Why Shuttle and is it for you?

Hello friends, and welcome to The Unsophisticated Investor! Brought to you by Scott & Rob, the founders of Shuttle!

If you want to be one of the first to get access to some of the most exclusive private market investment opportunities in Europe, join our limited waitlist now.

Now, let’s get into it 👇

Hello beautiful people and a special welcome to all of our newest subscribers. This week marks 12 months since we started writing The Unsophisticated Investor, and in those 52 weeks, we have published 49 episodes. A few missed for good reasons 😅

Most of our now 1,173-strong group of subscribers are here because of Shuttle; expressing an interest in what we’re building and joining the waitlist, and subsequently, subscribing to our newsletter. This week was an exciting one for Shuttle as we opened the door to our waitlist members and welcomed another 150 members, expanding the community and giving more people access to invest in incredibly exciting, high-potential companies. Investment opportunities that have historically been reserved for the ultra-wealthy. 

And given we have so many new subscribers here, I wanted to take the time to give you all a bit of context on why we’ve built Shuttle, to help provide some more colour to what it is you believe we do/are.

In a world where a person's ability to achieve financial freedom is constantly overshadowed by unaffordable housing, job insecurity and inadequate retirement plans, millions of people are now regularly investing to secure their financial futures. And Scott and I are no different!

We’ve been best mates for 25 years and about a decade ago we started investing together, dipping our toes in everything from crypto to stocks to pension funds. Like 99% of people, we didn’t approach it with any real sophistication, we just wanted to grow our money. But approaching it this way was a poor strategy, so I spoke with a financial advisor to get some more clarity on what direction I was headed. The first thing they pointed out was that my company was investing my pension in a fund that did not match my needs or stage of life. That was the wake-up call I needed to make more deliberate choices, and create a plan for how I go about building financial success.

And as we gained experience, things started to become more clear. And one glaring fact that stood out to us was that the best investment opportunities weren’t available to people like us. The most interesting and potentially higher yielding opportunities were ringfenced for the wealthy.

Why Venture Capital

We both worked in tech. Me as an Account Executive at Salesforce, selling into some of the fastest-growing venture-backed startups in the UK, and Scott as a software engineer, building products for massive companies and promising startups.

Through our work, we had a front-row seat to the startup world. I spent years speaking with executive teams, learning about their challenges, and seeing firsthand how these companies were growing. Scott, meanwhile, was working behind the scenes, helping companies scale their products and watching them turn into something huge.

We saw the potential. We saw the upside. And we wanted in.

But no matter how much we learned or how interested we were, the doors remained shut.

The world continues to change

As an ex-Salesforce employee, I was saddened to see yet more people put to the chopping block and lose their jobs these last few weeks. My dad worked at the same company for 45 years. That's loyalty. Unfortunately, that no longer exists. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it's counterproductive or stifling for your career growth. I dunno! But the complete reversal, it seems, of the connection between company and employee is anxiety-inducing and surely not conducive to great work.

But the pace at which the world is moving is forever gaining speed and we must move with it. We need to adapt. Most importantly, we need to prepare! No longer can we rely on our income as the only resource to fund our lives. The simple act of providing enough sustenance to stay alive seems extortionate these days let alone paying rent, raising a family and everything that goes with it. And of course, everything else. Creating/building financial resilience is now yet another job we must all employ.

And for Scott and I, these feelings have been gaining momentum for some time now. And when we realised that building true diversification into our investments created security as well as the potential for greater returns, we wanted in. The fact we worked in tech, and so, sat at the coalface, certainly expedited our feelings, but having spoken with so many others working in tech we now know we were never alone in that thinking.

What does the future look like?

As investing popularity accelerates, and investors (and by investors I mean you) become more knowledgeable, they’re beginning to seek out diversification and potentially higher-yielding opportunities. Not to mention the macroeconomic shifts that are driving all of us to sure-up our finances. Or at least consider them. And with that, interest in private markets is growing rapidly. Before we knew this for certain, we assumed it to be the case. But before we broke ground on building Shuttle, we knew we had to validate our thinking and figure out if people wanted what we were selling. So we set out to speak with and survey hundreds of people. A huge portion of those people working in the tech industry as well as others from finance and professional services. The result? 86% wanted to invest in exciting startups and 90% would invest in a VC fund.

Unfortunately, due to regulatory barriers as well as time, knowledge, network, net worth limitations, private markets have remained a luxury exclusive to the ultra-wealthy. Until now!

After over two years of work to become licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, Shuttle opened its doors in December 2024 to a small closed group and enabled those Founding Members to start building their venture capital portfolio by investing in two exciting young startups. Startups that also had the backing of 6 venture capital funds between them. And this week, the second phase of our launch kicked off as we welcomed another 150 Founding Members, with another exciting investment opportunity opening next week, and no less than 8 additional VC funds being added to our co-investor list.

Shuttle isn’t just an investment platform. And it's more than simple and unintimidating access to wealth building opportunities. It’s an opportunity to join an exclusive community in a world that you’ve been led to believe isn’t for you. A community that believes in what’s possible when access meets opportunity.

And this is just the beginning. The private markets are changing, and we’re making sure people like us - people like you - get to participate.

What we’ve been working on at Shuttle

• Onboarded 150 new members for the second phase of our launch 🚀

• Working on major improvements to payment flows 🫡

• Getting prepared for our own fundraise soon 💰

The Unsophisticated Investor is brought to you by Scott & Rob, the founders of Shuttle. We’re both sick of private markets being a playground exclusive to the ultra-wealthy so we started a company to challenge the status-quo. Shuttle’s singular focus is to unlock private markets for Millennial and Gen Z retail investors and help them build wealth through the highest performing private market opportunities.

Scott & Rob
Shuttle Co-Founders