Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Shaping the Future of Diverse Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs with Vinay Solanki

In this final episode of my special Channel 4 Ventures series, I interviewed Vinay Solanki, the founder of Channel 4 Ventures. He explains their role in supporting diverse businesses through media for equity investments, with a focus on fostering innovation and inclusivity. Vinay shares his personal journey and the challenges of creating opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs. We also discussed the importance of providing access and support to boost new products and services, especially those that address real-world challenges. It’s an amazing episode full of content for entrepreneurs, start-up founders, and anyone interested in the intersection of media investment and social impact.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST   If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Vinay Solanki on LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list,  Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter   Transcript Teresa: Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international best selling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Your Dream Business Podcast and our fifth and final episode in this special series that I'm doing. with channel four ventures. We have had some [00:01:00] phenomenal conversations during this week and these episodes. We started off the week with Nikki Wicks, who is the CEO and the creative director for body coach, also Joe Wicks, his big brother. We then spoke to the amazing Sam, who is the founder and CEO of Stellar insurance. We had a conversation with Tom who. knows everything that there is to know about investing and is a super smart man. And then yesterday was the awesome Grace who starting her business in university and talked about how she hustled in those early days and just went for it regardless of what the outcome could have been. And today we are finishing off with Vinay. Vinay founded and runs Channel 4 Ventures. It launched back in 2015 and is now the number one media for equity investor in the UK. Media for equity is an investment activity that swaps media and for shares in typically [00:02:00] unlisted companies like a venture capitalist investor. Binet is highly entrepreneurial, thoughtful and a seasoned digital media executive across many transactions, projects and sectors and geographies. Prior to Channel 4, Vinay led Getty Images European digital business development activities. Outside work, Vinay is a single parent to a teenager and enjoys cooking, running and music. He has a degree in law from UCL and an MBA from Imperial College London. Okay, you know how on Tom's episode I said I felt really stupid? And I felt a real bit of imposter syndrome talking to someone who is super smart? Well, that exact same thing happened when I interviewed Vinay. He is such a nice guy. And actually, what was so lovely is right at the beginning of the interview before we started recording, Vinay was like, We had a conversation about being a single parent and, you know, managing children in families that are living apart. And, and it was [00:03:00] really nice because it really kind of, you know, found some common ground, which was awesome. And then when the conversation started, I was like, Oh man, this guy's smart. And I guess. He's in an industry that I'm not in, so he's obviously going to be super, super smart about that. Binet helped me understand and better explain what the role was that Channel 4 had in not only the research, but what they are going to be trying to be doing going forward to ensure that more diverse businesses are being invested in. We also talked about how Channel 4 is a perfect, in my eyes, perfect company. to do this, given that the channel itself, the media that it puts out is very diverse and they're very proactive in that world. So it felt like a perfect fit. This conversation did push me a bit in terms of like, understanding and really [00:04:00] getting to grips of what this was all about. And I think it's a really nice one to finish the week on because it kind of sums up what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what the opportunities are. And there are some really exciting opportunities. So if you are listening to this, if you have listened to all of the episodes this week and were like, I need to know more about this, then This episode is really going to help you understand more about what it is that Channel 4 Ventures are actually doing. It has been my pleasure to have these business owners, these entrepreneurs, and these experts on over the last five days. I really hope you've enjoyed this special little series within my normal podcast. I have loved being given the opportunity to work with Channel 4 and being given the opportunity to speak to some of these amazing business owners, and I really hope that you have taken some awesome stuff from this. Cheers. But without further ado, here is the final interview of the week. Here's Vinay. Vinay, welcome so much to the podcast. How are you doing? Vinay: I'm doing very good [00:05:00] today. I'm excited to be here. Teresa: I am really excited to have you here and to get going with this conversation and topic and this wider discussion that we're going to have about this part of the world, which I've left it, anybody listening to the beginning of this, like, what are they talking about? What is she talking about? So let's just start by you explaining who you are and what you do. Vinay: So I'm Vinay Selanki and I work at Channel 4. I've been there, I'm very close to completing my ninth year. And I've had one job here in that time, which is to, I was the first employee into Channel 4 Ventures, which was called the Commercial Growth Fund at the time. And put very simply, we. We use the benefits of our nationwide broadcast, um, linear and streaming, which reaches 50 million people a month. Uh, we give that to startups in, in exchange, um, for equity instead of cash. Um, and it's, uh, it's honestly, it's a truly fascinating job and I'm very lucky to have it. Teresa: [00:06:00] So you've been there nine years, so is that when it started, you were the first employee? Vinay: Yeah. So prior to me joining the channel for was talking to a German peer around the model, they spent about two years investigating it, and they decided to go ahead with it. And then they hired someone to head up the activity. And that was me. Teresa: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So the reason I came into your world or you came into my world was because of something new that Channel 4 Ventures are doing that was kicked off by some research. So which way do you want to play this? Do you want to talk about the research that you did first, or do you want to talk about the new venture that you're doing? Vinay: I might do neither. I might talk about how, how, like, how the dots connect between the, both the research, a little bit of my lived history and, and, and, and how maybe all, all of it sort of hangs together. So I grew up in Leicester as a, as a kid and I [00:07:00] grew up in a, a very. you know, very basic underprivileged set up where, you know, and those shaped my formative career experiences when I went into investment banking in my twenties. And I could see challenges at that time. So I had a lucky break at some point, which I got to university and, And I've lived, sat and lived with experiences where I felt, well, firstly, I couldn't even talk about what I'm talking about for a decade or two, right? So the, so, and those experiences shaped very clearly people who, my perceptions of people who are in the club or outside the club, when you think about venture, and those are very big topics and we don't need to go into them now. When I've had the, if you then think about Jonathan Ventures and its core role, we've been, we are a minnow and like to remain a...