Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Shaping the Future of Diverse Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs with Vinay Solanki

Your Dream Business

In this final episode of my special Channel 4 Ventures series, I interviewed Vinay Solanki, the founder of Channel 4 Ventures. He explains their role in supporting diverse businesses through media for equity investments, with a focus on fostering innovation and inclusivity. Vinay shares his personal journey and the challenges of creating opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs. We also discussed the importance of providing access and support to boost new products and services, especially those that address real-world challenges. It’s an amazing episode full of content for entrepreneurs, start-up founders, and anyone interested in the intersection of media investment and social impact.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The Power of Media for Equity: Channel 4 Ventures uses media investments to support diverse businesses, helping them grow by providing resources and visibility to entrepreneurs who might otherwise struggle to get noticed.

• Fostering Inclusivity and Innovation: By focusing on underrepresented entrepreneurs, Vinay Solanki emphasises the importance of innovation that addresses real-world problems while ensuring inclusivity in the business world.

• Creating Opportunities for Growth: Access and support are crucial for new products and services to thrive, especially those that tackle social challenges. The right backing can help turn ideas into impactful businesses.

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LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Vinay Solanki on LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international best selling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Your Dream Business Podcast and our fifth and final episode in this special series that I'm doing. with channel four ventures. We have had some [00:01:00] phenomenal conversations during this week and these episodes. We started off the week with Nikki Wicks, who is the CEO and the creative director for body coach, also Joe Wicks, his big brother. We then spoke to the amazing Sam, who is the founder and CEO of Stellar insurance. We had a conversation with Tom who. knows everything that there is to know about investing and is a super smart man. And then yesterday was the awesome Grace who starting her business in university and talked about how she hustled in those early days and just went for it regardless of what the outcome could have been. And today we are finishing off with Vinay. Vinay founded and runs Channel 4 Ventures. It launched back in 2015 and is now the number one media for equity investor in the UK. Media for equity is an investment activity that swaps media and for shares in typically [00:02:00] unlisted companies like a venture capitalist investor. Binet is highly entrepreneurial, thoughtful and a seasoned digital media executive across many transactions, projects and sectors and geographies. Prior to Channel 4, Vinay led Getty Images European digital business development activities. Outside work, Vinay is a single parent to a teenager and enjoys cooking, running and music. He has a degree in law from UCL and an MBA from Imperial College London. Okay, you know how on Tom's episode I said I felt really stupid? And I felt a real bit of imposter syndrome talking to someone who is super smart? Well, that exact same thing happened when I interviewed Vinay. He is such a nice guy. And actually, what was so lovely is right at the beginning of the interview before we started recording, Vinay was like, We had a conversation about being a single parent and, you know, managing children in families that are living apart. And, and it was [00:03:00] really nice because it really kind of, you know, found some common ground, which was awesome. And then when the conversation started, I was like, Oh man, this guy's smart. And I guess. He's in an industry that I'm not in, so he's obviously going to be super, super smart about that. Binet helped me understand and better explain what the role was that Channel 4 had in not only the research, but what they are going to be trying to be doing going forward to ensure that more diverse businesses are being invested in. We also talked about how Channel 4 is a perfect, in my eyes, perfect company. to do this, given that the channel itself, the media that it puts out is very diverse and they're very proactive in that world. So it felt like a perfect fit. This conversation did push me a bit in terms of like, understanding and really [00:04:00] getting to grips of what this was all about. And I think it's a really nice one to finish the week on because it kind of sums up what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what the opportunities are. And there are some really exciting opportunities. So if you are listening to this, if you have listened to all of the episodes this week and were like, I need to know more about this, then This episode is really going to help you understand more about what it is that Channel 4 Ventures are actually doing. It has been my pleasure to have these business owners, these entrepreneurs, and these experts on over the last five days. I really hope you've enjoyed this special little series within my normal podcast. I have loved being given the opportunity to work with Channel 4 and being given the opportunity to speak to some of these amazing business owners, and I really hope that you have taken some awesome stuff from this. Cheers. But without further ado, here is the final interview of the week. Here's Vinay. Vinay, welcome so much to the podcast. How are you doing? Vinay: I'm doing very good [00:05:00] today. I'm excited to be here. Teresa: I am really excited to have you here and to get going with this conversation and topic and this wider discussion that we're going to have about this part of the world, which I've left it, anybody listening to the beginning of this, like, what are they talking about? What is she talking about? So let's just start by you explaining who you are and what you do. Vinay: So I'm Vinay Selanki and I work at Channel 4. I've been there, I'm very close to completing my ninth year. And I've had one job here in that time, which is to, I was the first employee into Channel 4 Ventures, which was called the Commercial Growth Fund at the time. And put very simply, we. We use the benefits of our nationwide broadcast, um, linear and streaming, which reaches 50 million people a month. Uh, we give that to startups in, in exchange, um, for equity instead of cash. Um, and it's, uh, it's honestly, it's a truly fascinating job and I'm very lucky to have it. Teresa: [00:06:00] So you've been there nine years, so is that when it started, you were the first employee? Vinay: Yeah. So prior to me joining the channel for was talking to a German peer around the model, they spent about two years investigating it, and they decided to go ahead with it. And then they hired someone to head up the activity. And that was me. Teresa: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So the reason I came into your world or you came into my world was because of something new that Channel 4 Ventures are doing that was kicked off by some research. So which way do you want to play this? Do you want to talk about the research that you did first, or do you want to talk about the new venture that you're doing? Vinay: I might do neither. I might talk about how, how, like, how the dots connect between the, both the research, a little bit of my lived history and, and, and, and how maybe all, all of it sort of hangs together. So I grew up in Leicester as a, as a kid and I [00:07:00] grew up in a, a very. you know, very basic underprivileged set up where, you know, and those shaped my formative career experiences when I went into investment banking in my twenties. And I could see challenges at that time. So I had a lucky break at some point, which I got to university and, And I've lived, sat and lived with experiences where I felt, well, firstly, I couldn't even talk about what I'm talking about for a decade or two, right? So the, so, and those experiences shaped very clearly people who, my perceptions of people who are in the club or outside the club, when you think about venture, and those are very big topics and we don't need to go into them now. When I've had the, if you then think about Jonathan Ventures and its core role, we've been, we are a minnow and like to remain a minnow in the investment world. And, and through the asset class that we have, and, you know, we syndicate our investments with all of the investors. And it gives me an extraordinary insight into, um, how it works, how the deals put [00:08:00] together, who's in the deals, the cultures, the sub times, types of deals coming through. And it's very evident to me that if, if you step back a bit into the, the challenges around, say the UK economy or the challenges around the innovation economy, or specifically the challenges in the consumer economy. And I'm going to deep dive here, um, slightly the consumer economy has seen a lot of investment come into it. Much of that investment is predicated on the efficiency of marketing costs, of course, and if you look at my investment model, which doesn't put in cash, it's about getting access to 50 million, up to 50 million people, marketing costs. So, so, and I believe, and I hope to have some more research on this topic. Consumer companies are not flavor of the month right now. And one of the drivers. For investors is marketing costs. And I think, you know, the lean startup, I think was written in 2011. Right. So, but it's still a guide that guides the kind of, how can I say the [00:09:00] incumbent thinking in the company, you know, book says don't spend anything money on marketing in 2011, it probably would have been correct. I need to check on this, but like, it's, it would have been correct at the time. And it's, you know, that time I don't think, you know, TikTok wasn't a thing, it didn't exist. Right. So the, the. I believe what you're seeing right now with the proliferation of digital platforms and the number of, is that the costs don't translate to scaling up, which is turning consumer investors away from consumer. And then if you come back to my broader argument and some of the observations I'm making in my lived experience, it's very clear to me that if, if you, if you use the following analogy and the data that we did in, so Channel 4 Ventures, is providing marketing to a range of businesses. It has a different capital structure. And when I think about, so, and you know, we could just look at that from a straight financial lens, or you think about what is our role in the ecosystem? So that's point [00:10:00] number one. But if you think about a deeper point, if the data shows both the VCs and the founders are coming from the two streets of London or two streets of the UK, there's 98 other streets to go for. Could that spark innovation? And I think the things that we, the things which I hopefully will have some research on soon is that I think I kind of anecdotally observed very consistently that Many of the consumer businesses coming through target people who are affluent target people who are, you know, the products that are sexy, that, you know, in wellness, fitness supplements, et cetera, et cetera. I'm glad to see there are some bigger, you know, I'm definitely seeing more female founders. I'm definitely seeing like different solutions coming out, but what if, what would happen if you create more access? Uh, to the 98 other streets in particular, and there's two arguments to that as a media investor, you could say, we, we are solving for the marketing [00:11:00] challenge that the specific cost of digital marketing, but we will write very large checks potentially to create most brand companies, but I'm interested in the things that may not be that sexy. Like, but, but go to the heart of some of our clear challenges in our education, access to education, actually access to skills, age, living well as you age, staying at home, home modifications. So living well, living, living, you know, that targeting people clearly, like, you know, the, the, the, the sectors that are like still underdeveloped, like women, there's a support to service of women, but also, yeah, the list goes on. There's not still not enough. And I think we can, and that might mean we back different kinds of businesses from that are not necessarily getting the attention from the incumbent venture capital industry, Um, but, but, you know, with obviously [00:12:00] aligned to creating shareholder value here, what's really interesting about all this is as a government owned entity, all the profits go into a clear purpose, which is different again, to the lens we can look. And I, I wonder if there's more room for modern fight that. Teresa: You've just said some things there that actually hadn't struck me up until this conversation that I had been looking at this and obviously at the point we're interviewing this, I've already interviewed some of the interviews to come. It's weird, like I constantly work in a, you know, am I in the future or in the past? What struck me was. I had been focusing on or I'd been thinking about the opportunities that the business owners have not been given because they might be, you know, a female or someone of color or someone who didn't have the educational upbringing that, you know, or whatever some of the reasons are. But one thing I didn't think about until you just said it was [00:13:00] the products that are coming forward. So not only, you know, Is it, and obviously I'm saying this in my own words, but not only is it better for the world to be able to give opportunities to people that possibly haven't had them or haven't had them as much as they should have to date, but also the products and services that are bought to markets are the people who are are trying to access them who are trying to get some of those things or need those things in their life aren't getting them because and like you said it's kind of understandable that it almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy of someone lives a certain style of life when they're you know looking to invest in something to make money they're investing in things that they know or things they know will sell so That for me is fascinating because like I said, I hadn't actually stopped to think about the consumer products that are being sold. I just thought about the people who are being invested in. Vinay: Yes. I think I'd like to do more research on this topic. Um, but like, I think [00:14:00] we will have inherent biases. Um, and, and, um, that's the nature. We shouldn't judge it, you know, it's just aware of it. Teresa: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that's the thing. And I think what I want to kind of conveys from what I've seen from channel four ventures so far is. there is no judgment. There is a, we've seen something and we would like to take an active role. You know, you're controlling what you can control because this is a much bigger beast than anybody. But you as Channel 4 Ventures are controlling what you can control and you're trying to do something different. So let's just touch on the, on the research and just some of the stuff that you found from the research and then how that confirmed what you had already experienced. Vinay: Yeah, the short answer is that the research findings did not surprise me in the slightest. It's been the least surprising, you know, and you can look back to, you know, my personal lived experiences, the, I [00:15:00] believe he took a straw poll of people, you know, either at the event or, or, you know, people who read the survey, you know, I'd be surprised. I mean, I did, I did recall some people were really quite depressed and, and I understand that too. It's shocking on the one hand, but the. Teresa: Not on the other. Vinay: No. Yeah. So look, I felt sad when you met, um, for the people who found it shocking But the, from my lived experience, it's not shocking at all. Yeah, based on the, I think it I want to go away from the judgment lens on, on that. I think the, it's also very understandable why this happens. And again, you need to create space for why it happens. And look at that quite compassionately, I think. And if you do that, then you can then spin quickly to, this is an opportunity. Teresa: Yes. Vinay: Really big opportunity. Teresa: Yeah. Vinay: So, and so then that gets into much deeper commercial arguments around those, all right, like new products and services. [00:16:00] And we think the UK is a net exporter, net creator of products. It's lingua franca, it's, it's been a top of design forever, right? And, and right across the UK, and of course, London is a world class center for, for that too, of course,...