Meet the entrepreneur-turned-investor who is driving Par Equity's growth in Yorkshire
Giles Moore was 19 when he learned his first hard lesson in business.
As a student at Newcastle University he launched two businesses. He sold the first – a clothing business – which paid his rent for two years. The second – a mobile billboard business using bikes – was a steep learning curve.
“The university gave us a mentor to support us and that mentor took the business off us,” says the Yorkshire regional development manager at venture capital firm Par Equity.
"He’d lent us a bike and supported us but we didn’t put any contracts in place because he said a handshake was all we needed.
"The moment the business started to grow rapidly he took the bike back and took all our business away. We didn’t have anything in writing to do anything about it. All I could do was go back to the university and they got rid of him as a mentor.
"I learned at the age of 19 that when you’re doing a business, don’t trust people and make sure you’ve always got a contract in place.”
Thankfully, the experience spurred him on rather than put him off and he went on to become a serial entrepreneur, starting and selling businesses in diverse sectors.
However, his first job out of university came from manufacturer Gripple, headquartered in his home city of Sheffield, to help the company launch in the US. He later relocated to Buenos Aires to help a vineyard build its online brand and then moved to New Zealand to work for a brewery.
He says he was settled in New Zealand but his family called him back to Sheffield to celebrate his father’s 60th birthday. While there, Gripple got back in touch to ask him to work on a six-month project and offered to fly him back to New Zealand afterwards in business class.
It was an offer he could not refuse but when the six months was up they offered him a promotion and he decided to stay.
"The nice thing about Gripple was that it made you think like an entrepreneur,” says Moore. “Twenty five per cent of its turnover had to come from new products so that made everyone constantly think about how to innovate.”
His first entrepreneurial venture was in reusable plastic bottles until PepsiCo accused him of infringing its patent. “We didn’t infringe it but unless you want to fight PepsiCo you have to back down quickly and move on so that’s what we did,” he says.
In 2013, Moore co-founded Airstoc, the world’s largest market place for drone pilots, taking the company to 20,000 professionals across 147 countries.
"It grew so rapidly,” he says. “Seventy eight per cent of our business was coming from the US. We worked on major films like The Fast and Furious, James Bond and Harry Potter, as well as programmes like Blue Planet with David Attenborough.”
Although he was asked to sell the business several times, Moore hung on but when then US President Donald Trump changed regulations so anyone could become a drone pilot it killed the majority of the business overnight.
Moore attempted to pivot into commercial real estate but it needed a different model.
After two years developing the new model he signed an initial £7.7m deal with US drone start-up Airware – but the next day the company went bankrupt.
"When Airware died, we died the same day. I had to sell my house immediately and negotiate with loan providers,” Moore says. “It went from a massive high to the biggest low in less than 24 hours.”
Moore went on to launch and sell a number of other businesses in AI, drinks and antimicrobial coatings.
His transition to venture capital began with Campus Capital in 2019.
During Covid, he joined NorthInvest, where he established the South Yorkshire Angel Hub, connecting start-ups in the region with crucial angel investment.
Last year he was recruited by Edinburgh-headquartered Par Equity, an early-stage venture capital firm, to drive its expansion into Yorkshire and northern England.
Par Equity invests between £500,000 and £5m in technology companies with high-growth potential in the north of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Alongside its 25 employees, it has an investor network of 240 people who help with due diligence and are situated as investment directors in the companies it works with. It invests in eight to 10 companies a year.
"We only invest where we can add value and we’ve got people alongside us who understand and have the knowledge to really execute and accelerate that business,” says Moore.
Par Equity now employs three staff across two Yorkshire offices in Leeds and Sheffield.
“There’s a huge amount of talent, great opportunity and some amazing resources in the region,” says Moore. “Par Equity had done about five deals in the North before I joined but they didn’t have much of a presence and needed someone who knew the region and could get the ball rolling straight away.”
Moore was a natural fit and knew exactly how to work with other business owners and start-ups.
“VCs (venture capital firms) don’t usually hire ex-entrepreneurs in the UK and as a founder you usually get treated quite badly and I didn’t like that at all but Par Equity is different – they’re very entrepreneurial as a company,” he says.
"I get the best of both worlds now because I can work with founders that I love and am inspired by but at the same time I can support them and put money into their business.”
He adds: “Do I miss being an entrepreneur? There are moments where you get giddy over something but then you think about all the hardship you’ve been through and think actually I don’t know if I want that in my life.”