Five well-known Greater Manchester tech business leaders have teamed up to form End Game, a “new kind of venture company” to help founders scale and ultimately exit their business on the best terms possible.
End Game is a founder-first venture co, which supports founders in making optimal decisions at critical points of their company lifecycle. Each of the End Game team has “been there,” and the company is designed to work with founders throughout their own entrepreneurial journey as they navigate their own highs and lows, offering hands-on, high-impact support.
End Game’s high-profile founding team includes Vikas Shah, Nick Richardson, Naomi Timperley, Giles Harridge and James Akrigg who, whilst all enjoying success, have also had to overcome significant corporate challenges.
They have partnered to create a venture company which aligns itself with the objectives of founders, to help them navigate their journeys from scaling to exit.
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Co-founder Richardson said: “We all know how hard it is for founders, to not only get going, but to also navigate the challenges of scale and the often-incompatible objectives of stakeholders. Our model is to fully align with their objectives and to guide them with our operational and governance experience, inspire them with our innovation and commercialisation experience and to ultimately accelerate them on their journey.”
Fellow co-founder Harridge added: “We’ve built and exited businesses, transformed teams, delivered digital innovation, and coached hundreds of people to become extraordinary. Often founders don’t achieve the outcome they hoped for. Every deal is different, and our mission is to close the expectations and quality gap between founders and investors, to get founders match fit for when they engage to seek investment or exit.”
End Game have defined that there are four types of founders that they will typically work with:
- High-Potential Start-ups – Helping promising early-stage ventures unlock traction, funding, and clarity
- Scale-Up Founders – Providing guidance and firepower to ambitious teams as they scale operations.
- Stalling Founders – Unblocking the challenges and burnout that stall growth and ambition.
- Lost Founders – Supporting experienced entrepreneurs ready for reinvention and their next chapter.
“In the last few months, we have combined our formidable ecosystem of companies and contacts to build a multi-faceted, multi-skilled network beyond the End Game Founders. We will be creating partnerships that accelerate opportunities for businesses not only in the Greater Manchester area but across the wider Northern Powerhouse,” said co-founder Timperley.
Whilst the company is not limiting itself to digital based businesses, former head of technology for partners at Microsoft and End Game co-founder Akrigg added: “Our digital transformation experience is significant, and our ability to support businesses with prototyping and digital transformation is a key part of our proposition.”
The company is in advanced discussions with several clients to be part of their first cohort, as well as finalising a number of new initiatives which it will be launching.
“We may have been only working together for a few months, but the feedback from founders, investors and other key stakeholders is incredible. As a result of that we are also looking at how we may further involve our End Game offering to provide other solutions for our clients and the Greater Manchester business community as a whole,” concluded Shah.
