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I Won't Invest (2019)

Between the pre-seed and seed rounds for Griffin we pitched nearly 200 different investors. These are some of their reasons for saying no.

Between the pre-seed and seed rounds for Griffin we pitched nearly 200 different investors. It's too early[1]*sound of investor ghosting* Brexit The market is too small The market is huge, but only if you expand to the US, which we don't think you can do The market is huge and has experienced massive growth but we feel there is no more growth to be had The market has long-term commodity pricing dynamics so there is no profit to be made here Your customers are too small and not enough of them will grow beyond that You won't get a bank license Your team doesn't have enough people with banking experience We think the product is too simple We think you will not be able to build a product It will take you too long to build a product We see strategic value here, we just want to wait until we can engage commercially[from a strategic investor] We see strategic value here and we think this would be a good investment, but we're only investing in AI and blockchain companies right now[from a strategic investor] You're not raising enough capital now - you need way more You're raising too much capital now - you should try to do a smaller version of what you're doing You will have to raise a lot of capital in the future and we're not sure you will be able to You will have to raise a lot of capital in the future and that will dilute our ownership stake We're not comfortable investing unless you as founders invest £[more money than we have] It has taken you too long to raise this money What are you talking to us for? : This catch-all excuse could mean anything from "we don't invest at seed" to "we're busy watching Game of Thrones" : This was from a partner at a £500M VC fund

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