{"id":18396,"date":"2019-02-01T12:15:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T12:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seedlegals.com\/resources\/interview-with-sportive-breaks-founder-phil-sears\/"},"modified":"2019-02-01T12:15:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T13:15:56","slug":"interview-with-sportive-breaks-founder-phil-sears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seedlegals.com\/ie\/resources\/interview-with-sportive-breaks-founder-phil-sears\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Phil Sears, Founder of Sportive Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I caught up with Phil Sears, founder of<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/sportivebreaks.com\/\" data-rt-link-type=\"external\"><em>Sportive Breaks<\/em><\/a> <em>which launched 2015, selling sportive entries and the best cycle-friendly hotels for events such as the Etape du Tour and Paris-Roubaix sportive.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u200d<\/p>\n<h4>What does your Sportive Breaks do?<\/h4>\n<p>Sportive Breaks creates<br \/>\ndream cycling holidays to the top destinations &amp; events in Europe.<\/p>\n<h4>What made you start your company &#8211; was it a personal passion, or a problem<br \/>\nyou identified, or a market opportunity?<\/h4>\n<p>Largely trying to overcome the problems that come up time and<br \/>\ntime again with trying to arrange a cycling holiday &#8211; finding a bike friendly<br \/>\nhotel, understanding the best places to ride and dealing with the painful stuff<br \/>\nlike finding a good local bike rental company or getting your bike from the<br \/>\nairport.<\/p>\n<h4>What funding have you received so far?<\/h4>\n<p>We started in year one with \u00a360k from a couple of early Angel<br \/>\ninvestors and then raised a further \u00a3130k last year.<\/p>\n<h4>How did you find your investors, and were they angels or VCs?<\/h4>\n<p>We started with friends and then used their<br \/>\nnetworks in the next round.<\/p>\n<h4>Do you think your investors invested in the idea, the product, the founders,<br \/>\nor the team?<\/h4>\n<p>The market<br \/>\nwas so under\u00a0served and we had a different solution to our competitors<br \/>\nwhich was easy to understand. Ultimately, at our stage everyone is investing<br \/>\nbased on the people first and the opportunity second.<\/p>\n<h4>Any advice for the perfect pitch deck?<\/h4>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get stuck in the detail, your investors just need to<br \/>\nknow your solution works. Tell them the story of you, the market and how your<br \/>\nsolution can grow in this market.<\/p>\n<h4>What was the hardest thing about doing your funding round?<\/h4>\n<p>Spending time on the deck, the meetings etc<br \/>\nwhile keeping on top of the daily activity in the business.<\/p>\n<h4>If there were three things you could tell a founder looking to do their<br \/>\nround, what would they be?<\/h4>\n<p>The process is both ways, you need to be happy with the investors as<br \/>\nmuch as they need to be happy with you. Be clear and set realistic<br \/>\nexpectations. Set a clear channel of communication that works for everyone &#8211; a<br \/>\ngood investor \/ director can be worth their weight in gold.<\/p>\n<h4>How did you hear about SeedLegals, and how was your experience?<\/h4>\n<p>Through one of our original Angels. It was<br \/>\nso easy, our previous experience was slow and expensive, SeedLegals could do<br \/>\nthings in a day that took a week in our first round.<\/p>\n<h4>What&#8217;s next on the horizon for Sportive Breaks?<\/h4>\n<p>We are launching a new tool to allow people<br \/>\nto find and book amazing custom cycling trips online, this will be the first in<br \/>\nthe market and we are pretty excited to roll this out to our customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We caught up with Phil Sears, founder of Sportive Breaks which launched 2015, selling sportive entries and the best cycle-friendly hotels for events in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"event_tags":[],"class_list":["post-18396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founder-stories-ie"],"acf":{"hero_image":432466,"post_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"text","text":"<p><em>I caught up with Phil Sears, founder of<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/sportivebreaks.com\/\" data-rt-link-type=\"external\"><em>Sportive Breaks<\/em><\/a> <em>which launched 2015, selling sportive entries and the best cycle-friendly hotels for events such as the Etape du Tour and Paris-Roubaix sportive.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u200d<\/p>\n<h4>What does your Sportive Breaks do?<\/h4>\n<p>Sportive Breaks creates<br \/>\ndream cycling holidays to the top destinations &amp; events in Europe.<\/p>\n<h4>What made you start your company &#8211; was it a personal passion, or a problem<br \/>\nyou identified, or a market opportunity?<\/h4>\n<p>Largely trying to overcome the problems that come up time and<br \/>\ntime again with trying to arrange a cycling holiday &#8211; finding a bike friendly<br \/>\nhotel, understanding the best places to ride and dealing with the painful stuff<br \/>\nlike finding a good local bike rental company or getting your bike from the<br \/>\nairport.<\/p>\n<h4>What funding have you received so far?<\/h4>\n<p>We started in year one with \u00a360k from a couple of early Angel<br \/>\ninvestors and then raised a further \u00a3130k last year.<\/p>\n<h4>How did you find your investors, and were they angels or VCs?<\/h4>\n<p>We started with friends and then used their<br \/>\nnetworks in the next round.<\/p>\n<h4>Do you think your investors invested in the idea, the product, the founders,<br \/>\nor the team?<\/h4>\n<p>The market<br \/>\nwas so under\u00a0served and we had a different solution to our competitors<br \/>\nwhich was easy to understand. Ultimately, at our stage everyone is investing<br \/>\nbased on the people first and the opportunity second.<\/p>\n<h4>Any advice for the perfect pitch deck?<\/h4>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get stuck in the detail, your investors just need to<br \/>\nknow your solution works. Tell them the story of you, the market and how your<br \/>\nsolution can grow in this market.<\/p>\n<h4>What was the hardest thing about doing your funding round?<\/h4>\n<p>Spending time on the deck, the meetings etc<br \/>\nwhile keeping on top of the daily activity in the business.<\/p>\n<h4>If there were three things you could tell a founder looking to do their<br \/>\nround, what would they be?<\/h4>\n<p>The process is both ways, you need to be happy with the investors as<br \/>\nmuch as they need to be happy with you. Be clear and set realistic<br \/>\nexpectations. Set a clear channel of communication that works for everyone &#8211; a<br \/>\ngood investor \/ director can be worth their weight in gold.<\/p>\n<h4>How did you hear about SeedLegals, and how was your experience?<\/h4>\n<p>Through one of our original Angels. It was<br \/>\nso easy, our previous experience was slow and expensive, SeedLegals could do<br \/>\nthings in a day that took a week in our first round.<\/p>\n<h4>What&#8217;s next on the horizon for Sportive Breaks?<\/h4>\n<p>We are launching a new tool to allow people<br \/>\nto find and book amazing custom cycling trips online, this will be the first in<br \/>\nthe market and we are pretty excited to roll this out to our customers.<\/p>\n"}],"blog_layout":"v2","v2":{"hero":{"image_background_color":"#E7F1FF","image_fit":"img--contain"},"adverts":false,"related_sidebar_posts":false},"show_author_card":false,"revision_date":"","has_custom_post_authors":false,"is_expert_reviewed":false,"post_content_width":"default","has_sources":false,"related_posts":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Interview: Phil Sears, Founder of Sportive Breaks | SeedLegals<\/title>\n<meta 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