Pitching during lockdown shouldn’t be so rough

Staying positive, there are some signs of optimism in the air as NOTWICS publish this month’s COVID Diary based on a survey of the views of many leading UK based VC’s and Angels giving insight and consensus on their current investment landscape.

However, it’s not all positive quite yet. Here are the main takeaways;

# The Pre-Seed & Seed stage is a car crash, with few quality new founders coming to the market, staying away because of market uncertainty and a lack of Angels and Seed Fund support. A return in volume and deal quality is not expected until 2022

# Tickets over £1M in Series A’s have “fallen off a cliff” as many mid & later stage VC’s are preserving cash until clarity emerges on the Macro. Currently, there is more urgent need to focus on managing an increasing amount of problem children in their existing portfolios. A return in volume and deal quality is hoped for in Q4, but not likely to emerge till 2021, especially if a second wave of the Pandemic hits

# On a positive note, Late Early / Early Scale-Up investors are very busy, making an in-line or even greater amount of Q2 investments, than in previous years. This category of startups is praised for offering some strong opportunities, right price and growing fast in COVID times.

Building on the growing optimism with shops and pubs re-opening and the return of football, NOTWICS has launched Connecting People, a new Video Platform where each month interesting founders and businesses that are growing in these challenging environments will showcase their work.

The founders present their business via video and the platform feels like a “Netflix” for discovering talent and tech, where you can explore and enjoy the businesses at your own convenience.

This month you can see pitches from, Custodiex, Retrace, Curation, Game Academy, Lawbite, Glucose Republic, Hiyacar, Staark and more.