Houghton Street Ventures | Community Newsletter | December 2022

Hello,

Welcome back to the final Houghton Street Ventures Community newsletter of the year, our monthly update on what’s happening within the LSE startup and venture ecosystem. This month, we have an interview with Joe Cross - LSE alum and former CMO of Wise, turned Angel Investor -  on his journey from the LSE to being an executive at one of the UK’s greatest fintech success stories.

If you’re interested to learn more about Houghton Street Ventures as either a founder, investor, or with any other hat on, we’d love to hear from you. Or if you have ideas about future content or collaborations, just hit reply!

An interview with Joe Cross

In a new segment in the HSVC Community Newsletter, we’re interviewing leaders in the LSE startup and venture capital ecosystem to hear about their journey from the LSE to the top of their game.

Joe joined Wise, then TransferWise, at the very beginning of their journey as employee #12. He saw the company grow to 2,500 people over the course of the next 8 years as the company's Chief Marketing Officer. Today, Joe spends his time as an angel investor, investing in companies addressing social and environmental challenges.

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Community News & Updates

Houghton Street Ventures

• We're in the process of completing our third investment from Fund 1.  An exciting insurtech opportunity in the US, co-investing alongside Tier 1 US venture funds. Expect to hear more about them in 2023 once they emerge from stealth

• We held the final event of the year, our Festive Drinks, last week to celebrate another great, and at times difficult, year in the LSE startup and venture ecosystem. This time, we partnered up with Odin, an emerging syndication platform, to bring together our two communities. Keep an eye out for invitations to the next get-together in the new year

• We kicked off a capstone project with the LSE statistics department. Houghton Street Ventures captures a huge amount of data on entrepreneurship at LSE, our database of founders is growing month-on-month. Now, we’re teaming up with the statistics department to analyse this data further, to understand what makes a great LSE entrepreneur from the moment they join the LSE to founding their business and beyond. Expect to see some insights on this project over the next year.

• The LSE Management Department is opening applications for their Open Innovation programme, an initiative designed to enable entrepreneurship students at the LSE to connect with businesses and work together on innovation projects. If you’re interested to learn more and apply, see here for further information

• Houghton Street Ventures is live on Landscape VC, a UK-based platform that enables founders to review their interactions with VC funds. The reviews are rolling in and LSE entrepreneurs are giving us great feedback

Big Deals

• Eterlast - founded by Joan Parera - raised a $4.5m Seed from Supernode, Play Ventures & Active Partners

• ChargeUp - founded by Ankur Madan - raised a $7m Seed from Capital A Partners & Anicut Capital

• TRM Labs - founded by Esteban Castano - raised a $70m Series B from Thoma Bravo & Paypal Ventures

• Maven Clinic - founded by Kate Ryder - raised a $90m Series E from General Catalyst

In the News

• Synthesia featured on The Seedcamp Podcast, discussing why making big bets as a DeepTech startup is so important

• Founder of Gro Intelligence, Sara Menker featured on the How I Built This podcast, discussing her journey to creating one of the leading climate and agricultural data platforms

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Meet the team

Much of our travel is winding down for the year as we gear up for the festive period. However, we’d love to meet any founders, investors, or ecosystem members in the New Year. Please do get in touch.

Enjoy the festive season, and have a fantastic New Year.

Best, 

Adam, Veronika, Hannah & David

The Houghton Street Ventures Team