Member Article

Stand on the shoulders of giants: Fearless Adventures Launches a New Fund by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs, Aims for Ten Startups by the E

Innovation in North West England, already home to 14 ‘unicorns’ companies, received a major shot in the arm today as Fearless Adventures comes out of the door with a multimillion-pound fund and a novel, one-stop shop of support services to grow the next generation of direct-to-consumer (‘D2C’) startups in the UK.

Started by a trio of the country’s brightest young entrepreneurs, David Newns, Dominic McGregor and Charlie Yates, Fearless Adventures uniquely offers their partner entrepreneurs three critically important areas of support: funding, marketing services and talent. The founders believe this triple threat is the key to fast growth and more successful exits further down the line but isn’t currently offered under one roof elsewhere.

Three entrepreneur-led companies are on board already, benefitting from not only the funding but also Fearless Adventures’ best-in-class centralised team of digital marketers, data experts, and talent specialists. The company aims to close up to 10 investments as soon as the end of 2021.

“We want founders and startups that we partner with to reach the world-leading heights that we did with our own businesses,” said co-founder David Newns. “So we asked ourselves: ‘What support do we wish we had access to when we started?’. It was clear there was a real gap for an offer that helped passionate entrepreneurs, not only raise capital but get a high quality, ready-made support system to help their startups thrive.”

In time for launch, it has already lured top talent from the Hut Group, Social Chain and Mojo Mortgages to provide topflight expertise on everything from SEO to PPC, and business intelligence to data analytics. To serve its portfolio, Fearless Adventures is based in a new high-tech workspace in Manchester, where its partners can also take advantage to work alongside their internal team.

Dominic McGregor, founder and managing partner, commented: “Having been through the highs and lows of growing successful businesses, we have experienced almost every problem associated with scaling companies. And we’re passionate about putting that expertise to great use with our partner companies that have already demonstrated a successful market fit, are profitable and are led by talented entrepreneurs who are as ambitious for growth as we are.”

The fast pace of partner onboarding and talent acquisition is characteristic of the Fearless Adventures’ founders - who have started, scaled and sold a clutch of nine-figure businesses of their own. Newns found and sold two companies for £158m within eight years by the time he was 33, taking a seat at the top level of FTSE30 company Imperial Brands in the process, as Group Science and Innovation Director. McGregor co-founded and sold Social Chain. He dropped out of university to become the company’s COO and grew it to over 700 employees on four continents by the time he was 28, eventually leading it to a public listing. And Yates has advised on the sales of over £1bn of owner-managed disposals, using his exceptional e-commerce and retail expertise to advise businesses on how to maximise their equity and value.

Charlie Yates, founder and managing partner, said: “Our key principle is ensuring we have complete alignment with our partner companies and investors. We structure our investments so that we are uniquely incentivised to help deliver as much value to the founders and their companies as possible”.

In addition, the team plans to develop and launch an apprenticeship program, The Fearless Academy. With a strong commitment to diversity, it will offer young, ambitious talent, training opportunities in marketing to equip individuals with the tools and skills for career progression.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by scot devine .