Alston Zecha at Eight Roads: building a funding roadmap & using capital as a competitive advantage

The StartUp to ScaleUp Game Plan

Alston Zecha is a Director at Eight Roads - a global VC who’ve invested $6bn in the past 12 years.

Formerly with Apax Partners, Alston also founded & led the mobile payments venture Payleven who merged with SumUp 5 years ago.

Alston reflected on:

• The resilience & focus he's seen from experienced entrepreneurs in the portfolio who’ve taken tough decisions during the COVID19 pandemic to support subsequent growth
• The importance of being human & remaining "in the moment" - especially during such troubling times
• Why capital as a competitive advantage was a blindspot for Alston when he was an entrepreneur and why he feels this continues to hold back many technical founders
• The importance of having a funding “roadmap” as well as a product roadmap
• His view that tech founders rarely create truly unique solutions - they rarely create a category from scratch
  

For more insights into Eight Roads check out https://eightroads.com/en/ & for advice on hiring exceptional leaders for B2B scale-ups head over to https://alpinasearch.com