I am applying for for exceptional promise - business category and would love your feedback on same before making a final submission. I am applying as a cofounder & CEO of my current startup
Recommendation Letters:
Head of Ventures of a VC/Accelerator that invested in my current startup
Chairman of our Board, 3x founder and current senior engineering manager for a global payment company
Founding Partner/CEO of an Investment firm that partnered to provide debt funding for users on our platform/current startup
Personal Statement:
My background
My Journey into Tech
Leveraging Tech for change (impact of the businesses I have founded or co-founded, revenue and investment raised)
My contribution to the UK tech ecosystem and economy
MC
Proof of pre-seed investments for my current startup - $50k (early stage VC) and $200k (Angel Investor)
Acceptance letters into two accelerators in 2023 (Africa and the US)
Certificate of Incorporation of my current startup in the US + evidence of last tax filing + Cap table showing me as majority shareholder
OC1
Innovation showcase at my current startup (From our first product, what we pivoted to with screenshots of the products, audited accounts from 2019 to 2021, screenshot of Google Cloud awards of $200,000)
Angel Investor reference letter, pages 1 and 7 of the SAFE agreement and his CV
OC3
My Contribution & Impact as cofounder and CCO at a previous startup I worked for between 2020 and 2022 (Reference Letter from the Board chair & Investor, screenshot of the eCommerce platform I built processing over 250,000 orders, unaudited accounts for 2022 FY)
Employment contract & Payslip at previous startup (Screenshot of employment letter showing high salary, described how my pay was hire than industry average based on payscale.com + my last payslip in November 2022 before exiting)
Breakdown of our MVP (current startup) and how it helped us raise funding from my current startup ($250,000 in pre-seed round) - shared core features of the product, impact it had on fundraising, how I built the data room + screenshot of our product design specs, disaster recovery plan and data room showing the folders contained in it.
Hi - thanks for tagging me Joshua, great to speak. Your application looks pretty strong and it seems like it’s very similar to my organisation. I would advise you to make sure that each of your evidences actually correspond to an exact line from Tech Nation - for example, for OC1, I would showcase evidence 1 as follows:
Evidence of innovation/product development, proof of product in market and associated traction through revenue. => at the moment your innovation showcase doesn’t really fit this criteria fully => the Google Cloud awards are actually not going to help as much but feel free to include them (since it wasn’t hard for us to get them - I assume it wasn’t too hard for you either). Instead, in this document, I would try to showcase as much proof of traction as possible (number of users in waitlist, number of API calls, number of businesses onboarded to your service, proof of user registrations with anonymised data, proof of business partnerships, amount of revenue generated or through letters of intent to pay at a future date).
I would suggest you try to add another evidence into OC1: Evidence of domestic and/or international sales should show customer numbers for each country in which the company is operating, including a ranking of your distribution channels with a breakdown of when these sales were achieved for each channel (i.e. online, physical retail, 3rd party distributors, resellers etc.). => here you can add evidence of signups on your waitlist page if you have one and their geographical distribution. Also, you can use similar web screenshots to showcase how the number of visits on your website etc.
MC: This looks good but just remember that acceptance into accelerators is not a criteria and is not as helpful (unless you get into a Tech Nation partner accelerator which speeds up the process but in itself is not a criteria). I would strongly suggest that you ask the accelerators for a reference letter from the organisation that you include alongside the acceptance letter. In that letter it should mention the number of applicants and provide more colour on why you were selected.
OC3: This looks good, just remember to format each evidence to exactly fit the bullet point in the guide!
The closer your application aligns with bullet points in the visa guide, the faster you get endorsed!
You have a great profile - you just need to tweak your evidence and align it towards the guide and you should be good to go!
