Investor Circle
Building better relationships between founders and investors.
That's the mission behind Canopy Community and the Investor Circle podcast.
We believe great founders can come from anywhere.
But too often, investment feels confusing, inaccessible or reserved for people with the right networks, introductions or experience.
We're here to change that.
In each episode, host Stewart Noakes sits down with angel investors, venture capitalists, family offices, fund managers and leaders from across the startup ecosystem to explore what really happens behind investment decisions.
Together they uncover the conversations that rarely happen in public.
- What makes an investor believe in a founder?
- Why do some startups raise funding while others don't?
- How do experienced investors assess opportunity, risk and character?
- What does a great investment relationship actually look like?
These aren't pitch competitions. They're honest conversations about trust.
Every guest brings a different perspective. Some have built and exited companies before becoming investors. Others manage funds, support founders or shape the wider investment ecosystem.
Each conversation reveals how experience, judgement and empathy influence every investment decision.
Our hope is simple.
One conversation at a time, we want founders to better understand investors, and investors to better understand founders.
Because raising investment isn't simply about finding capital.
It's about building confidence. Building credibility. And building relationships that can last for many years.
Whether you're validating your MVP, finding customers, preparing your first funding round, investing through SEIS, launching your own fund or simply curious about how early-stage investing really works, Investor Circle shares practical lessons from people who have built businesses, invested their own money and experienced both sides of the table.
The conversations go beyond term sheets and valuations.
They explore integrity, due diligence, storytelling, resilience, customer validation, exits, AI, governance, failure, and the decisions that shape successful companies long before the investment is made.
Produced by Canopy Community, one of Europe's leading startup communities, Investor Circle is part of a bigger mission:
To leverage entrepreneurship as a tool for social mobility by making investment more transparent, more relatable and more accessible to the next generation of founders and investors.
Because every investment starts long before money changes hands.
It starts with curiosity.
It grows through trust.
And sometimes, one conversation is all it takes for a founder to find belief, or for an investor to discover the person they've been looking for all along.
🎙️ Follow Investor Circle for new episodes as they drop.
🌱 Learn more about Canopy Community: https://www.canopy.community/
👋 Connect with Stewart Noakes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnoakes/
📺 Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@canopycommunity617
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Investor Circle
Latest Episodes
Great Early-Stage Investing Starts With Listening
We sit down with Jeffrey Faustin to trace how one of the UK’s longest-running SEIS funds is built, from the early days of the scheme to the realities of backing pre-revenue founders. We dig into what makes a founder investable, how follow-on EI...
Stop Selling The TAM And Bring The Team
We talk with Mark, a Dutch angel investor in the Algarve, about how his group backs pre-seed startups in southern Portugal and why sustainability and regional impact drive their decisions. We also unpack what founders get wrong in pitch decks, ...
A Great Deal Starts With A Truthful Story
We talk with Matt O’Donovan about what it really takes to sell a tech business, then switch viewpoints to what he looks for when investing as a UK angel. We dig into due diligence, founder integrity, SEIS and EIS, and the big open question of e...
Seed Funding Without The Headache
We sit down with Michael McDowell from Seed Legals to talk about making early-stage fundraising faster, cleaner, and less mentally draining for founders and funds. We dig into Northern Ireland’s startup ecosystem, the reality of SEIS and EIS ro...
Are You VC-able? Hard Truths About Startup Funding
Oli from Fuel Ventures unpacks the firm's investment strategy across their pre-seed and seed funds, sharing his personal "Venture Playbook" that guides their decision-making process. He reveals counterintuitive insights about founder profiles a...
