Gareth Hawkins learnt about the opportunity to invest in Moblox, the new venture from former Dragons’ Den Dragon Piers Linney, via the Connectd platform. We caught up with Gareth to learn more about why he chose to invest in Moblox and how he has found his time on the Connectd platform.
Piers clearly has a track-record of success in business and his vision and work-rate are highly admirable. In terms of Moblox, he has assembled an impressive team who have already built-out a credible launch product on a strong tech-stack. I’m excited to see them achieve their full potential with Moblox.
Moblox came to my attention when I was notified through Connectd. The platform really understands my investing thesis so I trusted that this could be a good match, and after speaking with Piers, I felt that this opportunity aligned with my aims.
Having built and run SMEs myself, I’ve experienced first-hand the fragmentation of Comms and IT services, the needless overcomplexity in finding and obtaining solutions, and the inconsistency of customer service among the large corporations – who don’t always contextualise their offer well for non-enterprise-level companies. Startups and SMEs require a collaborative, intuitive, flexible and easy-to-manage platform on which to manage the telephony, cloud-services and portable hardware they run their businesses from. Moblox aims to serve that unmet market need via a blueocean approach that emphasises the customer experience. That is a really strong proposition and it grabbed my attention!
Piers clearly has a track-record of success in business and his vision and work-rate are highly admirable. In terms of Moblox, he has assembled an impressive team who have already built-out a credible launch product on a strong tech-stack. I’m excited to see them achieve their full potential with Moblox.
Connectd is an enabler of authentic, mutually-rewarding connections between Founders, Investors, NEDs, Advisors and Mentors. It’s the muchneeded game-changer that restores balance and excitement to the seed-funding space, and goes to the heart of what authentic angelinvesting should be about: supporting founders on their journey to bring great products and services to market. I’ve made several investments in companies discovered via the Connectd platform.
Innovating, dedicated and scalable.
From what I’ve seen over the last quarter, among the business angel investor community I work with, there is an increasing appetite for new opportunities, as the returns from public markets are now far less certain. Due-diligence is taking a little longer, as investors are perhaps more cautious, but there is still plenty of dry powder in the ecosystem for strong founders developing innovative solutions for large target markets.
There’s not one particular story, to be honest. I tend to favour investing in tech platforms that provide infrastructure services addressing unmet market needs. Moblox certainly fits that criteria, but elsewhere in my portfolio I’ve been very excited by underestimated founders from underrepresented characteristics, such as founders of colour, neurodiverse and solo-female founders. I’ve invested in the passion and mission that they bring to the groundbreaking products they are building.
