Vague Promises Destroy Startups!’ The Measurable Method to Share Scheme Success – Ifty Nasir

“If you have things that are too complex, or if your condition agreements are not measurable or tangible, then that’s where you will have a danger down the line. Subjectivity is not a healthy component of equity share schemes.” – Ifty Nasir

Today we feature Ifty Nasir, the founder at Vestd. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

I’m Ifty Nasir, founder, and CEO of Vestd. Vestd is the UK’s first, most advanced, and only regulated digital share scheme platform for SMEs. Companies use it to issue shares and options to people who they want to incentivise, motivate and reward with a slice of the action. I’m a strong believer in the ‘Ownership Effect’ and advise businesses on how to share equity to incentivise teams and unlock value. In my earlier career,

I reached the most senior levels at BP and Essar Energy but decided to start my own business to transform the ‘shareholder’ world, currently dominated by ‘cash’, to one more reflective of the contribution made through human endeavour, energy, and hard work.

A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?

I was always entrepreneurial when I was younger and I did attempt to set up ‘Computer Aided Real Estate’ – essentially a precursor to Zoopla or Rightmove, but this was decades ago and I couldn’t secure support from the regional enterprise council couldn’t see how it would work. I guess everything in business is timing.

I then got a job offer from BP and once you are established in a successful career, there’s no reason to get off that ride until life changes and you get driven in different ways. I was one of the youngest group leaders at BP and ended up doing some really interesting stuff. It’s all journey and it’s all led me to where I am today. With a growing family though, I decided that I needed to balance my home life with my work life more, and that’s where the idea of founding my own business came from.

Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?

Vestd is the UK’s first, most advanced, and only regulated digital share scheme platform for SMEs. Vestd is a guided SaaS business. Our experts help customers to design and set up share schemes and provide ongoing support. Companies use it to issue shares and options to people who they want to incentivise, motivate and reward with a slice of the action.

The platform provides a secure, cost-effective way to share ownership with employees, consultants, advisors, NEDs, contractors… and anyone else who is important to the success of a company. The platform integrates directly with Companies House and gives founders and CEOs the ability to instantly issue and distribute equity, helping them to easily manage this valuable asset. Although Vestd is UK-based, 100% of our team are now remote and work from all over the country.

What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?

Once I’d decided to segue into setting up a business, I wanted to set something up to support startups today. However, I realised that my knowledge of contemporary startup challenges probably wasn’t in line with what founders might be facing. My co-founder (Naveed Akram) and I therefore initially set up a research tool to find out what those challenges were.

We discovered quite quickly that the bulk of challenges came from managing equity and getting people to participate in a business that isn’t yet cash-rich. It’s not just cash that builds a business, it’s effort, talent, and strategy. This could come from consultants, advisors, marketing specialists, and researchers…but how to get them to contribute if you don’t have deep pockets to pay market-leading salaries?

We developed the Vestd app/platform to help founders easily manage their equity, to help them to grow more quickly.

Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?

Incredibly, even in this year of disturbance and turbulence, Vestd has more than doubled in size. It’s clear that there’s a real resonance with founders and CEOs and the platform just goes from strength to strength. We were concerned about the impacts of Covid19 and that could’ve been a challenge but actually, we experienced double-digit growth month-on-month throughout the year.

If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

My advice to my younger self would be the advice that I would give to all new founders.

1) Make sure your team is vested in the journey and ultimately, your business success. No founder can do much on their own, so you need to make sure that the team has real skin in the game in the form of equity (conditional shares or options schemes).

Ideally, you’d set these schemes ahead of the investment, to maximise their potential reward and thereby incentive.

2) Know your cap table and keep track of its evolution…i.e. the dilutions that will come to pass over this and future investment rounds (you need to be able to run scenarios as easily as they come to mind).

Make sure you maintain it, keep it up to date…and have a real-time line of sight on it. It can get very complicated and messy quite easily. Having an understanding of how your position will change over this and subsequent investment rounds is critical.

These two things are fundamental and having them nailed down early on in the business evolution can help to expedite business growth.

We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?

We decided to become a fully remote company about two years ago so the biggest challenge for us was maintaining social connection when the team was working from all four corners of the UK. We use Slack as our main communications tool and that keeps us together. We use it to discuss work but also just to chat which is important to team cohesiveness.

What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?

There have been many but in terms of recent achievement, we were ranked as the highest-performing equity management software in the UK. In a report put together by G2, the world’s largest B2B review website, Vestd outranked the competition by scoring highly across a range of criteria.

The report was compiled from real user reviews submitted to the G2 site and revealed that 100% of Vestd’s customers rated the platform with an average of five stars. 100% of customers also agreed that Vestd is heading in the right direction, and nearly 100% indicated that they would be likely to recommend Vestd to others in their networks.

Obviously, the whole company was thrilled with this result. We’ve had a tremendous year of growth, but it’s vital to us that we continue to offer a premium service to all of our customers as we grow. We, therefore, view the recognition from G2 as proof that our decision to keep ‘customer success’ at the center of our business model is the right way to go.

What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?

My next ambition is to see hundreds of thousands of companies across the UK and beyond, enjoy the benefits of having their teams truly vested in their success… through an easy-to-use, safe platform… Vestd! My biggest ‘moonshot’ aim is to help 1bn people to become shareholders in the businesses they have helped to build. This doesn’t mean that we aim to get 1bn people on the platform, but rather, that we want to see a world where 1bn people share ownership of the companies they contribute to.

To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?

Most of my advice would be informed by everything I’ve learned since setting Vestd up so it would be mostly related to equity management. The main issues to be aware of regarding equity shares are getting too complex early on or not setting out your quid pro quo. And it’s exactly these issues that our platform mitigates. We can set your schemes up so that they are conditional, most commonly on delivery or time committed. We’ll help you to set up these commitments so that they are measurable, tangible, and fair.
If you have things that are too complex, or if your condition agreements are not measurable or tangible, then that’s where you will have a danger down the line. Subjectivity is not a healthy component of equity share schemes!

“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Vestd”

To learn more about Vestd visit www.vestd.com

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