Ferdinand Reynolds

I couldn’t be prouder to be a Venture Partner at Isomer Capital (aka the best European FoF - at least for me) as we just announced the launch of our pioneering £100m secondaries fund. This fund is dedicated to acquiring stakes from LPs in various VC funds, tapping into a massive and largely unexplored market. 🌟 Key Highlights: - Focused Investment: Primarily targeting stakes in VC funds, with selective investments in private companies. - Robust Funding: Already over 20% funded, thanks to strong support from Nordic family offices and a German foundation. - Market Potential: With a growing number of private tech companies and a VC liquidity crunch, Europe's VC secondaries market is poised for rapid growth. - Track Record: This isn’t Isomer’s first foray into the secondaries market. As a firm we’ve done several secondaries deals with portfolio companies and VC firms, including early-stage VC Seedcamp (in 2021) and mobility giant Bolt (in 2023). - Expert Team: Welcoming the amazing Omolade (Rachel) A., formerly of Coller Capital, as a principal to lead this initiative. 💡 Investment Strategy: - 65-75% of the fund will buy "LP interest" stakes in VC funds. - 15-25% will be directed towards stakes in companies. - Up to 15% reserved for flexible investment opportunities. 📈 Looking Ahead: We're targeting returns of 2-3x, with significant distributions expected in the next 4-7 years. As one of the few players in this space, we're not just participating in the market—we're driving it forward. Read all about it here: https://lnkd.in/dc7sbC3G #VentureCapital #SecondariesFund #EuropeanVC

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Do this before your Series A I often see founders Once they have proved the concept Get pressured into scaling fast and expanding further so much so that they get into the trap of expanding and burning To avoid that watch this #seriesA #growthstage #pr #expantion #Vc #startups

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Anthony's innovations have had a massively positive impact on so many in the UK tech ecosystem. I think it would be wise for the UK Gov (and Rt Hon Rachel Reeves) to pay attention. #capitalraising #startups #fundraising #founders #venturecapital #investors #vc #vcfunding #technology #startup #tech

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Interesting read from Dominic Jacquesson MBE at Index Ventures, for any businesses looking at expanding into the US 🗽 🗽The successful archetypes for US expansion (B2B & B2C) 🗽At what stage to expand into the US? 🗽Where in the US should you set up? 🗽Who should be your first boots on the ground? 🗽Operational needs - visas, tax structures, lawyers, etc. 🗽Once you're there, how do you scale? 🗽Once you're there, how do you fundraise? 🗽How do you maintain/evolve culture and comms across the Atlantic? Click here to get the answers to all of these questions: https://lnkd.in/eN529q_S #venturecapital #internationalisation #USA #USexpansion #privatecapital

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LOOKING FOR INVESTMENT ? Please submit via this link: 👉 https://lnkd.in/eKR-32P6 Fuel Ventures is one of the most active early-stage venture capital funds in the UK, established by 🚀 Mark Pearson as a result of his own entrepreneurial and investment successes. Mark built and exited his own digital marketplace business founded in 2006 and sold in 2014 for £55m, in parallel invested in and exited a number of personal angel investments including being the first investor into Paddle now valued at $1.4billion and has since established a portfolio of some of the most exciting early and growth-stage tech companies, which included a recent successful exit to Adobe. 5 exits and counting... They focus on fast growth Software (SaaS), Marketplaces, Fintech platforms and eCommerce businesses investing in the early stages. Since its incorporation, Fuel Ventures has created an impressive portfolio of 160+ technology companies. The Fuel Ventures team, investor, and advisor network provides a unique 'all under one roof' approach based on real-world experience which minimises the level of risk for the fuel companies, delivering a combination of mentorship, experience and access to the investment required to accelerate their revenue growth through strategic advice and practical business-planning and operational execution support. They look for super ambitious hard-working founders or founding teams, companies that have large global scale growth potential with multibillion market opportunities. They really want to see companies that have the potential to deliver x100 potential growth, mostly meaning £1billion+ future market cap potential. Their Funds: 👉 Concept/Pre-Seed 👉 Seed & Seed+ 👉 Pre-A & A Stage SUBMIT YOUR BUSINESS FOR INVESTMENT 👉 https://lnkd.in/eKR-32P6

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🔥 UK’s Top 10 Conscious Angel Investors 🌱 It's inspiring to see angel investors backing tech for good, driving positive change and innovation. Today, I'm excited to highlight the UK's top 10 conscious angel investors making a difference. These investors are not just funding startups; they’re empowering ventures that aim to make the world a better place. Sarah Drinkwater Chris Adelsbach Nick Lyth Amina Ahmad Vera Elizabeth B. Oksana Stowe Meganne Houghton-Berry Andrea Sinclair Scott Mackin Andy Ayim MBE These visionaries are investing in tech that addresses social, environmental, and economic challenges. Their commitment to conscious investing is setting a new standard in the industry. #ConsciousInvesting #TechForGood #AngelInvestors #Sustainability

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In 2019, I led a £9m Seed Round. It was the largest Seed Round in the UK that year. Now... You would expect the usual reasons why we invested so much: 1. A clear story 2. Special founders 3. A large opportunity But there was also something else that was a big reason for why we invested. What was it? The founders were able to hire in some of the best people we had seen. They had already built exactly what this company needed to. They had extreme amounts of success doing it. And now were willing to risk everything to join this tiny little start-up. Funnily enough one of those exceptional hires ended up being the CEO! That’s how good their hiring was. At the end of the day, investors invest into teams. And those teams are the people who are going to be the difference between a successful company or not. So as a founder you have to show investors that you can, will and have hired the best of the best. Because second-rate hires will never cut it. -- P.S. What do you think about team-building and its importance? ♻️ Repost to help a founder in your network

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🚨 Funding Alert: It's the last day of October, and 2024 is slipping away faster than you think... You know it, I know it – the funding world moves at LIGHTNING speed ⚡️ Timing is everything, and opportunities vanish in the blink of an eye. If you're aiming to land a funding deal before year's end, we've got your back! 💪 At Magdalena Reith, we're offering a special Q4 deal: Book a pitch deck package before November 15th and get a FREE one-pager 🎁 Your strategic conversation starter that turns "Maybe later" into "Let's talk!" Looking to finish Q4 strong and slingshot your startup into 2025? Here's what you get in our Q4 Power Package: 🎯 Expert guidance  🎁 FREE one-pager  💼 Professional pitch deck  ⏰ Priority completion (optional) Reach out via DM or drop a comment below to learn more and lock in your package before November 15th! #StartupFunding #PitchDecks #Startups

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LOOKING FOR INVESTMENT? 💰👀 Fuel Ventures 🚀 is one of the most active early stage tech investors in the UK. We back disruptive & ambitious founders at all the early stages: 👉 Concept/Pre-Seed 👉 Seed & Seed+ 👉 Series A stages 170 Investments and counting… 🚀 We look for/focus on fast growth digital/tech businesses. We like software, platforms fintech, e-commerce, B2B and B2C with super ambitious hard working founder/s or founding teams, companies that have large global growth potential with multibillion market opportunities. We really want to see companies that have the potential to deliver x100 potential growth, mostly meaning £1billion+ future market cap potential. 📈🚀 We have funds that can invest from Concept/Pre-Seed, Early Seed, Seed, Pre-A and A stages, so if your at any of these stages we are keen to hear from you. The best way for us to take a look at you business if you are looking for investment is to submit the business to our web form for me and our investment team of 8 people all get it directly into their inbox to review within our process, we review weekly in our investment meetings and will come back to you if we spot something of interest that gets us excited. So be punchy, ambitious and bold! Please do highlight why your business is special, the market size and opportunity and any traction or progress achieved. Please submit the business here: https://lnkd.in/d6AK2rjy

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🚀 Big News for UK #Startups: EIS & VCT Extended to 2035! In a huge win for entrepreneurs and investors, the UK government has extended the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trust (VCT) scheme until April 2035! These tax-relief schemes have fueled £41 billion in investment over the last 30 years and are now set to provide another decade of support for early-stage businesses. 🙌 With 30% upfront income tax relief and capital gains exemptions, these schemes encourage investment in high-risk, high-reward #startups, driving #innovation, job creation, and economic growth across the UK. #Startups and investors alike now have long-term stability to continue scaling new ventures. 📈✨ Industry leaders are applauding this move. Michael Moore from the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) called it "a vital step" to maintaining the UK’s competitive edge as the third largest #venturecapital market in the world. Extending these schemes ensures that more capital flows into the UK’s most exciting early-stage companies. This is a major boost for the UK’s startup ecosystem and a clear signal that the government is backing #innovation and #entrepreneurship for the long haul. 🌍💡 ETA Technologies is celebrating the good news and is dedicated to leveraging our cutting-edge technology to assist investors in identifying the most promising founding teams for investment. In the early stages, it is truer than ever: investors invest in people... What impact do you think this will have on the UK’s startup landscape? Source: https://lnkd.in/dUaFND_p

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Is the UK Government Setting Entrepreneurs Up to Fail? 🚫 With the new UK Budget just around the corner, a question haunts the entrepreneurial community: Is Britain really serious about fostering a startup ecosystem that can compete globally? The planned abolishment of Business Asset Disposal Relief—along with a proposed hike in Capital Gains Tax—feels less like "encouragement" and more like a slap in the face to anyone with an entrepreneurial dream. Entrepreneurs fuel economic growth. They are job creators, problem solvers, and innovators. Yet, with policies like this, we're signalling that risk-takers might not belong in the UK. Cutting tax incentives designed to reward high-risk ventures in favour of short-term gains sounds like a one-way ticket to mediocrity. If this isn’t anti-entrepreneurial policy, I don’t know what is. And let’s not forget: while policymakers talk about making the UK the next “Silicon Valley,” we’re still dealing with outdated infrastructure, huge disparities in opportunity, and barriers that stifle innovation across the country. Outside of London, many regions are barely keeping up, yet they’re expected to compete on the global stage.

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🗞️ I caught up with Hayden Evans recently at Beam it Recruitment to talk about: ▶ how I started with programming and my career so far ▶ the current landscape of Elixir learning materials ▶ the pros and cons of a language like Elixir ▶ why I started PureType and how it fits into a new world of software development 🔗 Link to the article is in the post below

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With some time on our hands, we’ve launched a little project tooearly with a single and quite simple idea in-mind: personalised help for promising first-time founders. There is an abundance of resources online, but not enough 1:1 feedback, materials revision, as well as hands-on and community support. After working as a first-ticket/pre-seed investor, I’ve noticed how many stellar individuals out there are a little unsure when it comes to navigating the founding and fundraising journey (from ideation, to validating the hypotheses, speaking to the right customers, building your fundraising OS and raising VC funding), especially as first-time founders. If you’re looking to build something game-changing, let’s speak. Besides support, we will invite VCs to Investment Committees whenever we see actual winners inside the community to give them a kick-start on their raising journey. !!P.S. We have a 30% discount for the first 20 people who join. OMG!! Little disclaimer: This platform by no means suggest that everyone should raise from VCs or glorifies it (as it’s a tough journey), but this should help you figure out the best trajectory for your idea, and if the VC trajectory is indeed the right one for you, after some months, you should be ready to go out there and start speaking to investors (not stay with us forever, only if you wish to 😉 ). Martynas Cepas - a partner in crime 🙌

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Join me and hundreds of other investors at Focal's S24 demo day this coming Thursday 16th May - link for tickets in the comments. We've filtered thousands of applicants down to the final twenty-five who will be pitching from 2pm-5pm BST. At previous demo days you've had the chance to invest alongside incredible VCs like Lightspeed, GV (Google Ventures) and even me at unbundled vc. I will also be hosting a Q&A session with one of the finalists. #founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic More at unbundled dot vc.

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I'm not going to sugarcoat it 💥 ESG (or Environmental, Social and Governance) has got to be one of the hottest buzzwords for a marketer in the #Financial space at the moment... And with more regulation coming in 2025, it's no surprise that many #CFOs are looking for new technological solutions to help meet these new legal requirements ⚙️ But I'm going to be honest: #Impero is not a magical solution that is going to solve your #ESG data problems for you — and there is already a wealth of tech solutions out there promising to do that 📊 However, what we can help with are the #InternalControls that you need to do to maintain #ESGCompliance in the long-run. Because ESG is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise. You need recurring accountability within your organization. And the best way to achieve that is through a structured framework for #RiskManagement and #InternalControls ✅ Curious to learn more? Join our upcoming webinar alongside #KPMG to learn more about how to strengthen your ESG journey with internal controls: ⏰ Date & Time: 9 a.m. CET on Thursday, December 5 🎤 Speakers: Morten Schleicher Christensen, Head of Solutions at Impero - Compliance. Simplified. Henrik Jürgensen, Partner, ESG Advisory Services at KPMG Denmark I'll drop a link in the comments below 🔗 #Compliance #ComplianceSimplified #Webinar

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Here is a snapshot of the top European funding rounds and exits in September 👀 347 funding rounds were completed in September €4.2bn was invested into European Startups 53 exits occurred, 49 undisclosed, 4 were valued at €3.3bn The UK raised €1.1bn across 68 deals More fundraising data on the last update from Isomer Capital on EUVC Insights! 🔽 https://lnkd.in/dTys96rP #venturecapital #startupfunding #Europe

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Very much looking forward to joining the discussion and sharing the importance of embedded finance within our products. Embedded finance has the potential to revolutionise customer experience across a number of verticals, offering unparalleled convenience to keep up with evolving consumer expectations. #FTTEmFin #FintechTalents #embeddedfinance

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I was just talking to a founder about the Stella Service business model that Jordy Leiser had built--where you test the customer service experience at a brand and then charge them in various ways for the results, either showing them how to improve or licensing them a seal of approval. The founder hadn't heard of that model and wondered in what other areas it could apply--and it got me thinking about a repository of models and business structures. Has anything like this been built? Pay to get unbiased recs--a la Angie's list. Good for X, Y, and Z markets. Pros, cons. A plugin that pops up information about each site as you visit it, a la Honey, SiteAdvisor (Chris Dixon's old startup before Hunch). It would be great for founders stuck on something to be able to say I've got X, Y, and Z information flowing from here to there, and it has this criteria, or these types of community members, this kind of power dynamic, etc... What models work for this? Otherwise, you wind up with "Uber for neurosurgeons" without realizing that "Uber for" only works with relatively commoditized services.

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Lorenzo Franzi and the Italian Founders Fund. Congratulations! <3 This week, Lorenzo and his team launched the Italian Founders Fund. They brought together over 100 founders and entrepreneurs, pooling €50M to support the next generation. It’s a big deal for Italian entrepreneurship. He has watched the Italian market with Global Founders Capital for three years. He has seen tremendous progress, met many talented people, and met ambitious new founders. Now, they're building the next wave of tech companies and putting Italy on the venture capital map. The pay-it-forward model—where experienced founders help the new generation—has worked in many places. Lorenzo and his team are making it happen in Italy with the Italian Founders Fund. They’re looking to work with angels and local investors. They're also excited about the growing interest from international investors. Their goal? Support Italian founders abroad and welcome foreign ventures to Italy. #ItalianFoundersFund #VC #Tech #Entrepreneurship #Italy #Innovation

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