Local experts join together to make Jersey a venture capital hotspot
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launched my first company, a web design business in 1996 and sold it to a publicly traded software company in June 2000. I guess being in the industry 24 years makes me somewhat of a veteran in e-commerce. I’ve experienced first-hand the development of the 21st Century tech industry and alongside that, the evolution of the funding landscape that has grown up around it.
When Richard Schiessl and I started Feelunique in 2005 external funding was considerably less accessible. We did not for one second consider raising money from an outside source to fund the business. In a way, that was a good thing; it meant we had to focus on creating a profitable company and fast. The longer it took us to become financially successful, the more money we could personally lose, and that’s a great motivator.
The flip side of course is that with external funding and expertise outside of our own competencies we might have built a bigger, better company more quickly. I tend to think in terms of no regrets though, and it’s a left or right path decision, rather than the right or wrong one. One never knows what ‘might’ have happened had we taken the ‘other’ path, so we plan from where we are right now, always looking forward.
Feelunique grew over the next eight years into a company that has never had external funding, employing around 200 people, turning over £35m and making a tidy profit of over £2m when in December 2012 we sold 56% of the business to private equity. We bought in new management in April 2014 and myself and Richard Schiessl, the co-founder, then stepped down from the management team. While we remain as shareholders and board members we have spent the intervening years investing in and working with over 20 different businesses, primarily in the e-commerce, digital and beauty sectors. They range from pure seed capital start-ups to co-investing with larger family offices and venture capital funds on later stage rounds.
In many instances we have co-invested and worked with other local founders and investors on projects both in Jersey and
By Aaron Chatterley A self-confessed serial entrepreneur
the UK. We have seen at first-hand the difficulty in finding access to ‘smart money’ funding that our portfolio companies had and the related need for advice, support, mentoring, contacts, introductions and further funding. We recognised that by creating a venture firm here in the island we could formalise what we were already doing, pool our resources and address the gap between pure funding and expertise.
With that end in mind we formally launched Faction Digital towards the end of 2020, bringing together some of the founders of Feelunique,
Play.com, MyMemory and DWE Digital.
We are not a ‘fund’ as such and we did not initially raise our investment capital from external investors. Unlike more traditional Venture Capital firms our focus extends beyond just funding. We work with companies where we can also provide execution and ongoing advisory assistance using in-house resources and expertise in a variety of disciplines. That includes strategy, digital marketing, finance, governance and business management.
Jersey is a hotbed of entrepreneurialism and innovation. I am constantly amazed by the quality of ideas and pitches that I see. I believe this is in no small part due to the fantastic work Digital Jersey has done in championing, supporting and promoting the tech community. We are also incredibly fortunate to have a world-leading fibre infrastructure island-wide and now the Digital
Jersey Academy is preparing local students for careers in a space which currently faces a lack of skills. This is all creating an exciting increase in new ideas, start-ups and ultimately the creation of new companies positively contributing to the island’s economy and workforce. Already, in the space of four months, Faction has signed agreements with three companies, one a local start-up in the media space founded by two amazing young entrepreneurs which we will be announcing shortly, and the other two are new commerce joint ventures with UK partners. There are also two other exciting local prospects in the pipeline as well.
Beyond 20/20 - Technology Page 65
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