“We look for people who can deliver an outsized return.”
Sam Jones is referring to investors. As founder of personal data monetization business, Gener8, Jones has built a company with around 890,000 users for its browser and app-based products, along the way attracting investment from business leaders, sporting celebrities and at least one successful musician in the shape of rapper and singer Tinie Tempah.
Jones has made a point of avoiding VCs, preferring instead to concentrate on angels and family offices. In a world that has increasingly come to regard venture capital investment as an essential component of technology company growth, that might seem an unusual strategy. But as Jones explains, high-profile private investors can contribute a huge amount to the growth of a young company. It’s a question, he says, of leveraging their strengths.
When I spoke to him in January, I was keen to find out more about what that means in practice.
Prior to starting Gener8, Jones worked for energy drinks brand Red Bull and was in charge of allocating an advertising budget of around €100 million across all channels, including digital. In his dealings with some of the big tech platforms he became aware – or perhaps more aware – of the sheer amount of data that gets collected when consumers browse, interact and transact online. Like others before him, he came to the conclusion there should be a way for web and mobile users to either limit the amount of information that tech platforms utilize or – alternatively – monetize that data. To that end, he set up Gener8 and the company went live in 2019.
Launching The Browser
The first step was the creation of a browser that gave users the option of preventing their online activity from being tracked or entering into a rewards scheme. Put simply, Gener8 would itself use the data to generate money, passing on benefits to users in the form of points that could be traded for goods and services. Last year, the company added a mobile app that allowed users to see how their information was being used and why. Thus informed, consumers could then choose to allow Gener8 to monetize data on their behalf. “The app proved transformational to our business,” he says.
But a customer-facing business requires at least two things – a profile and credibility. And that is perhaps where high-profile, and in some cases, media-friendly investors enter the picture.
Dragons’ Den
In 2021, Jones entered the world of reality TV when he pitched Gener8 to a panel of angels on the BBC show, Dragons’ Den, a British rendition of the format known in the U.S. as Shark Tank. “I went into the Den not only to pitch to the dragons but also to the TV audience,” he says.
That wider constituency was important. We all part with massive amounts of data every time we go online, but most of us don’t give it much thought. By going on TV, Jones could illustrate the scale of information collection and the possible opportunities for consumers to claw something back.
On the show, he picked up investment offers from two Dragons, in the shape of Touker Sul
eyman and Peter Jones. A third, Tej Lalvani, pitched in with an offer after the show. Today, Gener8 can also point to investment from the aforementioned Tinie Tempah, cricket star Chris Gayle and football manager, Harry Redknapp.
But does it make a difference to have celebrity investors on board? Jones thinks it does but each investor has something different to offer.
There are of course some practical advantages to having experienced business people on board. Jones says Dragon, Suleyman offered desk space at one of his offices and as Gener8 has grown, so has the facility. “We have now taken over a whole floor,” says Jones. In addition, Jones says Sulleyman is adept at connecting Gener8 with other businesses.
But what about the celebrity side of the equation? Well, that provides a means to generate publicity. “I’ve been on Sky News with Tinie Tempah and I’ve also appeared on stage with him,” says Jones who adds that getting on TV is much easier when Tempah is involved.
Equally, Jones sees the involvement of veteran football manager Harry Redknapp as highlighting the “breadth of Gener8’s appeal.”
Navigating Growth
Not all of Gener8’s investors are household names. For instance, Spotify executive turned investor, Jon Mitchell is also a backer. Jones says that – drawing on his Spotify experience – Mitchell has made a big contribution in terms of steering Gener8 through the trickier points of the growth journey
“The key to leverage the strengths of the investors,” says Jones. “And to ask them questions that are relevant to their knowledge.”
All of which sounds simple, but not every investor in a startup business will want to be visible.. Indeed, some will go out of their way to stay out of the limelight. And even when working in the background, some backers will want to be passive while others will seek to play an active part in growing the business. Jones says this is something that should be discussed at the outset.
To date, Gener8 has raised around £8.5 million, feeding through to a valuation of £30 million. The aim now is to expand to North America. Jones says he doesn’t have user targets, but the aim is to create a viable business using a business model with the potential to attract millions of users. In the U.K. the business is now profitable, although there is clearly some way to go before the product might have a claim ubiquity.
How much of that is down to leveraging the drawing power and expertise of some very public investors? That’s probably not easy to answer. But for a business that will rely on profile and credibility to expand its operation, having high-profile advocates can do no harm.
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