Keshvi Radia

🚨 Zoe Chambers pivoted from law to venture capital, landing investor roles at Octopus Ventures and then Frontline Ventures. She talks to Sam Shead for VC Wednesdays, a weekly series featuring a Q&A interview with a venture capitalist. 🖊️ What made you pivot from law to VC and how easy was the transition? I did really enjoy being a lawyer, far more in the later stages when it was more strategic and commercial versus the repetitive tasks in my early career (which are now being automated by startups!), but I got to a point where I needed to decide if I wanted to do this forever or try something new. I loved learning new things and working with management teams – venture seemed like a great way of being able to do both. I started as an associate at Octopus and they taught me the ropes, allowing me to ask all the stupid questions and learn about venture investing, which made the transition as easy as possible. 🖊️ What do you like most about being a VC? Is there anything you dislike? I love meeting the brightest, most dynamic, inspirational founders whose energy and passion for solving the hardest problems are truly infectious. I hate how much I have to say "no". It’s a daily feature of being an investor and, as someone who genuinely wants people to succeed at their endeavours, I find this incredibly tough. 🖊️ What’s the main challenge that VCs face today? Understanding how to exit businesses. We need liquidity for our investors and it cannot just be a waiting game. Being able to influence and drive this is really important for managers, particularly those that are fundraising with paper returns only. 🖊️ How many hours would you say you work a week and how do you switch off? It’s a lifestyle! I’d say I’m often thinking about work, but I love it, so I've no complaints. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to connect the dots more than anything else. Getting into the outdoors with my phone on flight mode is my switch off. ⁠🖊️ What sort of businesses are you keeping an eye out for at the moment? Ones where they are accessing data which simply hasn’t been accessed before. Without data you can’t have a model, you can’t run an algorithm, and you don’t have any insights; so industries or sectors that have been overlooked and can't yet be fixed by AI. Think female health, parts of the supply chain, waste industries, and energy management. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn

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Thank you Funds Europe for including my voice in the new UK Budget coverage. VC industry was expecting the tax on carried interest - private equity managers’ share of profits on successful deals - to increase. However many of my fellow Venture Capitalists raised a concern about removing the right incentives for taking risks. These incentives are even more important for the founders creating strategic technology assets in the UK than for their investors. "Carried interest rewards fund managers who take long-term risks, which frees the capital needed to support early-stage innovation, particularly in R&D-intensive fields like quantum computing and AI. These sectors require sustained, high-stakes investment, where tremendous strategic asset value can be created, but the journey involves a great deal of risk-taking and patience." Thank you to everyone who led a dialog on this topic in the past few months and made sure that incentives are largely not removed for the founders and capital to stay in the UK. OpenOcean, British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), Michael Moore, Daniel Harrington

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Despite England’s loss at the Euro 2024 last night in Berlin, the UK has retained its crown for venture capital investment! 🇬🇧👑 Data from Dealroom, a global provider of data and intelligence on start-ups and tech ecosystems, revealed that UK start-ups and scale-ups raised £7.4bn during the first six months of the year. That’s a 16% increase from the same period last year, accounting for nearly one-third of all venture capital funding in Europe! Some standout funding rounds include: • Wayve, the autonomous vehicles technology firm, raised £861m in May. • Credit technology company Abound secured £400m. • Highview Power, focused on long-duration energy storage, raised £300m. • Online bank Monzo gathered £150m. • Electric vehicle charging group Char.gy raised £100m. The second half of the year looks promising with Index Ventures announcing it has raised $2.3bn in two new funds to invest in start-ups, with a significant portion expected to be deployed in the UK. Tech companies specialising in energy attracted the lion’s share of funding, with £4.3bn across Europe, followed by generative AI companies, which attracted £2bn. Having been deeply involved in the UK tech sector, I’ve witnessed the resilience and innovation driving these impressive numbers. The UK continues to be a powerhouse for tech innovation and investment, and it’s exciting to see the impact these investments will have on the future of technology and sustainability. What are your thoughts on the future of UK tech investments?

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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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"Funding Collapse sends investment in start-ups to six year low" The Times today covering the shocking stats that VenturePath uncovered, with our partner Beauhurst. Great quotes from supporters Michael Moore CEO, BVCA and Julian David CEO, techUK. * UK VC funding at Series A is -44% from last year, and worsening * Q3 24 is down a staggering 57% from Q2, itself down from Q1 * 9 in 10 seed funded startups cannot access Series A VC funding, the next 'rung on the funding ladder' * Just 32 future scaleup companies across the whole of the UK were able to access their first VC funding round in Q3...a 6 year low * Half a billion less capital is going in to UK scaleups at Series A, than just 2 years ago! As the UK scaleup funding gap widens, we are losing ground against other countries, at both startup stage (a position the UK worked hard to achieve, since 2011), and for scaleup support. OECD data: 13th in the world for scaleup support, and that's before Series A funding access dried up. I get that its confusing. Another report (BBB, Nations & Regions) released this week spoke of positive trends in private investment, stating "The data for Q2 2024 shows that investment value has continued to grow". Great, I love to see optimistic data. But under analysis that bundles venture with private equity (later stage), where a few megadeals skew the numbers. Otherwise the exact opposite is true. Our independent research here, for the UK ScaleUp Investment Mission, is laser beam focussed on Series A. The funding round where companies move from the c.1m startups launched each year, through the 2,179 that access seed funding, into the rarefied category of being recognised as future scaleups, attracting Series A funding (£2-10m). The UK venture landscape is currently funding just 248 pa of these companies, and declining. We've been sharing this urgent call for support with the new Government since the day after the election. I've personally met with several Ministers, and spoke to all the relevant Government departments. I will shamelessly repeat loudly what is at stake. UK scaleup funding at Series A has nearly halved in a year, and continues to decline steeply, more than halving in the last quarter. VenturePath developed The UK ScaleUp Investment Mission to convene the scaleup support ecosystem and £7bn of funders to help address this problem, to improve nationwide access to VC investment, and create more venture-backed successes. We have clear support, clear recommendations to reverse this decline in UK scaleup investment, and have made a clear ask of Government for participation in this, to ensure immediate action is taken to create the conditions for success for UK scaleups, ensuring the focus on growth isn't undermined by lack of capital, or equitable access to it. Government decision makers, we'd love your interest, to progress to action. HM Treasury: Rt Hon Rachel Reeves Spencer Livermore James Murray & CC Poppy Gustafsson (welcome to the debate).

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We've raised $1.3B Balderton Capital in new funds across early and growth to continue supporting UK & European technology founders. This is the 8th(!) fundraise I've been part of and have shared some thoughts on why venture matters, how fundraising in Europe has changed and how we differentiate ourselves through conviction here: https://lnkd.in/e2XRcagq

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A few reflections on last week's Budget, from me, and a bunch of our fabulous FieldHouse Associates' clients. https://lnkd.in/exrefrpt #tech #innovation #investment #venturecapital #startups #scaleups #regulation #government #PR #publicaffairs #consultancy

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📣 We’ve got a big ESG_VC event planned for Tuesday next week – featuring the latest updates to our measurement framework, news of our 2025 benchmarking with the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), and an introduction to our new platform partners… 📣 On the afternoon of Tuesday 26 November, we’ll be gathering 200+ VCs for the latest update on the ESG_VC Measurement Framework – from what it covers to how it informs industry-leading research, and how you can now work with our accredited data collection partners. This will be our first event delivered in partnership with our cohort of platform partners: Apiday, Novata, and PortF. I’m excited to share with our members how these partners can support a big step up in your ESG initiatives. Join us for a jam-packed event that will feature: 🟢 An update from Suzi Gillespie of the BVCA on how you can take part in our 2025 research – we analysed ESG performance in c.600 VC-backed companies in 2024 and we’re looking to deliver an even more ambitious piece of research next year… 🟢 Insights from Emily Havers of Fidelity International Strategic Ventures on the updates that have been made to the framework and what it means for our members, their portfolio companies, and the broader ecosystem. 🟢 Perspectives from Emily Matthews of Oxford Science Enterprises and Nina Foote of Volution on how the ESG_VC Measurement Framework has supported their work on ESG. 🟢 Presentations from our platform partners: Edouard Audi of Apiday, Conor O'Laoire’Laoire of Novata, and Alex Lu of PortF. It’s going to be a good one so do register. Link to sign up in the comments! #ESG_VC #sustainability #venturecapital

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Nice overview of how we're using data to inform how we invest in early-stage founders. We'll be announcing more this summer but we're seeing some really interesting early data. https://lnkd.in/exU_Juf5

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Weird read and a bad take overall. The UK isn’t in the same league as the US economically or as a financial market. Get over it. “I find it hard to believe that the UK would not be better off were DeepMind still an independent company.” 🙄 The false hindsight with which some Brits view DeepMind is just bizarre. UK and European VCs wouldn’t/couldn’t fund it. Hell, most hadn’t heard of it when it was acquired (I was at a dinner with about half a dozen European VCs the night the acquisition was announced and none knew the company). Google buying DeepMind was one of the best things that happened to the UK’s AI ecosystem, and one of the best possible outcomes that DeepMind could have hoped for. Who in Europe would’ve injected the countless billions into it that Google has? Nobody. https://lnkd.in/e7z73S-B #vc #venturecapital #startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #tech #technology #innovation #deeptech #ai #artificialintelligence #deepmind #google #money #business

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Founders/Investors raising or investing...READ THIS We have raised £400k under the UK Government's SEIS/EIS Scheme, through SeedLegals Of that £400k, £250k was under SEIS and £150k was under EIS. So what does this mean? Well, the £250k we raised under SEIS, qualifies for Tax Relief/Rebate to the individual investor of 50% and 0% Capital Gains Tax. So, that means that £125k will be either offset or claimed back, courtesy of the government. A typical ticket of £25k, suddenly turns into £12,500 of actual investment, but still £25k in terms of your equity/shareholding....BLOODY GOOD RIGHT! Then we have the £150k under EIS. Same as the SEIS, you get 0% Capital Gains Tax and 30% Tax Relief/Rebate. So from the £150k under EIS, £45k is Offset or claimed back courtesy of the government. So of the £400k we raised, £170k will be claimed back, into the investors pockets! Now as we move into our Seed Raise, of £2million, we are still raising under the EIS Scheme, which means £600k will be rebated back by the government. So if someone put the full £2million in, they could claim back £600k, meaning their cash outlay is £1.4million, but they actual shareholding and equaity is at £2million. This Scheme is an incredible incentive for investors and a great way for founders to raise investment and fund their businesses. I hope this helps and I hope people take advantage of this scheme. #seis #eis #investment #Founder #fund #raise

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Very proud to see the WVC:E dream team - Anisah Osman Britton MBE & Rachel Drapper - alongside long time friend and rockstar Ekaterina Gianelli on stage at TechBBQ discussing "Fixing the Talent Exodus in VC". Key Takeaways: 💰Impact of Consolidation on Culture and Talent: The ongoing consolidation in the VC industry is reshaping company culture, affecting morale, and influencing talent. 🚀Emerging Managers Aren’t Diversifying VC: Despite the rise of emerging managers, the industry remains largely homogenous, with many new managers still coming from the same traditional, non-diverse backgrounds. ⚠️Perceptions of Diversity as High Risk: Many in the VC industry continue to view diverse hires, investments, and business models as "high risk," "too time-consuming," or "too costly," perpetuating a cycle of exclusion. 🚼 Parental Leave Inequality: Inequities in parental leave policies are disproportionately affecting women in venture, creating additional barriers to progression. But there are funds, investors, LPs and organisations (like us!) that are trying to change this!

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Recent M&A market performance is showing significant signs of recovery from the lows of H2 2023, with the growth in PE and PE-backed deals leading the charge.

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One of the worst things about VC is having to pass on amazing startups because they don't quite fit our thesis at 7percent Ventures. It's always a great when we get to shout out people building such transformative technologies - even when we've not invested. Thanks Kai Nicol-Schwarz for collating this list of startups in the #Cambridge ecosystem. My picks: Prospectral, Signapse, Tenyks. Who else should be on the list?

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Delighted to share news that Bizumi has just received SEIS Advance Assurance! This is great news for private investors looking to offset the inherent risks when investing in startup companies in search of great returns. In summary, the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) provides: Income tax relief of up to 50%: A £100,000 investment could provide a £50,000 saving on that year’s income tax bill.  Up to 50% capital gains reinvestment relief: You could reduce the CGT on gains made elsewhere by up to 50%.  Loss relief: If things don’t go to plan, you can choose to offset any loss, less the income tax relief received, against your income tax bill.  Now don't get me wrong, I have every confidence that Bizumi is a fantastic opportunity, but de-risking your investment through SEIS is a no-brainer! Get in touch to explore how we can become successful together.

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Great to our research featuring so prominently in the Financial Times! https://lnkd.in/eTsH6_Nu Link to the full underlying report in the comments

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There has to be a fair and transparent process to any change to taxes and a coherent plan for the future. Unfreezing fuel duty would raise £3bn to absolutely dwarf these taxes on ambition and value creation. And benefit the environment.

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Key insights and trends shaping US & UK venture deals

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I couldn't help noticing that the debate about UK Capital Gains Tax has been based around first time founders (who don't care about tax) and investors (who may or may not care about tax). Missing from the debate are serial founders. It's a significant blind spot because they are a very important part of creating a self-sustaining (tech) startup culture. It seems that in the general imagination, startup life is like this: 1. Have a great idea 2. Work hard at it 3. Make millions 4. Retire and get a yacht Reality is a lot more messy and convoluted than that. I'd bet that the vast majority of founders don't follow this path. So I hope that the narrative gets wiser to the nuances of the startup sector; I'd love to see the UK building a more self-sustaining tech startup sector. Post here: https://lnkd.in/euKNpjAw

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