Angel Insights | Your guide to angel investing

How a biochemist turned management consultant became one of the UK's most experienced angel investors — and what new angels can learn from his journey.

When Simon Blakey made his first angel investment in 2000, the startup ecosystem looked radically different. There was no AngelList, no Seed Legals, and certainly no standardised term sheets. Finding deals meant subscribing to the "Venture Capital Report" — a physical, green-bound publication that featured just two or three opportunities with basic due diligence notes.

Fast-forward 25 years, and Blakey has completed over 100 funding rounds across 50-60 investments, ranging from robotics companies eventually acquired by GE Aviation to ticketing platforms processing over a billion in GMV. As Chair of the Investment Committee at Playfair Capital and a board member of Cambridge Angels, he's witnessed the entire evolution of early-stage investing.

His journey offers invaluable lessons for today's angel investors, particularly those making the transition from successful entrepreneurship to investing.

In the latest episode of Angel Insights, we sat down with Rob Wallis, co-founder of Moth Drinks, a SyndicateRoom portfolio company revolutionizing the ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktail market.

While carbon dioxide (CO2) often dominates climate discussions, methane plays a disproportionately large role in global warming.

"Methane is a bit like the ugly duckling compared to CO2. It's between 28 and 84 times more potent, which means when it's in the atmosphere, it absorbs much more heat."

We had the privilege of speaking with Louise Parlons Bentata, the CEO and co-founder of Bluemethane. The conversation revealed the surprising scale of the methane problem and how Bluemethane is pioneering innovative solutions to tackle it, turning it from a warming agent into a clean energy.

We had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the incredible Dr. Brian Moretta of Hardman & Co.

Brian is a quant by nature, a former fund manager by past, and a fund analyst and reviewer at present. Not to mention, in his spare time, Brian is a professor at the prestigious Heriot-Watt University.

What does one do with a PhD in visual processing? Naturally, one would join the entrepreneur first accelerator, launch a machine learning-based visual processing business, sell it to twitter, then work one's way up the Twitter hierarchy before retiring around 30. Then one would turn one's hand to angel investing.

Don't believe me? Listen in to today's guest Zehan Wang as he recounts his tales and all of the lessons he learned along the way which he now applies to his angel investing.

Addie Pinkster is the Founder and Chief Executive of Adelpha, a female-led corporate financial advisor and leading investment network, that specialises in high-quality, fast-growth, UK-focused companies. Prior to that, she spent 15 years in investment banking, most recently as Head of Hedge Fund Strategy at Citi. She is also a NED, and a growth & tech investor.