A team offsite is a great way to create cultural clarity for startups. The sequel team offsite in December 2023 enabled us to look back on the year, what we could do better and clearly communicate our goals for 2024. We invited former US Navy SEAL Platoon Commander Errol Doebler to give his leadership course to our team. Our team were also up early every morning to complete Wim Hof breathing sessions followed by an ice bath. Some useful guides on how to run a startup offsite in the comments, including from Ashore a great platform for organising UK offsite locations.
About us
Sequel is a community of the world's best athletes investing in the world's best startups, advancing humanity. We are on a mission to help athletes build legacies for their families and for the world. We harness cutting-edge technology and a network of founders, angels and venture capitalists built over a decade to enable athletes to invest in the most promising startups changing the world for the better. Deal Flow + Community + Education + Diversification
- Website
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https://sequel.co
External link for sequel
- Industry
- Technology, Information and Internet
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- Miami
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2023
- Specialties
- startups, venture capital, community, and impact
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
Miami, US
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Get directions
London, GB
Employees at sequel
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Jack Beaman
Ex founder of Syft, exited to Indeed in 2019. Angel investor & advisor
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Andrew Webster
Founder DesignMyNight (Acquired '19) 🍹 | Co-Founder trumpet 🎺 | Venture Arm Horseplay Ventures 🐴 | Investor in 55+ Startups 😇
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Julia Harper
Creative Director at sequel
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Dan Okhlopkov
Data @ sequel
Updates
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Machine 🤖 + 👩💼Human = unstoppable 💪🏽
In the past year at sequel we have sourced 10,000+ startups, looked at 1,354 in detail and made 11 investments, currently at a rate of >2 per month, all with an investment team of 1. How did we do this? 🏎 Senna - our proprietary data-driven sourcing, enrichment and decision engine. The key features of Senna include: 👨👩👧👧 A custom CRM that centralizes all founder and fund communications including emails, calendar events, and call transcripts. 🎯 Automated data enrichment and machine-learning algorithms that score startups, founders, and lead investors. 📧 Cold outreach tools enabling two-click emails and follow-ups with a 28% conversion rate to founder calls. 🗄 A smart data room manager that organizes files, extracts data from pitch decks, and generates video scripts. Senna significantly increases the velocity of our investment sourcing and the quality of our decisions. If you're interested in learning more about our next plans for Senna - and seeing some data on our investment performance to date - tap the link to our newsroom below.
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Thank you to all the startups and investors that joined us at our startup showcase last week with the Antler team 🚀 A unique PechaKucha presentation dynamic kept the showcase short and high-energy. 💹 Falco empowers financial firms to analyse regulatory changes. 🏡 AskVinny is an AI-powered property maintenance. 🏦 Banqora uses AI to automate document processing and streamline post-trade operations, saving financial institutions significant time and money. 👨🏭 frnt optimises retail operations with digital workers. 🥗 cartd Hosted commerce for food creators. 👩⚕️ Gladys is a revolutionary new platform transforming the way people access care at home. 🤳 merx is an AI native platform that helps consumer businesses sell and engage on WhatsApp. 🏎 Track Titan is the home of racing insights - a digital platform for the world’s 1bn+ motorsports fans that helps them unleash their full driving potential and understanding of the sport.
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A growth-mindset is a winning mindset.
There’s a certain stereotype of footballers - that we’re lazy and dumb - which makes no sense to me having spent my career in different changing rooms. I couldn't disagree more. Athletes have many of the attributes required for success off-the-field. Strong work ethic, an ability to work under intense pressure, adaptability, perseverance, team influence, elite mental strength and a growth mindset all underpin the foundation for any success story in pro sport. At 31, I challenged myself to get an MBA. I had no tangible business experience minus an undergraduate degree 10 years prior. I didn't meet 90% of the criteria required to get accepted by any tier 1 institution. I decided to reach out to a programme director directly (thank you Xavier Duran) and pleaded my case. Luckily, he saw something unique in an existing athlete seeking further education and took me on as an exception. I joined a cohort of experienced senior executives across the world - from Google to Saudi Aramco. By far the least experienced person in the room (something I always recommend being), well and truly out of my comfort zone and on day 1 when I saw the content for my first class - data analytics - I genuinely thought I'd made a big mistake. I called Xavier a day later to said so, but luckily he told me otherwise. Trust the process, I'd be fine. I totally immersed myself into the process and applied the same principles that stood my in good stead for football - sacrifice and self-discipline. I also ask a lot of questions. 3 years later, I passed with distinction and it genuinely remains one of the proudest moments of my life for a number of reasons. If your goals in life are defined by what others think of you - you will not go far. Break stereotypes. Smash glass ceilings. Forge your own path.
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sequel reposted this
🌍 We have 3 spots free for our Planet Positive / Climate Tech drinks this evening on our roof terrace in London. If you’re a founder or investor in this space register below 🌍
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What does it take to raise a Series A round? Last night we hosted a dinner on our roof in London with 10 of the best Seed stage founders about to embark on raising their Series A with our partners Round and Odin. Advice from our CEO Alex: 'Series A is the first round where whichever VC joins your board will have a significant impact on the trajectory of your company. Build relationships with VCs ahead of raising the round and take blind references from their portfolio where that partner sat on the board. Importantly: don't just take references from the companies they list on their website - take them from the companies they invested in which failed. That is where their true colours will show.'
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sequel reposted this
The worlds of sport & entrepreneurship have many similarities. 📈 They both exhibit extreme power laws - most athletes and founders fail - and the lion's share of the rewards are shared by even fewer who reach the pinnacle of their respective games. 💪 Athletes and founders have to demonstrate extreme resilience to overcome the challenges on the path to success. 📚 In my hundreds of conversations with the best athletes and founders in the past year I've also noticed a common trait: they are all optimists with a growth mindset. We previewed our new brand film which encapsulates this this week at the sequel launch event... I look forward to sharing it publicly soon. Thank you to the athletes, founders, VCs, angels and partners who joined us at the event this week 🙏
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Day 2 of the sequel AI hackathon... T - 24 hours to launch 🚀
⏳ We are 8 hours into a 48 hour AI hackathon at sequel 👨💻 We've moved to our new office to knuckle down and release the launch version of our previous hackathon project - PitchLeague AI. There's no furniture yet... but with a Starlink (thanks Elon) and a pretty special view of Westminster Abbey from our terrace... we're caffeinated and motoring towards the official launch on Thursday. The launch version of PitchLeague AI will include a host of new features including: - Slide by slide feedback from our AI pitch deck coach - Startup scores measuring founding team, market size and traction (in addition to deck scores) - Competitive landscape analysis - Investor discoverability We are also building an API for VCs and investors to assess startup decks (privately without them appearing on the leaderboard). We're putting together a prize list... including investment, mentoring and invitations to our sequel launch event at the new office. What would be a good prize for the highest scoring startups? ⚡ Register for updates on our launch at the link in the comments.
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sequel reposted this
We have helped more than 3,100 founders improve their pitch decks since we launched our AI coach - Pitch League AI in Beta last year. A startup called Hireable (fka 'Career University') currently sits at the top of the league with a score of 96.45 / 100. I've had a few people ask me why we built this free tool for founders... so here's the answer: 1. Philipp Omenitsch and I wanted a way for the team to learn to use AI and the OpenAI APIs in their work - this was a great project to achieve that. 2. We sourced hundreds of relevant startups for sequel through this tool. 3. The data has helped us train our sourcing technology and process - which I believe are well on their way to being some of the most sophisticated in early-stage venture. 4. At sequel we believe in demonstrating our value-add to founders. What better way to do that than building free tools for founders - even before they become a part of our portfolio. We're planning on making some upgrades to Pitch League soon - what would you like to see added? p.s. shout-out to Timothy Armoo who dropped into our office when we were building this and sprinkled some marketing magic, coming-up with the name for Pitch League.
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