Roei Samuel, CEO and Founder at growth marketplace Connectd explores
The way startups operate has seen a huge shift in recent years. The fast-paced move to a digital future caused by the pandemic continues to affect large organisations, with many finding themselves still playing catch up. But for the startup world, digitalisation has taken on an entirely different meaning.
To delve deeper into the role tech plays in growing startups, our Connectd team commissioned a study. Most founders reported that getting digital right is their primary focus for 2022. This comes at a time when 84% of early-stage investors are looking to fund more projects than they did in 2021.
How investors plan their pipeline ahead in the wake of digital transformation (and the pandemic), how entrepreneurs map out their business post-Covid, and how digitalisation fits into their respective plans will determine what the overall picture will look like. With that being said, the early signs for startups are looking positive.
The most profitable startups in 2021 focused on e-commerce, mobile apps and SaaS, highlighting the reality of the pandemic for many of us – that technology was needed to make our lives more convenient. And startups innovated in their droves to provide the answer. You need only look at startups who have created a solution to home-food deliveries, from high end restaurants to fast food outlets. The pandemic drove that requirement, and the startup community answered.
Location, location, location
In the past it’s been fair to say that hubs like London have contained the majority of investment, but remote working has vastly opened up the radius of where investors are looking to spend their money.
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We found that 74% of angel investors are more likely to make deals from other parts of the country and that they no longer feel restricted by regional parameters. A side benefit of the pandemic is that location no longer restricts where we work, and it is a positive sign that investors feel the same.
The longer-term impact
Of course, with any significant scale of change comes consequences. While digitalisation certainly has its benefits on startup growth, there are some unfortunate victims, one being networking.
If you exclude the unavoidable reasoning around Covid-19, the reality that many investors have noticed is that if they can mitigate the amount of travel time they partake in, they can become more productive, a natural benefit. All this does is make the virtual pitch process that much more important. Time and convenience have become even more critical to investors, so getting your points across accurately and articulately is vital if you’re to stand out against the competition.
