April 2023 | Community Newsletter
April 2023 | Community Newsletter
Hello,
Welcome back to the Houghton Street Ventures Community newsletter, our monthly update on what’s happening within the LSE startup and venture ecosystem. We have some exciting events over the next couple of weeks:
Today, we have a piece by Adam French, partner at Houghton Street Ventures, on how university alumni-focused venture funds are empowering tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. A lot of column space over the past year has been taken up by funds focused on university spinouts - it is not the only game in town.
If you’re interested in learning more about Houghton Street Ventures, we’d love to hear from you. Or if you have ideas about future content or collaborations, just hit reply!
The Network Effect: How Alumni-Focused VC Funds Empower Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs
With our mandate at Houghton Street Ventures to back London School of Economics entrepreneurs, a week doesn’t go by where we get mistaken for a fund backing the university’s spinouts, and we can see why. The UK’s most prominent university-affiliated funds do exactly that, with Oxford Science Enterprises backing spinouts from Oxford University, Cambridge Innovation Capital backing those from Cambridge University and, most recently, Northern Gritstone announcing a £245m fund to support spinouts from the universities of Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield.
However, the LSE is somewhat different to those institutions; it is one of the world’s top universities for Social Sciences and Management, but as most people are aware, it has no engineering, technology, medicine or life sciences focus within its four academic walls, and as a result, has very little ‘spin-out’ activity. We, therefore, approach the university affiliation from a different direction, inspired by the birthplace of venture capital — the United States.
Alumni Offer
We’ve teamed up with Capsule, an insurance provider to venture-backed technology startups (including LSE alum startups like Scan.com). They are offering free insurance health checks to our community; if you’re interested in learning more, email alice.garnier@capsulecover.com or book a meeting directly here:
Community News & Updates
Houghton Street Ventures
Adam hosted a panel at the Innovate Finance Global Summit on the “Reimagining of Wealth Management: the Next Era of WealthTech." with the CEOs of Lightyear and Platform One and team members from Shares and Seccl. Along with the IFGS delegation, he opened the London Stock Exchange. Here’s Adam ringing the bell:
Big Deals
Axle - founded by Armaan Sikand - raised a $4m Seed round led by Gradient Ventures
Credora - founded by Darshan Vaidya - raised a $6m Seed round led by Coinbase Ventures
MetaGravity - founded by Tobin Ireland - raised a $9m Seed round led by MoonPay & The Spartan Group
HelloBetter - founded by Dr Elena Heber - raised a $7m Series A led by MassMutual Ventures
Scan.com - founded by Charlie Bullock - raised a $12m Series A led by YZR Capital, TriplePoint and Aviva Ventures
Rinsed - founded by Austin Esecson - raised a $20m Series B led by VMG Partners
Clerkie - founded by Gray Hoffman - raised a $33m Series A led by Left Lane Capital
In the News
Alice Pelton from The Lowdown had an ‘interesting’ conversation with Adrian Chiles on BBC Radio 5 Live about contraception
The team at Bastion, featured in TechCrunch talks about their journey from working at Palantir to building the all-in-one cybersecurity solution for SMEs
Scalable Capital featured in the FT as they uncover just how many young people are flocking to ETFs with digital investment platforms as a means of saving
Varun Bhanot, founder of Magic.Fit also made headlines in the FT as they reviewed the latest edition of their home workout technology
Meet the Team
The team will be in:
San Francisco - 22 - 28th May - Hannah is in town with VentureESG and will be hosting an event on ESG in VC with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Centre - if you’d be interested in attending, let us know
Paris - 29 - 31st May - Adam & Hannah will be meeting founders and LPs in Paris - they’re hosting a drinks event with LSE Generate on evening of 30th May for LSE alums in the startup/ venture world. If you’d be interested in joining, let us know!
Berlin - 5 - 7th June - Hannah will be hosting a roundtable on ESG & Impact at SuperVenture in Berlin
If our paths cross, we’d love to meet and catch up, let us know!
Best,
Hannah, Adam, and David