Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Dealmaker Uncut podcast where we speak to some of the UK's most exciting entrepreneurs and hear their investment journeys. We'll discuss the challenges, successes and lessons they've learned along the way with expert deals commentary from Jonathan Boyers, head of Alvarez and Marcel Corporate Finance, and me, Chris McGuire, executive editor at Business Cloud.
So welcome everyone to the latest episode of the Dealmaker Uncut podcast, powered by Avras and Marcel. My name is Chris Maguire and I'm the executive editor of Business Cloud. We're in London and I'm joined by the multiple award winning dealmaker himself, Jonathan Boyers. Jonathan's been involved in deals totaling billions of pounds during his long and illustrious career and he's now the managing director and head of Alvarez and Marcel's corporate finance practice in the uk. Welcome to London, Jonathan.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hi, Chris. Great to be here.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Looking forward to today, but in a second, we're going to get you inside the deal. In the first part of today's show, we're going to be interviewing our special guest who Jonathan's going to introduce. After that we'll have a short break and in part two, Jonathan will be leaning on his. Can you believe 38 years? I didn't realise it was that long, Jonathan. Years of working in corporate finance to answer the listener questions. So, Jonathan, who are we speaking to today?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Thanks, Chris. Well, well, today we're speaking to Tom Dunlop, who's the CEO of legal tech firm Surmise.
Tom's just recently completed a $50 million fundraising exercise in January, I think, to accelerate the global expansion of the business.
Welcome, Tom.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Thank you for having me, guys.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Tom, I'll kick off with a couple of soft questions before Jonathan goes for the jugular. I'm going to take you back to the very beginning. I think you're the only person that we've had on the Dealmaker, on the Dealmaker Uncut podcast that turned down the opportunity to compete in the Olympics because a lot of people don't realize this about you. You were the European number one badminton player. So why did you turn your back on the Olympic dream?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Well, I'd say I'm not necessarily turning my back on this, Chris. It's still very much alive. There's still still time.
No, I think I, you know, I guess my life revolved around sport. There was no necessary indication I was going to go into tech, no indication I was going to be a lawyer at that stage.
But I think when I was a junior and I was in this kind of amazing world, really, where Team England would travel the world. And I was a teenager, I had no responsibilities other than studying really alongside.
When I became a full time professional, it was kind of like, right, this has to either pay for my living or, or not. And badminton, believe it or not, is, is not the best paid sport in the world.
And so I had to make that decision. Do I kind of commit for the next four or five years on the, on the dream of going to the Olympics? And I'm not doing it for money. You're doing it for the, for the thrill of winning. I mean that's the, the kind of pure athlete mindset of you're not, you're motivated by winning, you're not motivated by monies. But at the same time I did my law degree, I could kind of see a different path. I kind of fell out of love with it a little bit.
Someone to pursue a different.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: I know a lot of people who were professional, semi professional sports people and they take that into business and the disciplines that they learned and how to handle disappointments and stuff.
You pursued a legal career, which you mentioned. You became an in house lawyer at AppSense where you met Charles Charland, who became an investor in Surmise as well. When did you first get the idea for Surmise?
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So the first idea for Surmise really was probably triggered when absence actually went through a acquisition itself. So I was the lawyer, sole lawyer for this company that was going through quite a big transaction actually.
And I had to basically review about 500 contracts as part of the kind of internal red flag process to get ready for the acquisition. So I was sat there in this kind of, you know, high tech software company, literally printing off these 100 page contracts with a highlighter, trying to find particular clauses that might cause a problem.
I was doing that alongside my day job and it probably took me about three months as well as trying to keep up with the volume of the day to day.
So at that point I was just sat there thinking, hang on a minute, this is like, this is bonkers. When you look at what the rest of the business is doing, trying to innovate and always move forward. I'm there as a lawyer with a highlighter and printed out paper, trying to find these like clauses buried in a haystack. So that's when I suppose my co founder Dave, who's a software engineer who works for AppSense and was basically like, surely there's a better way. How can I create a summary of this contract really quickly? I know what I want to find, but I need a tool to do it for Me. So I guess that was the genesis of Surmise and really where the initial idea came from.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And you went to work at Zuto and then in 2018 you actually set up Cemize.
Do you want to just talk about the journey just to taking that idea and building up the proposition?
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Yeah. It was an interesting one because I think at the time I actually went through this period where I was like, oh, maybe it's not that exciting of an idea because it's exclusive to me as a lawyer. So I'm kind of sat there thinking, you know, no one else will have this problem. Should I bother investing more time into it?
But then as I start to really lean into the concept, speak to other people, I was obviously still a lawyer at the same time and I could speak to my peer group because I knew a number of other in house lawyers.
They really validated the concept and really were like this. I would use this for so many use cases. And then I spoke to law firms and they had the same kind of reaction. And I guess in my head this is probably the sportsman's mentality where I was like, what's the worst case scenario? Like I don't make it. I don't kind of create the company. I can go back to being a, you know, pretty high paid lawyer. That is a pretty good backup plan. So for me it wasn't really a risk really at that point to kind of lean into some eyes. And I'd had enough validation.
I think, you know, a lot of people talk about this, that the best founders or the best ideas come from really feeling that pain. And you're so passionate about finding the solution that it was one of the most exciting and kind of I'd do my day job, then at night I'd be there thinking of all the, the great ideas we could do for the product. And that's what got me really excited. So, you know, you could argue the time. And we spoke, we spoke before about what does my wife think. I remember getting the first pre seed investment the same week my second child was born. And then three weeks later we moved house into a more expensive house. I then took a 50% pay cut because I started a business. So, you know, timing wise, it was definitely not like the best time in the world. But I was just so confident and so bullish because it was my use case.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And the business now has got to ARR of sort of eight figures.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: And 60 staff in Manchester, 30 in Boston.
You've just opened in San Diego. So just describe how the business Feels today.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Yes. It's kind of when I guess one of these investments and one of these deals really allows you to kind of pause and reflect. And it is even when you read out the numbers compared to. I can still remember when I'm sat there in a shared desk and there's two of us to build a business with 100 people so far and still growing exponentially.
But as a business we're, you know, I guess predominantly now US focused in terms of revenue. So that was a big switch that has happened in the past few years.
We have the kind of. I think the split in terms of investment will probably go in the US as well. So we're really pushing the boundaries and open up those offices in preparation for this funding so that we can really grow the teams out there.
And I guess from a product point of view as well. Obviously I started with my use case and this was kind of really important to me and I thought everyone found it. I think when you go through the journey you kind of put so much emphasis on that aha moment when you realize that pretty much every product or company pivots so much and you kind of focus a lot more actually as you go on that journey. So now we're exclusively on in house legal teams that we, that we provide the product for.
I guess our product now is basically any interaction with a contract. We make it more efficient. So the whole contract life cycle from the initial creation through to review and we do AI redlining for example when you're doing the negotiation to the repository where we summarize those contracts still so very much a holistic product end to end.
We serve just corporates with in house legal teams and very much focus on the kind of mid market folks as well.
So yeah, it's been an amazing kind of journey really. But yet I'm sure you hear this all the time. It really does genuinely feel like it's just the start. We've found our focus, we've got the fuel, now is the time to push.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Can we just talk about the fundraising processes then? The first fundraiser was precede.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: How, how easy. How hard was that to. To do?
[00:08:42] Speaker C: It was. Well, I guess when I look back at it is strange it was very hard because I didn't really know where to go if I'm honest. Like it was, you know, particularly Manchester I feel which was when I was trying to. To get the funding for it. There wasn't necessarily as much of an established network probably as there is now because that's really come on over the last Few years.
So naturally I was kind of going to my network or people I knew and as soon as you switch it from being, you know, I'm an employee and I'm in a business and they speak to you, then you go, I'm a founder, can you give me some money? It's a very different conversation.
But one of the, obviously we ended up convincing Charlie, who was the founder of AppSense, to come on board. And then one of the great initiatives actually that I really do believe in was the Northern Powerhouse Fund, which obviously was by the British business bank, managed by Maven.
And we managed to get access to that fund throughout. But I'd say that journey, I mean, there was about a year, 18 month period where, if I'm honest, we probably were going to throw the towel in about three, four times because we met people, they didn't want to do it, the terms were unreasonable.
So it felt like a really long, drawn out process.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: So just to make sure I understand then, so there was a pre seed fundraise and then there was a 2 million seed raise and then there was a 5 million pound series A. And I think that was with YFM and Maven.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Is that right?
[00:10:04] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. And I guess in the early days before yfm, Charlie and Maven were kind of doing the majority of the investments.
And I think we, we always saw it as being very milestone based. You know, we deliberately kind of, you could go very American with these things and do a huge, you know, seed raise. You see seed raises now that 400 million, I mean, which is, which is crazy, but we've always, whether it's the Mancunian in US or whatever it might be, but we've always wanted to build an efficient business. We wanted to build a business that makes sense for. And I think that when we've done the raises, we've done them deliberately because they were a specific fuel for a specific purpose. Like Series A, when we did the 5 million, was deliberately to open up the US. We had enough traction that gave us conviction on the us, but we needed the fuel to actually hire people and do that in a very organic way.
And that proved out that project's obviously very successful now.
So, yeah, it's kind of been a gradual journey. But I guess coming up to Series A was always very much about trial something, get the fuel to do it and then move on to the next. And that was kind of how we treated fundraising. I guess.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I'm going to come back to your $50 million raise in a second. But you've done over 150 investor pitches as well. You're clearly very good at it. We're talking about a lot of your successes because a lot of your pitches, you know, you've got the old tumbleweed moment as well. What are your do's and don'ts with pitches? And did you have any horror stories which our listeners and viewers would find interesting?
[00:11:32] Speaker C: I think, I guess horror stories wise, I mean, the only one that was, that I remember quite vividly was on a particular call. It was, it was a remote call.
I literally had the other. But they didn't switch off the camera, but they were on at their desk on the call, physically looking away, having a conversation with somebody else on the phone as well at the same time. And it was this weird kind of moment where I'm like, do I carry on? Do I not? Like is. They're obviously not listening. Is it a test? Like you, you're constantly kind of thinking whilst you're trying to deliver it well, 100% being rude and kind of went through it and they're like, yeah, great, sounds good. We'll, we'll follow up. And you're thinking that that was just a waste of everyone's time. Just, just tell me at the start.
But I think my, my honest, like, what I've learned throughout these different raises is you have to really cater your pitch or your deck or the key metrics to whatever stage you're at. And also the type of fun that you're dealing with.
Um, you know, in the early days, it was all about the story and it was all about whether they believe in me, whether they believe in the market, whether they believe in the solution that we provided. That was the number one thing that they cared about. But I was there with a financial plan that I got a friend to do for me with all these, like, complex formulas in a spreadsheet that showed how we're going to be at, I don't know, 100 million ARR within three years.
And I was so impressed by that that you could almost lean in with that saying, we'll look at the growth. And you realize that actually just focus on what matters to them. They don't care about that. They know that's the load of like, that you're not going to follow that plan. They just either get excited about the space or they don't. And you've got to make them excited to sell them the dream. And as we've progressed through, I think I've been probably learning and refining how I pitch the Business. What metrics am I leaning on? What story am I telling, depending on who they are? Is that a fund that wants to grow 10x? You know, their thesis is what we have to back 20 companies and one of them is going to be big. Well, if that's the case, you need to tailor your pitch to be. We're basically a US company that's going for broke on being a billion dollar business and that's it. Versus some of them are a bit more. Everything has to work. We want to grow consistently 3x rather than, you know, become a decacorn which is kind of the US mentality. So you really have to kind of be careful about how you're pitching what you're saying to make sure that it's landing with, with that fund.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: You've also, you've hired a lot of people over the last few years as well, haven't you? Presumably there's a similar pitch to them. I'm interested in how you brought that team together and persuaded so many people to come on board.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yes, I think, you know, when I was an employee I probably didn't put enough value on like culture and vision and you know, culture is thrown around as a, as a, as a term and I probably thought of it the same way when I started the business. It wasn't because I wanted to create a great culture really is because, well, at the time at this burning use case, I was excited about it. When you start hiring employees and you're kind of telling them about the vision and they kind of get the energy from you, I think they, they understand how passionate you are.
And I've come to realize as a lawyer, no one listened to me like I was the in house lawyer. People would actively not listen to what I would say and do the opposite. Whereas when you're the founder and the CEO, everything you say is interesting. And how you portray the vision and how you talk so passionately about what you're going to do brings people on the journey with you. And I think that was a big part of, and I learned that a lot that from Charlie. Charlie was this guy, this, this huge character in the business that he walked in. Everything you said you were kind of like, you know, you kind of believed every word that you said. And if we're going to be a billion dollar business, you were like, yeah, yeah, you know, we're in this together. And so I think I took a lot of lessons from what he did and really tried to make sure that yeah, about, we brought people on the journey, they understood why they were there, they understand that they can contribute to the business.
You know, one of the things we do is this 1% award. We physically pay people about £1,000 on each quarter for the best 1% idea, for the best margin gains idea. So we're saying like, tell us how we can be better. You can contribute and we're physically paying you the money for it. So it's things like that that really make people.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: I love that. I often say in our business, anybody can show leadership at any part of the business. Somebody can have an idea that can improve the business. I really like that.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Jonathan's building a quite formidable team at Avarice and Marcel as well. So I think that 1% idea might be introduced at the next commission meeting. The two things you mentioned there that made me think the first was when you mentioned that story, that investor story and they'd not turned the camera off. During COVID I was chairing a meeting and there are loads of faces on there and one person hadn't turned their camera off or their microphone and his wife said, what are you doing? He said, I'm listening to this really boring meeting.
And I messaged him and said, I didn't realize I was that bad like that. I wasn't talking about you. But anyway, it was just, it wasn't the best.
But the other thing, Charles, Charlotte. The thing I remember about Charles Charlotte, when I think of him, I always think of this great big belt buckle, the that he always has. I always think he's like a cowboy. All he needs is a Stetson.
You had a three and a half year gap between your Series A raise and your latest series B, the $50 million.
What did you have to put in place between your Series A and your Series B to get that? Because three and a half years is quite a long journey.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: It is and I think it was quite an interesting time. After Series A, we kind of had two choices. We could double down on growth and know that we might have to raise again in a year, two years, very much go down the venture path which would have been spending more and more money, incur a lot more costs. Probably not thinking as much about the metrics. Is it scalable but just doubling down and trying to take market share. Or we could grow and use the money to, you know, for us it was about establishing a US presence and. But make sure that we're building a business that if we did want to raise again we could just basically add fuel to the fire. It wasn't that we just needed the cash and we're kind of burning through it to the next milestone.
And so we were very deliberate with that. We noticed what was going on in the tech world as well. At that point there was a big shift from growth at all costs to I wouldn't say profitability, but just efficiency and understanding what makes your business tick.
So we've been around through the 2021, you know, huge raises where it was all growth at all costs. And we felt a bit left out at that point when we raised our series A and after that it switched the market kind of went off those type of companies. So we deliberately change, well, not change, but I guess focused on scalable metrics. So does the sales machine work? Yes, we're growing 100. That's great. But is every AE, for example, contributing? Does the, does the machine make sense? Are we spending too much on marketing for what we're bringing in?
We looked at how pipeline converts. We wanted the most predictable go to market engine possible so that if we hire another five AES, it's going to work the same way.
Does our support scale? You know, at the start we just had a customer success team that would do everything. We realized as a product got more complex. We needed to put implementation in as a separate team so we had to produce that after series A. So all these things were, I guess, refinements on the way the business operated. But we had a real focus on making sure everything made sense and that's why we chose to do the Series B. It wasn't because we needed the cash. We were fine in terms of cash as a business is because we got to a point where we thought, you know what, this foundation, we can scale every function. We know how it ticks, we know how it operates. And that's where that three year period was about really. It was going from product market fit to I guess, scalable business.
And that's kind of when why we deliberately raised this 50 million was. We're in a good place to do it.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: You must see, Jonathan, you must see loads of times though, companies that you work with going back to try and raise, you know, a year after their last raise without having demonstrated the growth that they really need.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously each case is different. I mean the name of the game is being really clear about what the plan is and what you're raising money for, what you're going to do with it.
And sometimes we often see businesses raising quite frequently.
But this case where it seems like the business has matured and I am interested in hearing about how they raise that you completed in January $50 million and you brought in two new investors. I think your existing investors might have participated as well. Could you just talk about that deal and how that came together and talk about the new investors. You've got Kenneth on board and if you could just talk about that for a minute.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Yeah, of course. So I think again following on from the Series A, I guess we've always been very deliberate about what path are we choosing to take and I think that isn't thought about a lot by companies in the early stage.
You know, like I remember in the early stage we, we would. You just want someone to give you money because you want to prove out the concept so bad. You don't really care about what's going to happen in two years time. You just give me some cash now and I'll prove that I can produce a product and everything is very short term. I think post Series A we're very much thinking about the long term and when we started to think about this round I was like, well, what do I want to achieve? Like what was the, the goal of this round? Rather than to think about a number, what does this round enable us to do?
We had a few very clear objectives.
Our U.S. growth is more like 200, 250% year on year. So our issue was we weren't covering off of our target market. We knew that we could only target about a third of the actual accounts that are our perfect ideal customer profile.
So we knew we needed to grow these go to market team and we reached conviction where you know, we had enough proof points that we could just go and add another five and they'd work for example. So we wanted to grow the go to market team. So we kind of landed on a number about what that would cost our engineering team, we've always operated a very lean engineering team and I think when we realize, when we look to the future, we want a bit more of the support in build out things like the qa, the testing side, some of the support functions and start to bring on more junior talent as well into the team and get a bit of a machine going from a, I guess from a people point of view. So that was one of the big initiatives. And then also if I'm honest, because this round was participation from existing but we had some legacy funds angels, they'd been on the journey for a long time and I think this is an area of, I guess investment that people don't talk about that much. Everyone talks about the venture side which is very much raise a lot of capital. You burn through it, then you raise again, then you burn through it and it's kind of, you either grow big or kind of fail basically or run out of cash.
I was actually keen to kind of sort out the cap table a little bit with this round as well. And realizing we'd had some debt before that converted into shares, we had some very much non participating shareholders that had been on a great journey today. And I felt when I look forward if we are going to exit at some point in the future, like having a clean cap table and having a very kind of just a few investors rather than a long tail of angels and all sorts on, there was, was a good thing to do. So there's a few different aims with this funding. And then when we brought it all together we, we kind of came to this kind of $50 million number and it was, you know, about the process itself. It was a long process.
It's interesting to understand the effect that AI has had on raising and, and generally on the markets, as everyone's seen with the public markets as well. So that was an interesting dynamic that we probably didn't realize was as much of a dynamic.
We went to the US and Europe. We've ended up with more European investors which if you'd asked me nine months ago, we would have gone with a US investor. I think going through the process made us realize that a lot of the US investors we're speaking to want control, operational control of the business and we weren't prepared to give that up. I've hired a very strong management team deliberately so that we can execute on the plan.
And it felt like in conversations there was a lot more of a, well, we're going to get involved, we're going to bring in all these people and basically run the business.
So that was a big pivot within the process that we found as well.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: So you've chosen your new investors carefully so that you've got the right balance of retaining control and bringing on some expertise as well.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly that. I mean again, kind of if I think about my mindset from the early days to now, like who's on your board? Are they. Is it a shared goal that you've got for the company?
Probably wasn't something I was thinking about in pre seed or seed. It was just a check, like someone give me some cash and I just need to go and then create this business. But I think this was a really good moment for me to kind of pause, reflect who do I want on the board? Are we all aligned in Terms of where we want to go.
And I think that going to Kennett it was specialist tech investor.
They operate in a very specific segment of the market.
Very shared alignment on the market itself and where we want to go. And so that was, that was definitely a huge consideration.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: You've raised in dollars or in sterling?
[00:24:36] Speaker C: We raised in sterling actually. I think we, we're very kind of, I guess there's a, there's a sort of. We ran the process very much in a kind of sterling but because we went to the US there was obviously a way to convert it to dollars. And also in terms of the headline
[00:24:50] Speaker A: news, clever move that we're more of
[00:24:52] Speaker C: a, more of a US business now. So it was Steve Bartlett does that
[00:24:55] Speaker A: puts everything in dollars.
[00:24:56] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a bigger number. So you know, it makes sense.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: And so I suppose the question there about how which I think you started talking about just elaborate a bit on the US versus UK or European, the funding community. That, that's interesting.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's obviously much bigger but they, they actually segment their. Like what. Like I guess the. Where they focus what part of the market in the US a lot better I think than the uk. I think the UK doesn't have as many investment funds. So the difference between VC at this stage in these verticals growth who are looking at a certain return for these, for this particular, like particular check size. For example in the U.S. it's like there's very clear cohorts of investors and they all have almost like a network where you, you bring on this investor, they've then got the next level investors that they'll just sell the companies to and it's like it's just a machine in the US and we just found with the UK there's a bit more flexibility actually with their mandate with what they'd invest in, you know, the return profile they were looking for.
And so we probably didn't know that going to market.
And then I think when we spoke to a lot of the US funds there was.
I think they just like to be a lot more involved.
The kind of check that we're looking to write, it's a big check, you know, it's big. Yeah, they are and they're a bit more, you know, the Americans and, and this is true of expanding to the U.S. if you expand to the U.S. it's the most competitive market in the world. The reason people do it is because if you crack the U.S. you know you're going to be a big company. You kind of have to be in the US to be a global company, but it's the most competitive and it is the most amount of competitors that you're going to face anywhere in the world. So the investors, if you are winning in that market, they're going to be all over you.
But I think they also have this mentality of we know best because we are the, you know, the, the number one in the, in the world for. Well, I guess they assume everything.
But I think that's what we found with some of the investors was, oh, you're a British company that's setting up in the us. We can help you expand the us but what they mean by that is we can probably take control a bit more of the operations and put our guys in. And that's one thing that, as we went through it, I certainly backed away from a lot.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: And so you completed the raise in January and then must have been sort of almost immediately after that. There's been a correction in the pricing in the market.
Has that affected you at all of the people who come on the investors?
Has that been discussed at all or.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: It's discussed by everyone. I think what's interesting, what's happened over the past three, six months, like, I mean, we're using these tools every day, we're using the different models. And I've always thought of the transition in the software market to go from, you used to have kind of the cloud infrastructure layer, the application layer, which is kind of the SaaS products, and that was it. There was kind of like two layers, really, that people played in. So it was Azure or aws, that'd be the foundation, and then you'd have vertical applications above it. The change that's happened now is that you've got kind of the infrastructure layer, then you've got like this foundation model layer, which is the LLMs, that has kind of created a whole new category. And they're drifting a little bit into the application UI layer. And this is merging of SaaS, AI and foundation models. And the honest answer is, and you hear this with the. The bigger US firms like Andreessen and Sequoia, they've never backed competitive plays really, historically, whereas all of a sudden they're backing both and investing significantly in both, because they don't know what's going to win and what the future is going to be.
So for me, uncertainty creates massive opportunity. Like, there's going to be, I think, a huge increase in spend in software generally and AI. So I think the market is just going to potentially 5x what it is today.
So it's an opportunity for us. But I think with uncertainty also creates this dynamic in the market with investors about do we make the bet, do we not? You never want to make a bet when you're uncertain about it. So we hear about it, we discuss it. From my point of view, it doesn't change anything. We're still bullish on what I mean
[00:29:09] Speaker B: there's a lot of investors who are long on software, they can't not be in it. So they're going to have to pick the winners and work out who's going to be the AI winners, I guess.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think, you know my general view on, on on that is if you're pretty vertical specific and you do more than just the UI, which is where the CRMs come under a lot of pressure because really what they do is rely on manual input into a screen and that's the products like that isn't very defensible. I think if you're pretty vertical specific you're, you're ingrained in the workflows, you have data that's specific to your, you know, you're vertically operating for US legal contracts knowledge and you can kind of make that your moat. Then they'll still be around and that's not going to go away. So I think you've got to differentiate. They've seen horizontal and vertical place.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Tom, you founded some eyes in 2018 and I think I've reported on your journey from the get go as well. And my observation is that you've not really changed other than that very nice looking coat that you're wearing.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Thanks for picking it on your wife. It was. My wife definitely chose it. So I'm going to give Mrs. Dunlop the props there.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: But would it be fair to say that surmise has grown up and changed and developed from an idea into a really viable business but you as a person, have you changed much?
[00:30:33] Speaker C: I don't think I've fundamentally changed personality wise. I think it's interesting a little bit now about. I mean this is what people say, repeat founders know a lot but almost that can be to the detriment in the early days of growing a business or founding it because you know what you're getting into.
I was like very naive. I had this great idea, I had this like bundles of energy and enthusiasm.
But I would, you know, have, I have quite a lot of imposter syndrome. I would be, you know, I always had this feeling like I did when I used to play badminton. I'm a Manchester lad, you know, I'm up against the world, it's me against the world, kind of the underdog mentality. And, and that was really, I think what allowed us to be quite bullish as a business. And I'm certainly not losing that now. It's just the stage, like, I guess the, the stage that we're on is slightly bigger. You know, before it was establishing a business, probably competing on a UK level. I, I do think of it like a competitive sport. Now I'm up against, whereas before I used to against the Chinese and the Japanese players on the world stage. That was tough. Like now as a business we're up against the Silicon Valley, you know, US players. But I just see it as a competition. I'm the underdog, I'm not supposed to win this battle. But yeah, we are against them and I think that's the way I kind of now approach it. So I think fundamentally, no, I haven't changed, I think just it's just on a bigger stage.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Absolutely fascinating what we're going to do. We're going to break and then when we come back, Jonathan and I will be discussing our interview with, with you and answering your questions. Our dear listeners, Welcome back to the second half of the Dealmaker Uncut podcast. We've just interviewed Tom Dunlop, CEO of Surmise. What did you think, Jonathan?
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Well, it was a really interesting story. I mean he's the man of the moment in terms of the fundraiser he's just completed in January and that sounds like that's really set them up to take the business on to a completely different level.
So I expect to see that business grow and prosper in probably quite a high profile way over the next few years.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Jonathan Avras and Marcel acted as a lead financial advisor to Endless on the sale of American Golf to Dragons Den star Peter Jones. I love that program and his investment group. You've worked with American Golf for years. Can you give our listeners and our viewers an insight into that deal?
[00:32:50] Speaker B: So American Golf was a business that we've worked with, actually I've worked with for quite a few years. We were working with them coming out of COVID when everybody started playing golf at the end of COVID if you remember. And so it had a real boost at the time.
Obviously we've just helped them find a new owner. And it was an interesting deal because it was marketed to normal trade buyers. But because of the nature of the business being related to golf, it was also interesting to a number of people who are just golf enthusiasts.
So it's interesting to get a deal in the end is bought by an enthusiast private individual.
And yeah, we're delighted to see that deal done and to look forward to seeing how that business grows.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: It's interesting. I watched Dragons Den and what's obvious watching Peter Jones, is he investing in the businesses that he has an interest in or a passion in that sector as well, which makes perfect sense. I read one of your fascinating LinkedIn posts, posts recently in which you wrote about current buyer behavior topical because Tom Dunlop spoke about this as well, spoke about AI. This is what you said. I quote, AI has moved from nice to have to must have Investors expect to see a clear, practical AI roadmap. Just explain what you mean by that, Jonathan.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Well, there's been a lot of talk recently about the software market and software investors looking at the threat from AI as well as the opportunity from AI.
We do talk about making sure that there's a clear plan as to why, if you are a software related business or actually any business, how you're going to develop the business in the context of AI and how AI is going to transform the business is now a question that pretty much every investor is asking. If you go back two or three years, the question was always how does ESG affect your business?
Whereas now a much more significant impact really is how AI is going to affect the business. And in the software market we are seeing businesses where almost every two or three weeks there needs to be a new plan because of the rate of development of AI, the use of AI in the businesses. So it's just such a dynamic, fast changing area and there's so many businesses are going to be affected that everyone needs to have a clear plan.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: I was in Leeds yesterday and I was walking down, I think it's Wellington Road and there's a pub there. It's called something like the Editors, the Editor's Drinkhole or the Editors Inn or something. And it just reminded me that back in the day in journalism, which I've just clocked up 35 years, the editors would go across for a drink all the time.
And I was struck by something that you wrote recently. You've clocked up 38 years in corporate finance and you wrote about this and you wrote a post in which you recalled how a young deal maker had to join in a conference call on the day of his wedding.
Just give us a snapshot, snapshots into the life of a deal maker today because hopefully that wouldn't happen.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: No. So I think that a lot of the investment banking community are still working phenomenal hours and have really high demands placed on them. There was a legal case recently where an employee was in litigation with an investment bank employer about working conditions and it's still an eye opening to see what some of the particularly the larger US investment banks expect of employees.
I think that in 2026 that every employer should find a way to be kind to to its people and expect people to be kind to each other. Even though investment banking is grueling and sometimes it can be a brutal industry to work in, I still think there's a place for a highly collaborative business with people who work together and at least enjoy and get the benefits of being part of a great team.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: I read an interview with Mark Carney, now the Canadian leader, and he spoke about working 100 hour weeks as an investment banker back in the day as well. So fascinating insight. That's all for this episode of the Dealmaker Uncut Podcast. Final shout out to the star of the show, Jonathan Boyers of Alvarez and Marcel.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Thanks Chris.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends and family and follow us on social media. Thanks very much.
