Investment Lifecycle

Sourcing

Our goal is to be the first institutional investor that engages with a new company or group of individuals that is seeking to start a new company. Therefore, we meet a lot of teams who are in the very formative stages of considering a new business. It is never too early in the life cycle of your business to meet Delta Partners. Where we judge a business to have too many risk factors to warrant an investment by us at that time, we aim to provide some feedback on the risks or challenges facing the business. It often makes sense for us to meet with businesses a few times in their early life as they develop and the opportunity becomes clearer and more likely.

Our investment opportunities come from many sources:

Spin-offs of development teams from international or locally owned technology companies.
University spin-outs or campus companies.
Entrepreneurially-minded people whom we meet through networking activities or who approach us directly.
Former executives of previous technology start-ups.

We work with many different co-investors, many of which are UK-based and a number of which are based in Continental Europe and the United States.

Managing

First and foremost, we are investors rather than managers. Each of our partners handles multiple investments. Each company also has an independent management team, who run the business.

Therefore, we at Delta Partners seek to work with our companies by acting as board members and by engaging in very high leverage activities in combination with the executive team in each company. The areas in which we typically aim to help are: strategy formulation; new financing decisions and processes; executive hiring and team buidling; remuneration; and, selling the company or doing and IPO.

In summary, management steer the boat and we help plot the course.

Each investment is governed by a set of legal documents. While these documents can set out decision rights governing the company in great detail, we find that we rarely have disagreements with management over basic decision-making in the company.

Exits

One of the most important activities in the life of a company is the process of exiting. It is also one area where we can add significant value to the company, as we have been through a lot of exits whereas the entrepreneur will likely have limited or no experience.

We are firm believers in the maxim that companies are bought rather than sold. Generally, organised processes for selling a company only yield a high price if the process is initiated on the back of strong interest from one or more potential acquirers. Similarly, the public markets are only receptive to the strongest of stories, with proven busienss models and exceptional growth.

However, this presupposes that the groundwork for an exit has already been laid by the executive team in the years prior to the exit. Long before the exit process, the executive team needs to know all the possible acquirers and ensure they are familiar with the target company.

Among the positive exits we have benefited from are: