Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Empowering Underrepresented Entrepreneurs with Tom Adeyoola
In the third episode of the Channel 4 Ventures series, I interview Tom Adeyoola, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Extended Ventures. We discuss his journey through the creative industries and his experiences in raising investments for his startup, Metail, where he secured £25 million. Our conversation delves into the challenges underrepresented founders face in sourcing investment, the emotional nature of early-stage funding decisions, and the importance of expanding the funnel to include diverse founders. This episode is ideal for course creators, membership owners, coaches, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of business investments. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Tom on Linkedin Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter Transcript Teresa: Hello, and welcome back to this special series of the Your Dream Business podcast, where we are teaming up with Charmful Ventures I'm bringing you some phenomenal business owners [00:01:00] talking all about not only how did they create their businesses, but also what experience they've had in getting investment for their own businesses and the journey that they've gone on. Today, I am interviewing Tom. Tom is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and board director across the creative industry companies, private and public. He grew his fashion technology startup, Metail, to exit raising 25 million pounds. Tom is also the co founder of Extended Ventures, which uses insights to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresentative founders, and now sits on various boards. Boards, including Channel four and leading independent schools, St. Paul's. He's actively involved in investing and policy co-authoring a labor startup review. Can I be completely honest? I felt so stupid talking to Tom. This guy is so smart, right? And he. Like [00:02:00] the stuff he's done, you know how some people are just serial entrepreneurs. That's what I got from him. I'm just looking at my notes and I literally have written fingers in many pies. He has done so much stuff. He's involved with so many things. He has been in non profit. He sits on steering boards. He is a massive expert in this space. And, and I was like, I don't know that I was intimidated by him because he's such a nice guy, and the conversation was great. And I have to say, if I'm being completely honest, this whole series that I'm doing is feeling very intimidating because it is an industry in an area that I don't understand enough about, and I feel like I'm getting serious imposter syndrome of like, who am I to bring this to you because I don't understand it well enough. However, I think sometimes...