Houghton Street Ventures | Community Newsletter
November 2023
Merry Christmas! We are wrapping up the year with the festive edition of the Houghton Street Ventures Community newsletter, our monthly update on everything that’s happening within the LSE startup and venture ecosystem.
In this month’s feature, we had the privilege of interviewing, Julia Black, the Strategic Director of Innovation at the London School of Economics. A pivotal figure in Houghton Street Ventures’ journey, Julia has played a crucial role in fostering our partnership with the LSE. Her work stands out as a beacon of leadership in innovation within entrepreneurship and educational systems.
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!
An interview with Julia Black…
Why do you think that now is such a critical time for social sciences and the humanities in tech?
Now is a critical time. There is no challenge now that isn’t a social sciences or a humanities question. Tech can bring us amazing advantages — no question — but we can also see the downsides — challenges now in the production and dissemination of trusted information, in the appropriate construction of data sets/ training models, of biases within data sets and models, issues of transparency, privacy, contestability of models and so forth. All of those questions are social sciences and humanities questions. And other questions simply cannot be resolved by tech. Take peace and conflict resolution — understanding the dynamics of those geopolitical tensions, which have tangled roots in history, over centuries, requires deep engagement with social sciences and humanities. Everything has a social science component — but they tend to be the difficult elements. It’s easy to build shiny widgets and bits of kits, but social sciences present different questions, which are hard to solve. You need those voices at the table, however, otherwise, we won’t get the answers we need.
Community News & Updates
Houghton Street Ventures
David shared the results of his research into the socioeconomic status of UK venture capitalists in The Equity Record, with Diversity VC, in front of a packed audience at HSBC Innovation Banking
Big Deals
Layer AI - founded by Burcu Ozcengiz - raised a $1.8m Seed round led by 500 Global
Langfuse - founded by Clemens Rawert - raised a $4m Seed round led by Lightspeed
Performativ - founded by Albert Geisler Fox - raised a €5.5m Seed round led by Fintech Collective
Retorio - founded by Patrick Oehler - raised a $9m Series A led by SquareOne Venture Capital
In the News
OakNorth featured in Innovate Finance with their research into the £500bn contribution by scaleups to the UK economy
Oda featured in Sifted with their proposed merger with Mathem, creating Europe’s leading grocery delivery company
Suno partnered with Microsoft to use their AI-powered music creation tools, enabling users to turn their ideas into songs
Meet the Team
If our paths cross or if you’re swinging by London, come visit us in the LSE library - we’d love to catch up, let us know!
New York - 23rd to 26th January - Hannah is visiting along with LSE Generate for the ‘LSE female founders lunch’ and meeting LPs and founders
Best,
Hannah, Adam, and David