An Interview With JONATHANHOLLIS Managing Partner at Mountside Ventures What do you love about AutomatePro? • Automation — we love automation! Large complex organisations continue to run thousands of time-consuming repetitive manual tasks unnecessarily. AutomatePro uses AI to automate regression testing, which improves job satisfaction of IT teams, keeps software up to date, and helps C-level executives deliver better ROI. They’re able to save large organisations over £100k through automating regression testing and reducing the resource requirements involved, by up to 86%. • Experienced team — they’ve got an all-star team of practical leaders with deep domain experience delivering complicated IT solutions to global corporations. • Compelling partnerships — they have built their product on top of the infrastructure of a leading software company, ServiceNow, helping them with testing their SaaS platform. The ServiceNow ecosystem is large enough in itself to build a huge business, but this is just the start. Tell us more about the round. The team received plenty of interest from UK investors and chose YFM to lead their £5m round. YFM have previously invested in the DevOps space through investments in Quality Clouds and Plandek, and so are well placed to understand their thesis and bolster the team’s expertise. How do you work with companies? We partner with the most ambitious entrepreneurs raising their next round of funding, minimising the disruption to their business. We do this by helping them get investorready, introducing them to relevant investors and supporting them in closing their round with terms that are right for them. This is what we did with AutomatePro. What’s your advice to other founders? The fundraising environment is particularly challenging at themoment so it’s important to ensure you are absolutely ready before going into a funding round. You should ensure you have a fit-for-purpose pitch deck, a five-year financial model, a strong investor FAQ and a completed data room. As the Managing Partner at Mountside Ventures, Jonathan Hollis works with early-stage companies looking to raise their next round of funding and helping them increase their chances of getting funded. He qualified with PwC as a Chartered Accountant (ACA) and co-founded their early-stage corporate finance practice, and Series A accelerator, whose alumni have raised over £500m with a combined valuation of £3bn, before leaving the firm three years ago to set up Mountside. “As technical founders, we needed trusted experts to help guide us through the institutional investment process, which was completely new to us. The Mountside teams’ experience and expertise in all aspects of the investment process, in everything from preparation through to negotiating heads of terms, was invaluable and always delivered in a friendly and professional way.” - Paul Chorley, Co-Founder, and CEO of AutomatePro Finance Monthly. Tr ans ac t i on Repor t s 69
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