When I first wrote about corporate venture funds six years ago they were a relatively new phenomenon in Europe’s growing start-up ecosystem. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a huge explosion. Pretty much all of the well-known, well-funded big tech company funds (GV, Capital G, Intel, Salesforce, etc) now…

Just as for everyone else, COVID’s travel and lockdown restrictions changed venture capital entirely. For almost two years, none of us traveled and new investments, board meetings and the internal management of firms happened entirely on Zoom. While restrictions have been lifted in most places over the last 12 months…

Most venture capital firms track their ‘loss ratio’. This is simply a ratio of the number of investments that end up being worth zero to the number of investments made in a particular venture fund. While every firm wants every company to be a success, the reality is that early-stage…

My greatest venture blogging hero has to be USV’s Fred Wilson, I’ve followed his writing since I was an entrepreneur, years before I even thought of being a VC. Five years ago he wrote a great piece on venture firms’ Reserves. Pretty much all of this is still true. A…

I was with two co-founders of a London-based tech company this morning who had just signed a new lease in the city. One of them shared they had gotten a good deal but not the sort of amazing one that was on offer a year ago and backed it up…

The last time there was this scale of pullback in the markets (2008/9) I was a founder and CEO. This time, I’m an investor. I’m not going to lie, I sleep better this time round. Part of that is the nature of the role: CEOs are ground zero for responsibility…

Like a lot of things in this industry, the business model of venture capital is shrouded in mystery. Successful entrepreneurs often end up investing in VC firms (usually the ones that backed them) and get insight into how it works at that point, but first-time founders often have no idea…

Founders sometimes know little about the investment process inside the VC firms they pitch for investment. If you’re talking to a VC and especially if you are talking to more than one of them, knowing their process is incredibly valuable: it tells you what’s coming, how seriously to take each…

If you’ve started a company and want to raise your first round of financing from a venture capital firm, you’re probably at Seed or Series A stage. The exact definitions of these labels are constantly in flux and probably a good topic for a future post but, for now, let’s…