When communities collide, great things happen

Invest in Winefi through Founders Capital

We scour Europe for the top 1% of Start-ups led by epic Founders, giving them access to our world-class investor & partner network to scale their ventures to heady heights.

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When communities collide, great things happen

Founders Capital exists today because 5 years ago, my co-founder Hugo started a small Whatsapp community of like minded founders to help each other navigate the perilous journey of scaling start-ups.

This community was aptly named Founders Club. Quite simply, Founders Club was designed to be a "safe space" for Founders to learn from each other, share high-quality service providers and occasionally voice disgruntlement at time wasting VCs.

Fast forward to today and Founders Club has 250 members, 16x 7 figure exits and over £350m investment raised by Founder members. It's a hotbed of Europe's most illustrious founders - but the beauty of this group goes beyond the headline stats… the main charm is that it will never be commercialised and it's far from just another elitist club. 

Last week, I wrote about what we look for in an EPIC founder. One of those young, credible and wildly ambitious Founders is Callum Woodcock. 3 months ago, Callum quit his job as Commercial Director at a well funded start-up to follow his passion and build a marketplace dedicated to investing in wine.

Enter Winefi.

Winefi makes investing in wine as easy as buying into an index fund, by providing access to shares in diversified, expertly-curated collections of fine wine via an easy-to-use fintech platform.

We are pleased to announce that Founders Capital will be participating in Winefi's pre-seed round. In fact, Callum has nailed his raise to such an extent we will be the last ticket in.

It always hits differently when we back one of our Founders Club members. Especially one who is taking the first step in their entrepreneurial journey. Even though Founders Club and Capital are closely aligned, Callum had to go through the same due diligence process everyone else who gets backed by Founders Capital goes through.

Callum has demonstrated all of the key attributes we expect to see in an early stage founder and we believe the business has the potential to scale significantly in the coming years.


Why have we decided to invest in Winefi?

As an asset class, fine wine has a compelling investment profile, outperforming equities over a 30 year period with a fraction of the volatility. At the same time, the experience of investing in wine has remained opaque, expensive and inefficient.  
 
Callum has built exceptional supply side access, and a top advisory committee representing a ‘who’s who’ of the global wine trade. This committee includes two Masters of Wine (of which there are only 414 globally) and two professional wine investors. This committee includes the ex-Buying Director of Berry Bros, and the former CEO of WineGB.

Round details
Company Name: Winefi
Raise amount: £400k - £500k
Pre-money Valuation: £1.5m
FC Allocation: £50k
EIS: Yes
Vision: Our ambition is for Winefi to become synonymous with wine investing, in the same way that Masterworks is for art, Vanguard is for index funds, or Blackstone is for property.
See the investment memo here.

Cheers,

Rich & the Founders Capital team