Houghton Street Ventures | June 2021 Newsletter
Welcome to the first of our monthly Houghton Street Ventures newsletters - providing you with a little glimpse into our latest news, that of the LSE alumni founder community, and from within LSE’s four (entrepreneurial) walls.
‘Entrepreneurial’ may not be the first word that springs to mind to describe LSE alumni, or LSE as a school, but we are here to tell you that LSE founders are everywhere and it’s likely someone you know may be one - they are hiding in plain sight! The numbers below really speak for themselves and we are here to help support this whole community.
LSE-founded companies span every sector, every corner of the world and many are names that we all know and love:
What's happening at Houghton Street Ventures:
We are excited to have the full Partner team in place! Building and nurturing our relationship as a team, largely remotely, over Covid has been a rewarding and insightful experience and we’re chomping at the bit to start IRL office life on campus as soon as restrictions relax.
The volume and quality of LSE founders in our pipeline continues to astound and excite us - a few of note include: Mono (Colombia, FinTech), Alter5 (Spain/ UK, Sustainable Finance), The Lowdown (UK, Consumer/ Digital health), BYOB (UK, Fintech), Kyan Health (Germany, Future of Work), and Abwaab (MENA, Edtech).
We launched a global ESG initiative for the VC industry, called VentureESG, alongside GMG Ventures. Its aim is to bring together both VC funds and LPs to help promote, and support best practice and engagement around ESG in venture. At latest count, we have c.130 VC funds, and c.45 LPs in the initiative, from across the globe. See here for some coverage in Sifted. Let us know if you’d like to find out more.
What's happening within the LSE alumni founder world:
There were some hefty alumni raises recently including Bitpanda’s $170m Series B (founder: Eric Demuth), ComplyAdvantage’s £70m Series C (founder: Charles Delingpole), Merama’s $160m Series A (founder: Olivier Scialom), Tessian’s $65m Series C (founder: Ed Bishop), Bowery Farm’s $300m Series C (founder: David Golden) and Capchase's $125m Series A (founder:Przemek Gotfryd).
LSE founders have a knack for identifying and shaping new industries:
A handful are at the forefront of the Amazon FBA roll-up movement (including Heroes, SellerX, Olsam Group, Valoreo etc), and in a similar vein, Merama and Blazar Capital (collectively, this group has raised >$430m since November).
Here in London, there’s no escaping the new online grocery delivery companies, and there are two LSE alumni founders in the space - Zapp and Dija (together they have raised c.$120m over the last six months).
At Houghton Street Ventures, we care a lot about making sure founders are being cognisant of the way their businesses interact with people and planet, and it seems that this is part of LSE DNA. We were excited to see the launch of Allbirds’ Carbon Footprint Calculator (which they have open-sourced) as well as WeTransfer’s write-up of their journey to Carbon Neutral. Alumni company, Plan A, who are working with companies and investors to better track and report their carbon footprint (and whose founder also set up the GreenTech Alliance), last month closed their $3m Series A (from Softbank, Demeter and Coparion).
What's happening at LSE:
LSE is celebrating its 125 year anniversary this year - check out some of the stories about its history and future plans here.
The school’s entrepreneurship centre, LSE Generate, recently kicked off its latest accelerator programme ('GAP'), supporting very early stage, alumni-founded ventures tackling the SDGs. With the programme going remote given the times, it’s their most global cohort yet, with participating founders from Kenya, Uganda, the US, and the UK, working on ventures across healthcare, education, transport, future of work, exercise for the ageing and even….goat rearing.
With 70% of LSE alumni based beyond UK shores, LSE Generate has set up nine Global Innovation Hubs (Mumbai, SF, LA, Tel Aviv, UAE, Lisbon, Chengdu, Sao Paolo, Lagos), with a few more in the works, which tap into the school’s international ecosystem of entrepreneurs, mentors, advisors, investors and operators, to proactively connect, educate and inspire alumni to build and scale impactful business.
That's all from this month - we look forward to keeping you updated!
Best,
Veronika, Hannah and Adam
The Houghton Street Ventures Team