Mercedes Bankston is a Director of the London Founder Institute accelerator and the founder of FunderStar, a platform that provides equity crowd-fundraising services for companies that successfully pre-launch via Kickstarter, IndieGogo, or Product Hunt. She is also a Venture Capital Advisor at Loyal VC, and previously from 2015 to 2020 served as an EiR at UCI Applied Innovation in Irvine, California while working in Director-level positions at McGraw-Hill, Cylo, and more.
If you are a startup ecosystem leader or advisor, and want to build an equity portfolio by adding value for startups in your city or region, you can learn more about becoming an FI accelerator program director at fi.co/lead
In this interview held during Women's History Month 2021, FI London accelerator leader Mercedes Bankston joined the Founder Institute HQ live, for a discussion on the 'State of Startups' in London, and in digital ‘remote-first’ entrepreneurial communities around the world. Key topics included: mentorship for entrepreneurs, diversity and inclusion initiatives within the startup community, the London and UK entrepreneurial ecosystems, the effects of Brexit on UK and EU early-stage businesses, and much more - watch the full-length interview or see highlights below:
Key Interview Highlights & Insights:
On the Value of Startup Mentorship and Network-Building
Mentorship is really powerful, because it is learned lessons - so when I’m looking for a mentor specifically for entrepreneurs, oftentimes I go after someone who has failed a couple of times and then has become successful. And the reason for that, is when you hit failures in your company, you learn really quickly - and you can pass those lessons on, and hone in on where the problems are early-on in an entrepreneurial journey.
Mentor-building is essential to having a connector network. Your connectors are your cheerleaders and your champions—and the best way to get investors or clients, really, is word of mouth—so use your mentors wisely. They’re going to help you save money, help you get clients, and help you succeed—so you should reach out [actively] and build an advisor network that can help propel you through these challenges.
On Female Founders and Startup Diversity
Being involved with women in entrepreneurship is a network… it’s fun to communicate with people who are like yourself, and the one thing about entrepreneurship is… you have some of the same personality traits. You probably have a little bit of grit, maybe you didn’t quite fit into the workplace… but when entrepreneurs come together, they accept each other’s quirks… They can move forward with friends, who are also entrepreneurs, in a different way than the corporate world or a university system.
When we talk about diversity, entrepreneurs come from all walks of life… everyone has a journey on how they got there, everyone is passionate about whatever that subject matter is that they’re selling or creating—and I think it’s really that shared passion that glues people together within diversity.
There’s a lot of places in this world that aren’t friendly to women… keep in mind that there’s a lot of ignorance in the world—and don’t fault people for being ignorant, but try to educate them along the way—that’s what I would suggest doing. I think this year is actually going to be great for diversity—and maybe we aren’t seeing it now, but things are moving rapidly. We’ve moved forward in technology 5-10 years, educational systems are changing overnight, and so I think as a result of that we are going to change overnight as well, as humans.
I don’t think people really care who you are or what you look like, if you have the numbers to backup your idea or your vision. That’s what it comes down to: finding your customer/market…But celebrate your diversity: find out what is your one unique factor that can propel you faster than another entrepreneur. So sometimes using those—being female, being a certain color, even being a certain nationality—people really relate to where you came from. So use that to your advantage as your differentiating factor.
If you are an entrepreneurial community leader or startup advisor, and want to build an equity portfolio by adding value to pre-seed stage companies in your city or region, you can learn more about becoming an FI accelerator program director at fi.co/lead
On the London Startup Ecosystem Remaining a Global Leader Post-Brexit
I saw a report maybe a year ago that said London has a better startup ecosystem than Silicon Valley, and I actually believe that to be pretty true. Being a Californian living in London… it’s already a very naturally diverse city… When we look at the [application] numbers at the London Founder Institute, we have a lot of female entrepreneurs, but we also have a lot of foreign entrepreneurs, who aren’t British.
We have tons of grants [in London] that just ballooned over COVID. In fact, I’ve seen some of the best funding of our graduates over the past year, getting grants any where from £175k to £350k. It’s almost like government is throwing money to startups to start new companies—and they’re doing it particularly in areas you would expect, like health technologies, transportation, and sustainability, which is really important to the UK.
Education isn’t going to change, I think, in London. London is kind of this center for education around the world, and that’s why I think London will continue to thrive: because foreigners from all around the world will continue to come to London universities—and then, by the way, they want to stay. They go to work for a company, and then they realize, ‘Hey, I can do something better, I wanna start a startup’—and we see a lot fintechs get started that way.
I think for startups [Brexit] is not going to be big problem right now. You know, London has created quite a few startup visas specifically for entrepreneurs—but also throughout the UK. And I actually think there will be more opportunities because of the pandemic—major city centers around the world that all of a sudden shrunk and are looking at major deficits financially, the question is: how can we change that? … Entrepreneurs are one of the quickest ways to do that.
Startup visas are a dime a dozen [in London], and there’s lots of accelerator programs… Lots of companies are getting funded every day, and that wouldn’t happen if London wasn’t a good place to go, or if the UK was out of money. I think the UK will remain a top focus startup ecosystem for entrepreneurship around the world, and is still going to be a top place for Europeans to move to.
Shout-Outs to a few FI London Alumni mentioned for major Funding & Traction news over the past year:
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Zobi - Home Intelligence to detect & prevent cybercrime
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StyleSwap - social shopping marketplace for luxury fashion
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Subly - subtitle videos automagically in seconds cross-platform
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CircaGene - industry leading genetic testing
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Gamestake - skills based mobile gaming with real daily prizes
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Pynk - AI + wisdom in crowds to make better investments
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Finverity - cross border supply chain finance for mid-markets
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Oddbox - surplus fruit & veg rescued to help save the planet
Yes Pynk—that’s actually a really interesting classic case: of 3 entrepreneurs who all had separate ideas and met at the Founder Institute, and they leveraged each others’ skills. And so when we talk about mentorship, I mean they were mentoring each other in their own cohort, which is oftentimes what we see—because everyone comes with their own superpower… They all work brilliantly together, I think they’ve had two crowdfunding campaigns that if I’m not mistaken have raised about £4 million.
If you are a founder of a pre-seed stage startup interested in learning about how to apply for the upcoming FI London Virtual Spring 2021 accelerator cohort, go to FI.co/apply/London.
If you are a startup ecosystem leader or advisor, and want to build an equity portfolio by adding value for startups in your city or region, you can learn more about becoming an FI accelerator program director at fi.co/lead
Alumni of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.75BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
