From lived founder frustration to UK funding infrastructure: the ThatRound story

Early-stage teams are spending more time working out who to speak to, how different services operate, and what good looks like. The issue is not a lack of investors. The issue is a lack of structure.

This frustration is what pushed Bradley Jones to start ThatRound, the startup platform becoming the UK’s starting point for founders who are looking to raise.

Brad is a serial founder who raised capital in the same way most UK founders still do today: scattergun outreach, repeated pitch decks, mixed messages from brokers, unclear fees, and long conversations that often led nowhere. Every raise produced the same lesson. The problem was not that early-stage capital did not exist. It was that there was no organised way into the market.

Matt had launched products at several early-stage startups and kept seeing the same patterns; founding teams pulled away from the day-to-day to work on fundraises, founders wasting time connecting with the wrong investors, and little visibility into why things were slow or not working.

When Brad and Matt compared their experiences, the conclusion was obvious:

“If founders are losing months chasing investors who were never a fit, that isn’t a founder problem. It’s an infrastructure problem, and it can be fixed.”

The UK has world-class talent but no shared infrastructure layer

Seen from a distance, the gap in the market is obvious.

The UK produces more unicorns than the rest of Europe, and sectors like AI, health tech and advanced manufacturing continue to accelerate. Global investors are active and still backing UK teams. Yet founders keep saying the same thing: raising money feels slow, fragmented and confusing.

Data reinforces this reality. Early-stage deal counts continue to fall. Investor concentration is increasing. SEIS activity is rising but EIS is tightening. Tech Nation also reports that almost half of UK founders are considering moving their HQ abroad, often because of funding access.

This is the paradox ThatRound aims to solve. The UK is a global tech leader, but it still lacks a single, merit-based gateway into funding, and it’s holding the UK back.

Building ThatRound: from comparison tool to funding infrastructure

ThatRound did not begin with a big vision. It began with a simple question:

What if founders could see, in one place, every fundraising service and investor they could access, and compare them on clear data like investment criteria, previous ticket sizes, fees, process and reviews from other founders?

From transparent marketplace to AI-enabled infrastructure

The first version of ThatRound helped founders compare and engage angel networks, brokers and other fundraising services. For the first time, founders could see the real differences in fees, approach, timelines and focus. This removed guesswork and reduced wasted time.

As the platform grew, investor feedback brought another issue into stark contrast: the majority weren’t short of inbound, they were drowning under the weight of it, and too many strong founders were being overlooked simply because their pitch wasn’t presented in a way investors could quickly assess.

That’s the gap ThatRound is closing. By helping founders communicate their round clearly, to the right contacts, and standardising that data for investors, the platform strips out friction on both sides. AI supports this middle layer but the real value comes from creating shared standards — reducing noise, improving fit, and ensuring the right founders get the right introductions faster

A founder-first philosophy that values clarity

Brad and Matt believe the fundraising market works better when both sides understand what they are stepping into. The platform is designed around transparency. AI features are clear and not treated as a black box. Feedback is direct, and mandatory. Investors receive deals that actually match their mandate. Founders avoid months of outreach that was never going to progress.

For founders, this turns fundraising from a search problem into a structured workflow. For investors, it reduces noise and helps them find founders they might otherwise miss.

ThatRound’s mission over the next two years is explicit: to become the essential infrastructure layer for UK startup funding, the first place founders turn when preparing a raise and the place investors trust for qualified opportunities.

Inside the co-founder dynamic: empathy and systems thinking

Even without the product, the team story holds together. Brad and Matt have experienced the pressure of raising from within early-stage startups and understand the strain it puts on a company’s story. They also recognise that early-stage investing will always rely on building relationships and an element of serendipity, so everything is still moderated by the human team at ThatRound. AI can make the many micro-processes clearer and faster, but the founder and investor connection remains central.

The focus on finding a balance of AI, data and the human aspect means that when ThatRound makes an introduction between founder and investor, it’s very well regarded by both. That trust, which takes time to build, is core to their view of the market. And the combination of systems thinking and founder empathy shapes how ThatRound operates. It is built with founders, not only for them.

The future of fundraising

The UK funding landscape is changing in ways founders cannot ignore. Investor concentration means fit matters more than volume. International funds remain active but are selective. SEIS expansion is bringing more early founders into the market while EIS becomes more constrained. Recent political attention on entrepreneurship and the role of startups in economic growth, including in the latest Budget, has added new pressure and expectation to the system. And with a record share of unannounced rounds, transparency is falling at the moment founders need it most. Structure now matters more than speed.

Success for ThatRound is measured against this reality. Founders should have a single, structured place to begin a raise, with clarity on which investors fit, how they work, what they cost and how to strengthen a pitch before outreach. Investors should receive better qualified opportunities without rebuilding their own funnel from scratch.

For the UK, this means something larger: a more open and more efficient funding market where geography matters less and high-potential sectors benefit from real infrastructure.