James Islay

But initially, you know, that was a bit of a shock to our system of actually, you know, because we had like a great office culture and, you know, great, great team in office.

So yeah, we've raised in total about 23 million from a mix of European and US investors.

So we've still got a very healthy cash balance from that.

But yeah, initially we had investors from mainland Europe, from Switzerland and actually from the Balkans, like a fund from the Balkan fund.

And then we got funded by UK investors, angel investors, and then

More recently from a big US VC called Peakspan and then from AXA Investment Partners, which are also European based.

Yeah.

And that was a mix of like primary and secondaries.

Yeah.

So basically, it's existing employees or existing investors selling their shares for a small discount to an investor.

So it's a great way to get liquidity and it's becoming a bit more common.

So if you want liquidity in an earlier stage, that's actually becoming an option now.

From my understanding, it wasn't much of an option even just a few years ago.

But now funds are getting more used to offering it.

Yeah, I mean, speaking to some of my angel investors, especially from the UK, a lot of their angel investments have just died.

And so actually getting any sort of money out of an investment is great.

So they're ecstatic to actually see any sort of return from a seed stage investment.

Um, uh, I don't think, you know, just generally, you know, all everybody in the team is, is pretty much a first time in startups.

Like none of us are experienced, um, entrepreneurs.

Um, and so just getting some liquidity to, to get a lifestyle balance, um, you know, was, was, it was a great opportunity to, you know, um, I, I suppose like get cash, get a bill of cash and, uh, and buy some of the things that you wanted in life.