Creator Fund

"The biggest mistake that university investors can make is to focus on the technology and then bring in an external management team. We back massively motivated PhD founder teams.” Forbes explains the Creator Fund model in this excellent piece exploring what we have built over the past 3 years: https://lnkd.in/eMK58NWT

Welcome to the Creator Fund Class of 2024-5! We spent the summer recruiting a team of 47 students embedded across 25 universities in 8 countries. It is this PhD team that meet the best scientific founders across European laboratories, and has the technical understanding of cutting-edge science in AI, BioTech, Physics, Materials, and Robotics. We are delighted to announce our new team for the 2024-25 academic year! Now across 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇫🇮 🇸🇪 🇩🇪 🇨🇭 🇭🇷 🇳🇱 🇩🇰 https://lnkd.in/ewz8JEmu

We host matchmaking nights at universities across Europe, where top PhD students come together to meet potential co-founders and pitch their ideas over a glass of wine and snacks. On 2nd December we're headed back to the dreaming spires of Oxford. If you are keen to meet others students across the university working on Deep Tech ideas, sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eKvpsura Miranda Conn Sasha McMurray Edward Harris Yoav Gelberg Bruno Trentini Cherie Wong

Look up to the sky: there are now drones flying blood samples across London. This is the first use of medical drones over a major world city. Apian has pioneered this between St Thomas' to Guys hospital significantly cutting down delivery times in Southwark. Watch the launch coverage by the BBC this morning and the story of what it means for the first patients. Huge congrats Hammad Jeilani, Alexander Trewby, Christopher Law.

Congratulations to our portfolio company AllFocal Optics (formerly Lark Optics) who announce their $5.3mm seed round and also their new commercial partnership with Jaguar Land Rover. All Focal is developing lenses for AR and VR that eliminate nausea and discomfort typically associated with experiencing virtual worlds. It is led by the inspiring Pawan Shrestha who grew up in rural Nepal and only used electricity for the first time at 8 years old, and eventually became a Research Associate in Electrical Engineering at University of Cambridge. We invested at pre-seed. And thrilled to see this round led by Speedinvest, and another.vc and Germany World Cup winning goal scorer Mario Götze. Covered in Sifted too: https://lnkd.in/epCie24A Alexandra Ntemourtsidou Jan Heck Jamie Macfarlane

Delighted to announce our investment in TreQ in Sky News today. CEO Mandy Birch is a Brigadier General in the US Air Force and worked at Rigetti Computing and is an expert in quantum computing. She launched Treq in Oxford to leverage UK universities' leadership in the field. Treq makes early quantum computing systems viable for real-world applications by connecting and integrating all the different components of the hardware and software stack. Round led by Lavrock Ventures and we were joined by our friends at firstminute capital https://lnkd.in/gr2HjmKt Mark Kleinman henry lane fox Alexandra Ntemourtsidou Adriana Vitagliano Daniel Marti Dafcik Jamie Macfarlane

Applications for our 2024/5 team are closing this Sunday 15th at midnight! If you are a student at a European University and want to learn about venture capital, or if you want to learn how to become an entrepreneurial scientist and start your own company out of your PhD... Apply now: https://lnkd.in/emwA23Z4

Applications to join our student investment team close on *September 15th*! Ahead of this, come and meet our CEO Jamie Macfarlane and COO Alexandra Ntemourtsidou to hear first-hand what helping run a VC Fund alongside your PhD is all about. 5:30 pm on Thursday 5th September. Alexandra started as a student investor on our Imperial College London team herself. https://lnkd.in/eqv-kR86

We are excited to announce our pre-seed investment in BrainZell. Our first investment in Sweden 🇸🇪, from the Karolinska Institutet. Brainzell is creating synthetic brains which transform pharmaceutical clinical trials by allowing drug companies to test on advanced human cell models. It replaces the need to test drugs on over 100 million laboratory animals every year with a far more accurate organoid alternative. Proud to be working with Petra Szeszula, PhD and Robin Pronk, PhD to change the way drugs are developed to the benefit of both patients and animals. Reece Khan Meike Bleeksma Katariina Kordemets Leon Gibson Jamie Macfarlane Alice Pettitt Jun Jie (JJ) Ong Adrian Signell

Huge congratulations to Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey as BeyondMath announces its $8.5mm seed round. Led by UP.Partners with Insight Partners joining too. BeyondMath builds AI that simulates the natural world to transform the way we design cars, airplanes, and other vehicles. Proud to back the team at pre-seed in Cambridge and also again now. https://lnkd.in/e7HnQYdC Alexandra Ntemourtsidou Konstantin Hemker