Campus Capital Oxford: What, Who, Why, How….

What is Campus Capital Oxford?

Hello founders, entrepreneurs, coders et all. We are Campus Capital Oxford, the only venture capital group at the University of Oxford solely made up of undergraduate students. In fact, we are the first such group in the country to run independently of any university faculty.

We are a part of Campus Capital, a FCA registered venture capital firm, with whom we invest in startups. Our role is in finding, analysing and vetting startups from the University of Oxford, who we then pass on to Campus Capital who undertake further due diligence and make final investment decisions. As well as providing funding, we also aim to be a source of advice for startups — if you have any questions or just want some questions answered, get in touch with us on Facebook here.

We are also hoping to play our part in growing the startup eco-system in Oxford, both through providing startup funding and also by running events which bring entrepreneurs, coders, founders and dreamers closer together.

Some of our Student VCs

How can we help you?

If you’re here, you’re probably either looking for startup funding or looking to get involved in a startup. You might also be thinking ‘Why should I trust you?’ or ‘What makes you different to all the other VCs out there?’

1. We are solely focused on students at the University of Oxford and are run by people just like you — we understand the struggle of splitting your time between university work and a new venture and have the resources to help. An essay crisis means you have to rearrange a meeting? We get that. Don’t know where to look for startup founders at Oxford? We can help.
2. We focus on feedback. Many industry VCs, who are often deluged by funding applications, simply reject applications with little or no explanation. Our team will sit down with every startup who applies to Campus Campus to give them feedback and explain the reasoning behind any decisions to help your startup develop further. All our team members have received training from Campus Capital and many have themselves created or been involved in startups before. Take a look at some of our other blog posts (coming soon!) for profiles of our team members and insights into our specialities.
3. We believe that only with diversity can VCs properly understand the problems that startups are solving. Of our three team leads, 2 are women whilst 50% of our core committee are women. This is in complete contrast to the VC industry: Forbes recently estimated that just 3% of active VCs are women. (Article here) We are also diverse in terms of nationality, ethnicity, sexuality and in wider interests, from Blues tennis players to University Challenge participants to budding photographers. We also have a wide diversity in areas of study — from E&M and PPE to History and Law to Physics and Biomedical Engineering. We want to support the best ideas coming out of the University of Oxford, no matter how and from whom they arise.
4. We operate all year around and do not have specified funding periods. We recognise that not all startups develop at the same speed and not all need funding at the exact same times every year. Instead, we focus on providing funding when you need it and fitting around your development timeline — we want to support your ideas, whenever you come up with them.

Further Benefits From Being Linked To Campus Capital

1. Campus Capital pride themselves on being founder friendly. They recognise that many people who apply to them likely will never have applied for investment before.
2. They are also prepared to lead further rounds of investment. This can be vital for growing ventures if they need further capital to achieve real growth.
3. Campus Capital have programs operating at the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Lancaster, with more programs soon to be added. Our sister teams provide immense collaboration opportunities and resources and a vast talent pool for startups to draw upon..

What should i do next?

Congrats on making it this far. If you are a founder at the University of Oxford looking for seed funding, then go to our website at ccoxford.webflow.io. If you want to get involved with our networking events or have cool tech and entrepreneurialism articles in your News Feed, then go and give us a like on Facebook here.

By Denise Wong, Founder and Senior Team Lead.

Edited by Edward Kandel, Team Lead.