Some potential investors would “say stuff like, aren’t you kids to be doing this, shouldn’t you wait five years or 10 years or, don’t you want to be working in another firm first for 10 years?” de Haes says.

He said 14 of the 20 companies to which Backed has provided seed financing have raised follow-on funding, and have done so at valuations that are on average three times as high as when Backed invested.

Spotting Potential

Some founders enthuse about young investors. “There’s this really interesting dynamic with a young venture capitalist under 30 who understands the mindset of a young founder,” says Tim Armoo, the 22-year-old co-founder and CEO of Fanbytes, which helps brands to advertise on Snapchat.

“The people under 30 can empathize really quickly with younger founders. People over 30 have literally been like, back in my day, in the Yahoo days - and you’re like, mate, we’re not in the Yahoo days.”

Callum Negus-Fancey, the 27 year-old co-founder of StreetTeam, says his company’s early financial support came from young investors, including Backed, who “could relate to it more easily.”

His firm provides software for fans to sell tickets for events such as music festivals to their friends and is used by companies including LiveNation Entertainment Inc.

Older venture capitalists needed “more proof” and showed an interest later, by which time they had missed out on “some of the upside,” he says. Negus-Fancey says StreetTeam’s revenue has more than doubled each year since it launched in 2014. U.K. accounts for StreetTeam Software Ltd., which are unaudited and dated 31 December 2016, do not state revenue but show it made a loss of 2.6 million pounds ($3.4 million).

‘Frustrating’

It can be hard for young investors to win founders over. Avin Rabheru, 34, founder of the cleaning startup Housekeep, says he has had difficult meetings with some “junior guys” from venture capital firms: “There are very, very, very few things that are more frustrating than somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about trying to explain your business to you,” he says.