Channel 4 rejected my TV show idea

Happy Wednesday!!!

I very nearly didn’t get a Substack out this week (I’m furiously writing this at 6.55am ready to go live at 8am) which sounds like a very small thing, but actually made me realise something… I think I’ve properly committed to Substack.

And I’m actually really proud of myself for that.

Because historically, particularly when it comes to creating content, I can be someone who decides I’m going to do something, gets really excited about it, does it for a bit and then… life gets busy, something else becomes more important, and suddenly the consistency disappears.

But there are now more than 600 people on this email list / Substack, and whilst I know 600 isn’t the biggest number on the internet (I’m certainly not suggesting I’m an up and coming Molly Mae), when I actually stop and think about it, that’s 600 actual human beings who have said “yes, I would like to hear what you have to say every week” which is kind of mad.

Like… that could fill a West End theatre???

And every week that number is growing, slowly and consistently, and I think there’s something really lovely about that. So thank you for being here 🤍

Anyway, the reason I almost didn’t write this week is because things have gone slightly crazy.

And it’s basically all because of Angels.

I’ve been mulling over the idea for Angels for SUCH a long time, and weirdly, the original seed of the idea came from watching Lucie Macleod pitch Hair Syrup in season 22 of Dragons Den.

She walked into the Den needing to level-up her already successful business and in my opinion needed mentoring, not cash. It felt like (one of) the Dragons took advantage of small miscommunications. I remember watching it and feeling quite frustrated because, from my perspective, the way she was being spoken to felt a little patronising at points, when what I could see was someone who had built an incredibly successful, profitable, digital-first business and understood an entirely different way of building a company.

And it made me think about how interesting it is that Dragons’ Den is still basically the mainstream entrepreneurial entertainment format in the UK. Because the way businesses are being built has changed SO much.

Creators are building brands through TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. They’re testing products with audiences in real time, building distribution before they even launch, creating communities that traditional businesses would spend millions trying to acquire, and sometimes building enormous companies in the process.

But where is the format that actually reflects that world?

So… I created one.

Angels is essentially my take on what an entrepreneurial entertainment format could look like if it was built digital-first.

The idea is that every week, three creator-founders pitch their businesses to five Angels.

Each Angel would bring a different area of expertise to the panel, so you might have someone brilliant in finance, someone in tech, someone who really understands product, someone with experience scaling consumer businesses etc., rather than everyone essentially assessing the founder through the exact same lens.

And I LOVE the name Angels because there’s something quite fun about reclaiming that word too.

Angel investing is still an incredibly male-dominated world. UK Business Angels Association research found that only 14% of UK angel investors were women at the time of its study, meaning roughly 86% were men.

And yet… Angel feels like such a feminine word??? 😇

So having this brilliant, diverse panel of Angels who understand what modern entrepreneurship actually looks like feels very right to me.

But there’s another part of the format that I think makes it really interesting.

The audience gets a say.

Each episode goes out weekly and the audience votes for the entrepreneur they most want to see progress. Those audience-selected businesses then go through to the final, where the Angels collectively decide which founder they want to invest in.

And importantly, they invest together.

So instead of an entrepreneur walking away with one person’s money and expertise, they’re potentially walking away with five people around the table who all bring something completely different to the business.

At the moment, I’m roughly modelling it around each Angel committing £10k to invest, but that could absolutely scale up or down depending on where the format lands and what makes sense.

The other thing I feel VERY strongly about is that this needs to be digital-first.

I want full episodes on YouTube. I want clips everywhere. I want it to go out weekly so there’s an actual conversation happening around the businesses. I want the creators themselves to be part of the distribution engine, and I want the audience to feel involved in what happens next. Basically, I want the format itself to behave like a creator.

And this is where the last week gets slightly mad.

I know the phrase “building in public” gives some people the ick lol, but I think it is one of the most exciting and dynamic ways to build.

Rather than sitting for 12 months developing something, perfecting the deck, having endless meetings behind closed doors and THEN announcing it to the world… you let people into the process. You let them tell you what they think.

And, importantly, you create demand before the thing even exists.

Before I posted publicly about Angels, I’d already spent 2 years ideating, pitched to Channel 4 (got rejected) and then had a production company reach out. I talked them through the format, they confirmed they were interested and they’re now looking at potential funding.

So I thought… okay, why don’t I just talk about this properly?

I posted about it on LinkedIn and that post has now had 140k impressions, 176 comments and 1.5k likes.

Across TikTok and Instagram, the content has had 30,000 impressions and 350 comments.

And then my inbox basically exploded.

In the space of a week, I’ve had 10+ additional production companies reach out wanting to talk about the format… (two which have produced MASSIVE celebrity shows)

I’ve had brands contact me about potentially funding it.

I’ve had investors contact me about angel investing in Angels which, lol, feels very full circle.

And I’ve had some MASSIVE creators reach out saying they’d be interested in being on the panel, people who collectively have millions of followers and could bring a huge amount of expertise, but also potentially an enormous audience to the show itself.

Which is incredibly exciting.

And also… quite a lot to suddenly deal with 😂

Hence why, at one point yesterday, I realised it was Tuesday and thought, there is absolutely no way I’m getting a Substack written this week.

And then I realised…

This literally is the Substack.

Because this is what building something actually looks like.

I need to work out how I actually want to make it. Because there are SO many different routes Angels could take from here and that is both exciting and semi overwhelming.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m booking calls with production companies, brands and people in the industry, because every deal structure creates a slightly different version of what Angels becomes.

And I think that’s where I’m going to leave it for this week, because the next question is obviously… how do I actually make this happen?

There are SO many things I’m thinking about at the moment around how Angels gets made, who I make it with, what the deal looks like, how much of the IP I retain, whether we fund Series 1 through a production company, brand sponsorship, investment or some combination of all three… and I’ve realised that is basically an entire Substack in itself.

So that’s what I’m going to write about next week.

I want to properly lift the lid on the conversations I’m having, the different routes that are currently on the table and how I’m thinking about structuring a deal for something like this, because I actually think this next bit might be just as interesting as coming up with the idea in the first place.

And I guess that’s also the whole point of building it in public… I don’t want to disappear for six months and then come back when everything is signed and polished and announce that Angels is happening. I want to share what it actually takes to get it there.

For now though, I’m having LOTS of conversations and trying to get as many interesting options on the table as possible before deciding what the right route is.

So, a small callout to the 600+ people reading this because you never know who knows who…

If you work at a production company, you’re a brand interested in sponsoring or funding an business first series, you invest in media / entertainment / creator-led businesses, you’re a creator who could make an amazing Angel, OR you’ve read this and immediately thought Verity needs to speak to this person… please hit me up.

Basically, if you think you could help move Angels forward in any capacity, I would love to hear from you.

A week ago, this was largely an idea living in my head and in a deck, and now I’m having conversations about actually making it.

Which is quite mad.

And VERY exciting.

Verity x