October 2023 | Community Newsletter
Hello,
Welcome back to the Houghton Street Ventures Community newsletter, our monthly update on everything that’s happening within the LSE startup and venture ecosystem. We have some exciting events to round out the year, with our next founder AMA session:
Today, we share more about our investment in Company Hero. We invested in Company Hero, founded by LSE alumni, Miklos Grof, and Diego Izquierdo as part of their seed round in November 2022 alongside lead investor, Allievo Capital and a handful of industry angels. See the full blog below.
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!
Introducing Company Hero…
Brazil is ranked 124th in the world for ‘ease of doing business’
Brazil, despite its economic stature as a top 10 leading economy, ranks a lowly 124th in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index. This reality represents a huge problem for a third of Brazil’s workforce transitioning towards independent work. Company Hero, led by Miklos Grof and Diego Izquierdo, addresses this gap, simplifying business operations and mitigating inherent risks of self-employment.
Ecosystem Offerings
Greengage founded by Sean Kiernan, offers relationship-based e-money account services for businesses and individuals. They are restoring the merchant banking approach, bringing together traditional and digital finance. They provide GDP, EUR, and USD accounts to startups, fiduciaries, and digital asset firms. Their accounts enable customers to hold, manage, and transfer funds electronically via mobile app or website, all linked to Visa Debit Cards. Greengage is offering LSE founders:
A dedicated relationship manager for every client
Support for different payment thresholds and multiple signatories
Account opening within two weeks
Support for defi and crypto startups and entrepreneurs
If you’d like to feature in next month’s newsletter with an offer for the LSE startup and venture community, please do get in touch!
Community News & Updates
Houghton Street Ventures
We are in the process of finalising our tenth investment from the fund. The portfolio companies that we can share information are up to some very exciting work:
Venteur, launched Artemis, their new AI-powered health insurance platform trained on 30 years of medical claims data and behavioural insights gained from experience as an ICHRA administrator. Artemis offers personalised health insurance recommendations for users with seamless enrollment.
Adam flew out to Monaco to meet LSE-alum and founder of the EasyGroup, Stelios Haji-Ioannau. We’re excited to have Stelios as part of the Houghton Street Ventures journey.
Big Deals
Likeminded - founded by - raised a $1.5m Seed round from N&V Capital
Atalan - founded by - raised a $2.5m Seed round from OCA Ventures
Autone - founded by - raised a $2.5m Seed round from Speedinvest
Kranus Health - founded by - raised a $8.5m Series A from Karista
Nova Credit - founded by - raised a $45m Series C from Canapi Ventures
In the News
TrueLayer were selected to power Stripe’s account-to-account payments in their checkouts, and featured in Finextra
Tessian, the AI-powered cloud email security tool, was acquired by Proofpoint in a deal which creates the largest email security platform
Magic Fit, were in the news again, this time demonstrating their fitness tech to Lorraine on ITV
Aiolos Bio was featured in Crunchbase News with their $245m Series A to build drugs to tackle asthma
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!
Helsinki - 28th November to 1st December - Hannah will be attending Slush
Best,
Hannah, Adam, and David