Investor & Startup News from Dealum

​[[{"value":" We’re pleased to announce that Dealum has partnered with the UK Business Angels Association (UKBAA). Through the partnership, UKBAA’s DealShare platform will now be powered by Dealum, providing its member community with a dedicated space to share and discover investment opportunities. UKBAA is the national trade association for angel and early-stage investment in the UK. It represents over 590 members who collectively deploy more than £2bn annually, including angel groups, individual investors, early-stage VCs, equity platforms, family offices, universities and accelerators. As a not-for-profit run by and for its members, UKBAA works to connect the investment ecosystem across the UK. The problem the partnership addresses Angel investing depends heavily on collaboration, but sharing opportunities across different groups and networks can be fragmented. Each organisation has its own processes and systems, making it harder for relevant deals to reach investors beyond their immediate network....

​[[{"value":" TL;DR: Nine in ten funded startups won't get a venture exit, yet many are solid businesses with real technology and proven teams. The buyer who fits them best, the mid-market company, needs exactly that capability and can't build it fast enough. What's missing isn't companies or capital. It's the connection. The last piece ended on a claim worth unpacking. If most funded startups never reach the exit everyone underwrites for them, they don't all simply vanish - they become a large pool of capable businesses looking for an outcome. And the buyer who could give them an outcome — and their investors a return — is hiding in plain sight. It isn't a fund, a tech giant, or a private-equity roll-up. It's the established, mid-sized company. Profitable, somewhere in the £20–50m revenue band, the kind of business that rarely appears in a venture conversation at all. It has a problem that looks nothing like the startup's, but the two fit together almost exactly. The build problem Mid-sized companies are...

​[[{"value":" TL;DR: Our 2024 bootstrapping advice still stands but for none of the original reasons. AI has made building nearly free, venture money has concentrated into a handful of AI deals, and investors now fund proof, not vision. Bootstrapping is no longer how you survive a bad market; it’s how you become fundable. Raise late, from strength, or not at all. You can read our earlier version here We stand by the conclusion. Bootstrapping is often the smarter path. But almost every reason we gave for it has changed: The cost of building a product has collapsed.  The funding market didn’t recover evenly. It concentrated. And bootstrapping stopped being the thing you do because you can’t raise, and became the thing you do because it puts you in a stronger position when you finally can. One thing does still hold, and it anchors everything below: bootstrapping forces discipline that outside money can mask. When the only cash coming in is cash your customers hand you, you learn your unit economics early, you...

​ Every pitch deck ends the same way. A slide titled "Exit," a logo soup of plausible acquirers, and a line about a five-to-seven year horizon to a "liquidity event." It is the part of the story everyone nods along to and no one checks. We checked. Dealum sits on the portfolio records of more than 180 angel networks with thousands of investments logged not by a research team writing a report, but by the people who actually wrote the cheques. It is a dataset that captures what happens after the round closes, including the part of the story that rarely makes it into a conference panel: the companies that raised once and then went no further. The picture it paints is not the one on the slide. But it is not all bad news. Most of these companies never found a buyer — yet many of them are solid, working businesses. The way out is to widen the exit: instead of waiting for an IPO or a big-corporate acquisition, these startups can sell to, or partner with established mid-market companies, buyers that need exactly...

​[[{"value":" Understanding the role of conflict and recognizing when it becomes harmful is only part of the equation. In practice, most teams struggle with how to handle it in real time – often under pressure, with limited resources, and across different levels of hierarchy. In previous articles of our three-part series, we talked about how conflict should not be feared and, when resolved correctly, is a source of positive innovation. But how to achieve this positive solution? This article provides concrete tools and structures for resolving conflict in a way that leads to better outcomes, both within teams and between founders and investors. Read the previous articles in the series: Don’t let a good conflict go to waste Founder mismatch: when conflict becomes a problem and how to solve it Switching to learning mode The resolution of most conflicts does not lie in will, but in approach – for example, people try to impose their own point of view or reach a compromise, although this rarely leads to the best...

​[[{"value":" Not every founder conflict is productive. The 3 red flags of founder mismatch and what investors can do before disagreements damage the company. While conflict can be a valuable tool, not all conflict creates value. In founder teams, the same differences in perspective that drive innovation can also become a source of friction that slows down or destabilizes the company. For investors, this is one of the most critical risks to identify and manage early. This article from our three-part article series focuses on the point where conflict stops being productive and starts harming the company. We talk about how to recognize fundamental mismatches between foundersm and what practical steps founders and investors can take to address them before they escalate further Read the previous post in this series: Don’t let a good conflict go to waste 3 main red flags for founders Conflict between founders is not inherently bad; on the contrary, as we discussed in the previous article, it is often necessary....

​[[{"value":" In startups, conflict is often treated as a warning sign – something to resolve quickly or avoid altogether. Alignment between founders or with the investors is seen as critical. However, the absence of visible conflict doesn’t necessarily indicate strong alignment; and when used correctly, conflict can be one of the most productive management tools.  Our three-part article series explains how to understand conflict, handle it better, and use it to make stronger decisions in startup teams and between investors and founders. What is conflict?  Dealum’s co-founder, investor, and mentor Rein Lemberpuu sees conflict as a positive phenomenon. Rein himself is an entrepreneur, investor, and mentor who has founded over 30 companies and invested in dozens of startups. He’s an experienced mentor and a founder of a self-develpment school.  According to Rein, most people confuse conflict and argument: “Simply put, conflict arises when two – or more – parties observe the same situation, but describe it...

​[[{"value":" Every accelerator program manager knows the familiar chaos: spreadsheets overflowing with startup applications, founder follow-ups filling the inbox, pitch decks going missing, and a Notion page quietly pretending it is still up to date. Dealum is for accelerators and incubators that take application management seriously, want structured evaluation, care about portfolio outcomes, and want their founders to raise capital. We work with the programs using it every day. We've built it this way on purpose. Because there’s a better way, and it starts with finding a tool that supports your process. Choosing the right fit takes some research and sorting. The options range from adapting general-purpose tools to building a custom system, as well as purpose-built incubator and accelerator software designed around how these programs work.  The work that quietly breaks every program Most accelerator programs don't start operating with specialized software. They start with a Google Form, an Airtable, a...

​[[{"value":" A practical guide for active angels managing multiple portfolio companiesBy Victoria Brock LinkedIn TL;DR Most active angel investors don't have a shortage of portfolio information. They have a shortage of usable portfolio information. Updates, contracts, founder asks, and their own notes are scattered across email threads, decks, PDFs, and follow-up replies from a dozen different senders. Investor Plus from Dealum is a single place where every update and document for every company sits together, with new updates summarised so you can see what changed, what's slipping, and which founders may need follow-up. The result: less time digging through your inbox, more time on the decisions and conversations only you can have. A quick question before you read on When did your most recent portfolio company last send an update? Don't open your inbox to check. Just see if you can answer from memory. Now think about what that update actually said: the KPIs, the team news, the ask at the bottom. If you're...

​[[{"value":" On April 9, we brought together Ashok Kamal from NuFund Venture Group and Sigvards Krongorns ex-Verge HealthTech Fund to talk about something everyone's discussing but few are doing well: using AI in fundraising. We talked about real workflows, real tools, highlighting how investors are already integrating AI into sourcing, evaluation, and decision-making. TL;DR: AI is already embedded in investment workflows, from research and deal intake to screening and expert matching, but it's augmenting decisions, not making them. The sheer volume of deal flow has made automation necessary. Key takeaway for founders: AI has raised the bar on material quality, but fit and relationships still matter most. The future isn't AI replacing investors; it's allowing investors who use AI to outperform those who don't. Want the full conversation instead? Scroll to the bottom for the webinar recording The scale problem: why AI became a necessity On the webinar, both investors opened with the same basic reality: the...