Houghton Street Ventures | November 2021 Newsletter
Hello and Happy Halloween!
Autumn definitely came in with a bang after the summer break and we can’t believe that it’s November. Freshers week was a sight to behold this year, with the long-awaited in-person events and meet-ups in full force, and a real buzz around Houghton Street.
The LSE entrepreneurial community has been keeping busy, hitting quite a milestone, $7Bn raised in funding since the start of the year (!), compared to $13Bn raised since 2018. This puts 2021 on track to truly be a blockbuster year for LSE alumni founders. Some more big numbers below:
What's happening at Houghton Street Ventures:
We continue to power through to our close, and the finish line is almost in sight - a big shout-out to all our early supporters and folks making introductions. We wouldn’t be here without you!
As campus reopened, we were able to move into our digs on the top floor of the library - yes, there are offices there, not just library desks, and the views are pretty great; come visit.
In lieu of funding, we continue to support the early-stage community in every way we can; some highlights this month include: Dines, Odore, HeyTimi, Ikigai Data, and Foresight.
Our non-profit, VentureESG, collaborated with the PRI on a survey around ESG practices in early stage venture; coming up, we’ll be at Pre-Money (2nd December, Miami) working with US funds to expand our US activity and community.
Last month we hosted our second LSE founder and investor meet-up, kindly hosted by the Marshall Institute. We will be doing a Christmas edition in early December, let us know if you’d like to join!
What's happening within the LSE alumni founder world?
Funding rounds continue apace, with some big highlights as follows: HappyFresh (E-Commerce, Indonesia), Allocations (Fintech, US) WorkMotion (HR tech, Germany), Bitpanda (Fintech, Austria), MavenClinic (Healthtech, US) and Taktile (ML, Germany), Truelayer (Fintech, UK), Sundayapp (Fintech, US), Vidsy (Adtech, UK).
Overall this may have been the strongest September on record for LSE alumni entrepreneurs!
There has been quite a bit of literary activity in the ecosystem:
The co-founder and CEO of Boost Technology, Mike Quinn, has written a book on building a purpose driven start-up, order your copy here (and keep an eye out for his public talk at LSE in January).
Former N26 COO, Michael Schilling (a fellow LSE alumnus), has co-written a brand new guide for start-up scaling, “The Builder’s Guide to the Tech Galaxy”. Check out the Sifted piece which contains an abridged chapter here. Our very own Hannah Leach and Johannes Lenhard co-authored chapter 2 on ESG.
We are continuing to see community take center stage in company building. The approach around community engagement is becoming a key requirement for any go-to-market strategy irrespective of vertical or product, and is particularly successful when the community of early users or target customers is harnessed from the very beginning and is incorporated into product testing and development. Within the LSE ecosystem, Sudor (Sifted article here) and the Lowdown (Wired 5-page spread (!) here) have implemented this approach with great success, and Orbiit has developed an impressive B2B solution to supercharge community activation, one we’re actually using to activate our VentureESG community!
LSE alumni founders in the news:
Bitpanda is expanding their digital asset investing product to Italy (link here).
ComplyAdvantage is moving into crypto and blockchain transaction monitoring through a partnership with Elliptic (link here).
Allbirds IPO target valuation is set at $2Bn (link here).
Sales at WeTransfer rose 26% in the past year ahead of a potential IPO (link here).
What's happening at LSE?
LSE Generate has launched an entrepreneurship hub in Dubai, which makes 12 hubs globally, with others including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Lisbon, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Accra, Shanghai, Chengdu, São Paulo, and Lagos.
LSE Generate has also won funding from the British Council to set up a Nigeria Innovation Hub and incubation programme.
The LSE's Entrepreneurship Society (now the largest student society on campus) has kicked off the year with a stellar line up of speaker events, hosting the likes of Tom Blomfield (Monzo founder), Christian Angermayer, and Johnny Boufarhat (Hopin founder).
To conclude, we wish you the best of luck with the autumn rush and look forward to seeing you on the other side of Thanksgiving. With the borders reopening, we are planning some US travel in November, hitting up both coasts from the 8th of November onwards. Let us know if you will be around, in-person is the new zoom, and we’d love to catch up!
Best,
Veronika, Adam and Hannah
The Houghton Street Ventures Team