James Robson
Hi, I’m James. I’m a founder and investor who has raised over £100M and worked with 14,000+ businesses to explore funding.
Most founders think capital is about access. It isn’t. Not these days. It’s about timing, structure, and understanding how decisions actually get made.
Working closely with founders & operators every day has given me a front-row seat to how capital really works - and why so many smart businesses get it wrong.
This page brings together my thinking, my writing, and what I’m building, with one aim: helping founders and SMEs make fewer irreversible capital decisions, and to understand what it really means to raise finance in an age of AI, Big Tech, and a new era of Capital Markets.
My Company:
FundOnion: FundOnion is a Financial Technology business finance platform built around a simple idea: founders should understand when to raise capital, not just where to get it. Our thesis is that Timing > Access. That means we can help growing businesses explore, compare, and access funding with better context, fewer myths, and clearer trade-offs.
My Newsletter
This is simply a practical newsletter for founders making capital decisions in the real world. No pitch-deck theatre, no VC mythology, no LinkedIn rhetoric.
Just clear thinking about capital raises, funding trade-offs, and the decisions that compound over time.
Sign up if you’re interested to learn more and keep in touch.
Why did I start this newsletter?
1/ Most people misunderstand capital raises. They think it’s about great ideas and slick storytelling. In reality, it’s about timing, structure, and incentives.
2/ Founders don’t know exactly what to do - or what not to do - when raising capital. They’re flying blind and making mistakes that only show up months or years later.
3/ Everything in capital raising comes down to one thing. Once you understand it, most of the noise disappears. Once you know something, you can’t “un-know” it.
4/ Capital raises should be as simple as possible, and debt should be guilt-free. Strip away the unnecessary complexity.
5/ Debt isn’t failure. It’s fuel. Used well, it accelerates progress. Used badly, it destroys options. The stigma is the real problem. It’s time to kill it.
Must Reads
My Values
1/ It’s not who is right that wins but who wins that is right.
2/ Life is a game. Capital is one of the rule systems.
3/ You need to understand who you are to build anything meaningful.
4/ Ambition without sacrifice is nothing.
5/ Don’t have a solution for a problem you don’t yet have.
Other projects I’m working on:
Clause: A debt fund focused on providing €1M–€10M contract financing to businesses across the UK, EU, and USA.
Dead Broker Society: An education and training platform built for finance brokers, designed to raise the bar for how they learn, think, and operate.
Board Advisor to: CompanySights: A data & analytics SaaS focussed on providing headcount benchmark data to corporates and advisory firms.
Socials
Email me: james@mandrillcapital.com
My life story:
ages 18-25: Left my career in Big Law, chased the experience I actually craved.
ages 25-30: Still young and dumb, but gaining enough awareness to figure out who I want to be.
ages 30-34: Built my philosophy, time to execute. Still learning every single day.