A Question Asked Above Skyscanner
In 2015, I was running a founder/investor event on the top floor of Quartermile 1 in Edinburgh. Skyscanner occupied the floors below us – a company that would soon sell for £1.4 billion, one of Scotland’s first unicorns.
That lunchtime, surrounded by founders and angel investors, someone asked a question that would take a decade to fully resolve: could we gamify the startup process?
The traditional path (build in isolation, perfect your pitch, chase investors, get rejected, repeat) was producing a 99% failure rate. We wondered if competition, visibility, and real-time feedback could replace the demoralising grind of pitch-based fundraising.
That question led to The Startup Race. And what we discovered, after years of development with Edinburgh’s founder and investor community, was that we hadn’t just gamified the startup process. We’d accidentally gamified the investment process too.
The same mechanism that makes fundraising better for founders, makes investing better for investors.
Born in the Home of the Scottish Enlightenment
Edinburgh has a particular relationship with unconventional thinking.
This is the city where David Hume challenged assumptions about knowledge itself. Where Adam Smith reimagined how economies work. Where, more recently, the founders of FanDuel met and Skyscanner spoke at the E-Club at Edinburgh University – a club instrumental in creating Scotland’s startup ecosystem.
It’s also where I met my co-founders on that afternoon in 2015. Dan had just graduated from Heriot-Watt with a First in Economics. Michael Clouser had been a VC at Cornell before moving to Edinburgh, where he helped found the very E-Club that the Skyscanner and FanDuel founders attended.
The question we asked that afternoon (could competition replace pitching?) emerged from an ecosystem that had already produced billion-pound companies by doing things differently.
The First Race: Crowdfunded in Real-Time
The Startup Race didn’t begin with a business plan. It began with an act of spontaneous generosity.
In 2019, I was running a League of Entrepreneurs event at Whitespace, an innovative design agency nestled below Edinburgh Castle. Our guest speaker was James Varga, the Canadian founder of miiCard, one of Edinburgh’s pioneers in the Open Banking movement.
During the event, James did something unexpected. He instigated an impromptu crowdfunding – right there, in the room. People in the audience pledged cash to create a prize pool for founders who could demonstrate revenue growth.
£1,000 was raised that evening. The first Startup Race was born.
The winner, Jonas Virsilas, achieved 12X revenue growth over 10 weeks. The runner-up achieved 11X. The model worked – and we had the data to prove it.
Shaped by Conversations with Scotland's Startup Leaders
What happened next was a series of conversations that shaped the Startup Race concept into what it is today.
Ian Ritchie CBE: Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to enterprise and education, became one of the first angel investors to observe our races. His feedback was invaluable: the model gave investors something they’d never had before. Real-time visibility into founder performance.
Paul Atkinson, a Founding Partner at Par Equity (one of Scotland’s most active venture capital firms), challenged us on what investors actually needed to see and how the Race could scale.
Nick Lyth, founder and president of the Green Angel Syndicate was the first to see the opportunity it gave investors.
Michiel Smith, gatekeeper at Apollo Informal Investment, helped us develop the due diligence processes.
Mary Jane Brouwers, formerly at Old College Capital, now Entrepreneur in Residence at Edinburgh Napier University, pushed us on how the model served founders.
Alan Donald, formerly at LINC Scotland (the national association for business angels in Scotland), helped us understand the angel investment landscape.
Jonathan Harris of Young Company Finance provided perspective on how the model would be perceived by the investment press.
These weren’t casual conversations. They were years of development with people who had built Scotland’s startup and investment infrastructure. This years £100,000 Startup Race is the result of their feedback, challenge, and encouragement.
The Misery Is Mutual
Here’s something no one talks about: traditional fundraising is awful for everyone involved.
For founders, the experience is a demoralising grind. You spend months perfecting a pitch deck. You chase warm introductions. You perform confidence in rooms full of people who’ve seen a hundred pitches that week. You get rejected—usually without meaningful feedback—and start again. The 99% failure rate isn’t just a statistic; it’s thousands of talented people burning through savings, relationships, and self-belief on a process designed to break them.
For investors, the experience is anxiety-inducing uncertainty. You listen to pitches optimised for persuasion rather than accuracy. You try to evaluate “team quality” based on a 10-minute performance. You write cheques for £50,000 or £100,000 based on projections everyone knows are fiction. Then you wait—months, sometimes years—to discover if you bet correctly. The 91% underperformance rate in UK angel investing isn’t a failure of diligence; it’s a failure of the entire evaluation methodology.
Both sides are playing a game they hate. And both sides are losing.
| Founders | Investors |
The Experience | Pitch, get rejected, repeat | Listen to pitches, guess which founder is real |
The Psychology | Demoralising grind | Anxiety-inducing uncertainty |
The Information Gap | “Why did they say no?” | “Will this founder actually execute?” |
The Outcome | 99% failure rate | 91% underperformance rate |
What if there were a single mechanism that fixed both sides simultaneously?
The Uber Map Principle (Applied Twice)
Rory Sutherland, the behavioural scientist who’s spent forty years decoding irrational human decisions, tells a story about Uber that illuminates everything.
Uber’s breakthrough wasn’t logistics. Their cars didn’t arrive faster than traditional taxis. The breakthrough was showing you a map—a little icon moving toward your location in real-time. The wait was identical, but the experience was transformed.
Sutherland’s insight: people hate uncertainty more than they hate waiting.
The London Underground discovered the same principle. Their highest-ROI investment wasn’t more frequent trains. It was countdown displays showing when the next train would arrive. The service didn’t improve. The information did. And customer satisfaction increased dramatically.
Now apply this principle to both sides of fundraising:
For founders, the traditional process is pure uncertainty. You pitch, then wait. Did they like it? Will they call back? What should you do differently? The silence is excruciating because there’s no map, no countdown, no feedback until it’s too late to adjust.
For investors, the traditional process is also pure uncertainty. You invest, then wait. Is this founder executing? Are they hitting milestones? Will this return 10X or 0X? The quarterly updates are curated press releases, not real information. You’re flying blind until the outcome is fixed.
The Startup Race gives both sides a map.
Founders see their position update weekly. They know exactly where they stand relative to competitors. The feedback is immediate, actionable, and impossible to ignore.
Investors see the same board. They watch founders move – forward for growth, backward when competitors outpace them. The uncertainty that normally spans years is compressed into real-time visibility.
Same mechanism. Both problems solved.
How the Game Works
Picture a circular board, like Monopoly. Ten sections representing £10,000 ARR increments.
The Starting Line
Founders enter with £5,000+ Annual Recurring Revenue – proof they can already generate income. This isn’t a game for people with ideas. It’s a game for people who’ve already demonstrated initial capability. The entry requirement filters for founders worth watching.
The Weekly Update
Every week, founders are ranked by that week’s revenue performance. Position 1 goes to the highest revenue generator. Position 52 goes to the lowest. The board reshuffles based on actual results – no pitches, no presentations, no persuasion. Just performance.
The Premier League
The top 10 positions constitute the Premier League—the front of the pack, visible to all observers. Fall out of the top 10? Fight your way back. The pressure is constant. The visibility is total. The feedback is immediate.
The Finish Line
After 52 weeks, the founder who generated the most cumulative revenue wins £100,000 in investment from the Prize Provider syndicate.
But here’s what makes this different from any other competition: both sides have been watching the entire time.
What Founders Experience
For founders, the game structure transforms the psychology of building a company.
Traditional fundraising psychology:
- Isolation (building alone, hoping someone notices)
- Delayed feedback (rejection emails months after pitches)
- Unclear metrics (what actually matters to investors?)
- Demoralisation (repeated rejection erodes confidence)
Startup Race psychology:
- Competition (you see exactly where you stand)
- Immediate feedback (weekly position updates)
- Crystal-clear metrics (revenue is the only thing that matters)
- Energising pressure (competition motivates; rejection demoralises)
The results speak for themselves. Our 2022 winner, Priyanshu Nath, achieved 44X revenue growth in six months. Our runner-up achieved 17X. These aren’t outliers- they’re what happens when you replace the grind with a game.
Competition extracts performance that isolation never could.
What Investors Experience
For investors, the game structure transforms the psychology of making investment decisions.
Traditional investing psychology:
- Uncertainty (will this founder execute?)
- Information asymmetry (founders control the narrative)
- Delayed discovery (you learn the truth years later)
- Anxiety (every investment is a leap of faith)
Startup Race psychology:
- Certainty (you’ve watched them execute for 52 weeks)
- Information symmetry (the board shows reality, not narrative)
- Real-time discovery (you see setbacks and recoveries as they happen)
- Confidence (investment decisions become obvious)
Instead of analysing pitch decks, you watch the board. Instead of evaluating projections, you observe actual revenue. Instead of hoping a founder can execute, you’ve seen them execute—week after week, under competitive pressure, for a full year.
The decision to invest stops being a guess. It becomes a conclusion.
The Virtuous Cycle
Here’s what makes the dual gamification genuinely powerful: each side makes the other side work better.
Because founders are competing, they perform at levels they wouldn’t achieve in isolation. The game structure extracts maximum effort, creativity, and execution. Investors aren’t just watching founders—they’re watching founders operating at their competitive peak.
Because investors are watching, founders have additional motivation to perform. The visibility isn’t surveillance; it’s an audience. The best founders rise to occasions. The Startup Race gives them an occasion worth rising to.
Because performance is visible, both sides make better decisions. Founders know exactly what they need to do (generate more revenue than competitors). Investors know exactly who to back (the founders who’ve demonstrated capability under pressure).
The traditional fundraising process pits founders against investors in an adversarial dance of persuasion and scepticism. The Startup Race aligns them: founders want to demonstrate capability; investors want to observe capability. The game serves both interests simultaneously.
The Ladder: From £1,000 to £1,000,000
The Startup Race was always designed as a progression – a ladder that founders climb and investors can enter at the level that matches their investment thesis.
Race | Entry Requirement | Target Growth | Exit Valuation | Investor Type |
£1,000 Startup Race | Proof of concept | — | — | Proved the model |
£10,000 Startup Race | Early revenue | — | — | Proved it scales |
£100,000 Startup Race | £5,000 ARR | 20X | ~£1M | Angel investors |
£1,000,000 Startup Race | £50,000 ARR | 20X | ~£10M | VCs |
The maths are intentional. A founder who enters the £100,000 race at £5,000 ARR and achieves 20X growth reaches £100,000 ARR – a valuation of approximately £1,000,000 at a 10X revenue multiple. Selling 10% equity for the £100,000 prize makes sense at that level.
The £1,000,000 race is a different game for different players. Founders would need to enter at approximately £50,000 ARR and scale to £1,000,000 ARR to justify selling 10% equity for £1,000,000. That’s a VC-scale opportunity, not an angel one.
The £100,000 Startup Race is the angel investor level. It’s not a stepping stone to the “real” competition—it’s the competition designed specifically for angels who want to watch pre-scale founders prove they can grow.
Winners who want to keep climbing will have first access to the £1,000,000 race when it launches. But that’s a different game, with different stakes, for different investors.
Developed in Scotland. Now Open UK-Wide.
For nearly a decade, we’ve refined this model in Edinburgh – testing, iterating, and improving based on feedback from founders who competed and investors who watched.
The £1,000 Startup Race proved the concept. The £10,000 Startup Race proved it could scale. The £100,000 Startup Race is the version we’ve been building toward: 52 weeks instead of 10, ten times the prize money, and a full year of visibility for investors.
Today – New Year’s Day 2026 – we’re opening registration to angel investors across the UK.
If you’re tired of pitch-based investing and want to watch founders prove themselves before you commit capital, this is your opportunity to join the syndicate.
Two Ways to Watch the Board
Investment Prize Providers: Betting on the Winner
Prize Providers contribute £5,000–£10,000 to the £100,000 prize pool. You’re not picking a founder based on a pitch. You’re committing to invest in whoever proves themselves over 52 weeks of competition.
What you get:
- Pro-rata SEIS-eligible equity in the winning startup
- 52 weeks of due diligence built into the selection process
- Full access to the board throughout the race
- First opportunity to invest additional capital in runners-up
The commitment today: Register your interest. Letters of Intent are confirmed by 31st of March 2026. The investment is made in April 2027, after the race has concluded.
You’re not guessing which founder will execute. You’re watching them execute, then investing in the proven winner.
Race Observers: Freedom to Choose
Observers get full access to the weekly board without committing to the prize pool.
What you get:
- Full visibility of all competing startups
- 52 weeks of performance data on every participant
- Freedom to approach any founder for investment discussions
- First access to runners-up after the race concludes
The commitment: None. Watch the game. Invest when you see what you like.
Our 2022 runner-up achieved 17X revenue growth. She didn’t win the prize, but observers who watched her perform had all the information they needed to invest with confidence.
The Mathematics of Reduced Uncertainty
Traditional angel investing:
- 91% underperformance rate
- Decisions based on 10-minute pitches
- Outcome discovered years after investment
Startup Race investing:
- Previous winners achieved 44X, 17X, 12X, 11X growth
- Decisions based on 52 weeks of performance data
- Outcome visible throughout the observation period
Add SEIS tax benefits:
Tax Benefit | What It Means |
50% Income Tax Relief | Invest £10,000 → Reduce your tax bill by £5,000 |
CGT Exemption | Pay zero capital gains tax on profits |
Loss Relief | If the investment fails, offset losses against income tax |
With 50% income tax relief, your effective exposure on a £10,000 investment is £5,000. Combine tax efficiency with 52 weeks of demonstrated performance, and the risk-reward calculation changes fundamentally.
Registration Opens Today
It’s January 1st, 2025.
Ten years ago, in a room above Skyscanner’s offices, we asked whether we could gamify the startup process. The answer (developed over a decade with Edinburgh’s founders, angels, and venture capitalists) is the £100,000 Startup Race.
We built a game to fix fundraising for founders. It turns out we fixed it for investors too.
Investment Prize Providers (£5,000–£10,000)
Join the syndicate. Watch the board. Invest in the proven winner.
Race Observers (No commitment)
Watch every founder. Every week. Invest in anyone you like.
The £100,000 Startup Race begins Spring 2026. The board will be visible to all registered investors from day one.
Come watch.
James Shoemark is the founder of The Startup Race. He met his co-founders Dan and Michael Clouser at a founder/investor event in Edinburgh in 2015. The Startup Race has since invested in 7 companies based on watching them compete, not listening to them pitch.
Compliance Note
To participate as an Investment Prize Provider or Race Observer, you must self-certify as a High-Net-Worth Individual or Sophisticated Investor under FCA regulations. Early-stage investing carries significant risk, including loss of capital. SEIS tax relief mitigates but doesn’t eliminate this risk. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.