Matt Ford is the CEO and co-founder of Sidekick, a digital wealth management platform for professionals looking to invest their savings.
Founded in 2022, Sidekick is a platform aimed at founders, tech workers, lawyers and similar professionals who want to invest beyond picking stocks but don’t know what the next steps are.
The London-based startup raised £8.5m in June this year, in a combined debt and equity round.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Ford explains how lots of startups aren’t solving a scalable VC-backable problem, reveals what he would do differently when launching a company, and shares mindfulness tips for avoiding burnout.
1. What one thing do you wish you’d done differently when launching your company?
Matt Ford: Sidekick isn’t the first startup I’ve built, so I’ve taken a lot of the lessons learned in my first venture to avoid certain pitfalls the next time around. Back in 2014, I founded a money management business, Pariti. From the outside looking in, an exit to Tandem Bank looked like a resounding success, but the truth is that we struggled to raise enough money to be competitive....