Welcome to Make it Stack, this episode involves the first guest on the podcast, Mark Ellis. Mark is a good friend of mine who works in corporate finance and focuses on securing equity finance for a wide variety of start up enterprises. One source of finance for these companies is through backing from venture capital trusts (VCTs) which is an alternative asset class for retail investors. We discuss VCTs and the relationship with investors in detail and move on to talk about Mark's personal investing. We finally touch upon the impact of the changing pensions landscape, in particular defined contribution pension funds and the importance of taking personal financial responsibility.