Hey LEGENDS,

TLDR

Many of you have been witnesses to our journey in the last 2 years. Some of you came to our events, some of you read this newsletter. But I have no doubt that you can feel my passion for everything we do for the startup community and my ambition.

From day one on this journey I have been lucky to meet amazing people who helped me grow personally and helped Rare Founders become what it is today.

With more than 20,000 founders and investors in our community, I think it’s fair to say that we are one of the largest startup communities in the UK.

Rare Founders is now a well-recognised and respected name in the startup ecosystem in the UK. But it’s time to take it to the next level. A level where we can have even more impact and actually change how the startup ecosystem works.

And I want to personally invite you to join us on this journey. I would not be here without the support from each and every one of you.

After seeing how the ecosystem operates from the inside, from founder, investor, government and service provider perspectives, I can distil it all down to one simple thing. Relationships.

We all know this subconsciously and chase it all the time. MIT and Stanford have researched this for the last 15 years. They even created an entire field called Social Physics. Their research shows that the more connected you are, the higher your chances of success. In fundraising, sales, hiring, job hunting, and even emotional support when things get hard.

None of this is news. Yet we live in a world where everything is programming us to chase quantity over quality.

I personally have 12,000 connections on LinkedIn. But I don’t know 90% of these people. I never spoke to them. I never exchanged messages. What is the point of this “network” if I can’t ask them for help or make introductions?

And this is what we are changing.

We are building your OWN social graph where you will be able to see your connections based on your ACTUAL relationships.

This includes:

And all of this is not based on random assumptions or random data. It is based on 15 years of research by MIT and Stanford. Luckily for us, on our team we have a founding member of the Social Physics division started by MIT 15 years ago.

Up until today, relationships have never been quantified outside research labs. We are the first ones to do it in the real world. The impact will be massive.

Example. You are looking for office space. The system tells you that you have a strong relationship with Jack. Jack knows Oliver. Oliver’s family owns commercial buildings in London and they have space available.

The use cases are unlimited. What we are building will change how networks work. It will make them intentional.

I believe the world is ready to prioritise quality over quantity. And we are aiming to dominate this space.

And you can be part of it.

This is not a solution that should be rushed. For it to work many elements have to align. There is a reason why it was not done before.

That’s why we are doing this in phases.

Right now we are raising £250K SEIS. £80K already committed. Conversations ongoing.

We need this money to launch the MVP, drive adoption and run real experiments with positioning, communication and product. We need real behavioural data before launching the full social graph.

Once validated, in 9–12 months we will raise £3–5M to scale into other countries.

We are working on closing this round before the end of March. Once it’s closed, allocation is gone.

I want to share future success with the people who helped me get here.

I know we are building something big. It will be challenging. Many assumptions will be killed and rebuilt. But I am confident that what we create will redefine how we all build and maintain relationships.

We already have part of the round committed. We are now speaking to the final investors for this SEIS allocation.

If this sounds interesting, do not overthink it.

Book a call with me here. Let’s speak.

If you feel strong about it, we move fast.

If not, you will at least understand what we are building before everyone else.

We have a short story deck for you here. A more detailed deck is available before the call.

I am open to smaller cheques if you are super excited and can help us strategically.

That’s it, legends. Long journey to get here. Fully worth it. Thank you for being part of it.

The sky is the limit.

P.S. We already have part of the round committed and only about 11 investor slots available. If you were ever thinking about being involved in Rare Founders on a deeper level, this is the moment.