40 Minute Mentor

January 4, 2023

Series 8 Roundup: Navigating The Economic Downturn & Fundraising In 2023

“The recession period felt awful, but actually during that time, even as a small business, we got to be the UK market leader, and all that with only five people working for us, at the time.” 

To kick off 2023, we’re looking back on the latest Series of 40 Minute Mentor and handpick some of the great advice our mentors shared with us, this time focused on the economic downturn and fundraising. 

There’s still a lot of uncertainty and instability in the world and it’s hard to predict what 2023 will look like for most Tech Founders. 

However, this isn’t the first recession for many Startup Founders out there, so we thought we’d share some of the brilliant advice from our latest Series, including: 

➡️ How Photobox became the UK market leader during a recession [01:55] 

➡️ Why you can still fundraise in this climate [03:41] 

➡️ The metrics to focus on when fundraising as a mission-driven Startup [04:37] 

➡️ Why cold emails work in fundraising [06:12] 

➡️ How money alone won’t help you through the recession [07:09] 

➡️ Fundraising do’s and don’ts in this climate [07:28] 

➡️ Who to listen to when it comes to advice [09:56] 


For the full 40 Minute Mentor episodes mentioned in this episode, head over to: 

🎧 Graham Hobson: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-graham-hobson-photobox/ 

🎧 Sho Sugihara: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-sho-sugihara-pave/ 

🎧 Amali de Alwis: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-amali-de-alwis-subak/ 

🎧 Ian Hogarth: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-ian-hogarth-plural-platform/ 

🎧 James Lo: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-james-lo-mana/ 

🎧 Molly Johnson-Jones: https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/series-8-molly-johnson-jones-flexa/ 


🤝Explore Hidden Pages: 

For last year’s Black History Month, we’ve had the great pleasure of partnering with Samuel Tholley and Hidden Pages – a zine discovering hidden Melanated history & lists of sources exploring the Melanated/”Black” experience. 

We talked about his motivation behind Hidden Pages, why it’s so important to normalise black history and he shares some amazing historic figures we can all learn from.

This is only the beginning of this partnership, so make sure you check out our initial conversation with Samuel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF_-blY_kUQ 


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