investing and impact investing. Right? So what's the impact of these investments and how does the future of the world look like if these investments really succeed at scale?
What do I bring as an investor?
Capital, knowledge and networks are the three ways that I try and add value around founders to support them along their journeys if they're coachable, open and willing to take that support and advice. Cause I'm not an armchair investor. I don't wanna just invest and leave it to the rest. I wanna be hands-on and support my portfolio to help 'em succeed and transform their life and hopefully the lives of the customers that they're impacting.
Understanding your story
In terms of what a founder should be looking for, firstly, the founder should understand their story. What is your origin story? Why are you well suited to solve this problem? Who are the customers that you serve? Can you share stories about your customers and how you alleviate a pain point with the problems that you're solving for them?
What are the existing alternatives to your products, and why are customers switching from those alternatives to use your products? And what is your traction story? Which is not a single number in time, but rather a trend of the growth that you've had over the last six to 12 months. These are the kind of things that help to start telling a story to get people to buy into why you.
Doing due diligence both ways
The same way the angels are doing due diligence on you and referencing you, you should be doing due diligence on your angels and referencing them because this is a long-term partnership and relationship you're about to form.
This is what I think people need to understand, is that you don't wait to transact to form a relationship. No. You invest in forming a relationship and maybe down the line you transact. But even if you don't, you should value forming the relationship with these people.
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That was all for now. Take care until next time.
Frank Albert & the EdTech Garage crew