Steve Black

Big News: Minut x Google Nest Integration is now Live! 🚀 Minut works hard on sustainability. We spend a lot of effort on making sure our supply-chain is short and that our products are eco-friendly. Even more importantly, we're also helping Airbnb hosts run their rentals more sustainably! This latest collaboration between Minut and Google Nest is a game-changer in that regard. With this new release hosts around the world can: 💡 Cut energy costs: Automate heating and cooling to keep energy usage low when guests are away. 🛏️ Enhance guest experience: Ensure every guest arrives to a perfectly comfortable space with pre-set temperatures. 🌱 Reduce carbon footprint: Gain control over your heating, reduce energy consumption, and make your property more eco-friendly. Start saving energy and lowering your environmental impact today: https://lnkd.in/eY58wkxV We're particularly proud of this release, so please let us know what you think! 🙏🏻

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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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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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Striking: Zenobē, a UK climate tech startup, raised £600m from KKR and £270m from Infracapital, bypassing VC entirely. Zenobe captures excess energy from wind farms to stabilize the grid and reduce gas power reliance. This means: Zenobe secured one of 2023's biggest startup fundraises — without any venture capital. #battery #fundraising #venturecapital #energystorage #infrastructure #growthinflection Sifted: https://lnkd.in/g8wF-xA5

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This month marks my 10 year anniversary in Venture, and what a ten years it has been 🎉 🤩 First stop: JamJar Investments Rewind 10 years and you’ll find me sitting at my desk at JamJar, operating under the alias of “Bread”, working my way through an inbox full of 1000 cold inbound pitch decks, reviewing and replying to every single one. Highlights included a hand drawn picture of a new ketchup sachet design with “target market: Nandos” written below it, and a concept for a drink that tasted like the leftover milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl. But there were also some diamonds in the rough, and it was here that I got my first experience of that lightbulb moment when you meet an exceptional founder that you want to back, making my first investment a few months in. JamJar was the best training ground I could have hoped for, and I'm so grateful to Katie Marrache and Adam Balon, Richard Reed & Jonathan Wright for welcoming me into the team. Second stop: Venrex In 2015, I joined Mark & Tom at Venrex alongside Pooja Patel. We clicked as a team immediately, and over the ensuing years launched 7 new funds, grew the portfolio to 180+ companies, built a brilliant team, moved from a small attic in West London to panoramic views in Fitzrovia, and had a lot of fun along the way. As well as the buzz of discovering new founders to back, I also discovered my love for supporting founders post-investment. With 11 board roles and a further 16 portfolio companies to support, the ex-strategy consultant in me had just enough to get my teeth into. Venrex’s people-centric and pragmatic approach to investing chimed with my own instincts about the type of investor I wanted to be. They gave me the most incredible platform to grow as an investor and roll up my sleeves with all of the operational sides of running a venture fund. To the entire Venrex team, new and old, thank you for an amazing chapter. Third stop: Circle & Co In June, I left Venrex to launch my own Venture fund, Circle & Co, which is on track for its first close next month. It's by total chance that this milestone falls on my 10th anniversary in venture, but what an incredible way to kick off the next decade. More details on the fund to follow, but for the moment I want to thank the amazing network of friends, fellow VCs, founders, LPs and family who have got me this far. You are the original Circle, and have been the inspiration & driving force behind this next step. Let's make it a good one.

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Cambridge Future Tech builds DeepTech ventures and last week we hit another milestone; we're co-founding our 15th venture 🤘 It's awesome building new ventures from the ground up. It's why we started CFT in the first place. It always feels great to be at the start of the build phase, helping founders articulate a new venture’s tech and potential, building a strong narrative. We’re collaborating closely with founders to transform groundbreaking ideas into companies. 🚀🚀🚀 More to come on this. I'm hyped to share what we're building 🤘 #venturebuilder #deeptech #startups #cambridge

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It was a pleasure to be on Rupert McSheehy's podcast Fireside with Founders and Leaders. Thanks again for having me! We talked about 📈 key metrics for Series A, 🌍 how to expand internationally and 🚀 the benefits of an evergreen fund structure. More here 👉 https://lnkd.in/e_aeQp7K #VentureCapital #Startups #Scaleups #GrowthJourney #Podcast

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Survival of the Fittest in a Shifting Funding Landscape Founders are adopting a low-key approach, focusing their energy on internal growth. Armed with capital secured in 2021, many are strategically revitalising their businesses. But the big question remains: What will the dealmaking landscape look like in 2024? "Overall, capital infusion will be concentrated on a narrower spectrum of companies than in all. The private capital raising landscape is anticipated to be robust, showcasing significant improvement from 2022. However, the capital infusion will be concentrated on a narrower spectrum of companies compared to the prolific scene of 2021." Read More: https://lnkd.in/d3536qvA In the meantime, share your thoughts! Are you a founder facing a funding crunch? How are you adapting your strategy? #StartupFunding #Founders #Growth #DealMaking #SibaPanda

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TLDR: EIS should be scrapped as a fund structure but retained for Angel investments by individuals. Alex Chalmers has done all the work which in 10 years I've never got around to doing: why 95% of EIS/VCT funds are bad for our tech ecosystem, rip #startups off, and why as a Founder you should push back against their stupid fees or not take their money. https://lnkd.in/dnq9ZScS

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Thrilled to back Eshita Kabra and By Rotation Team with Sie Ventures & our investor network. Since I met Eshita last year I've been super impressed by her dedication to circular economy and her hyper focus on customer love. She lives and breathes the By Rotation mission and her commitment to changing consumer behaviour for the better is contagious! A few reasons why we backed By Rotation:  💡By Rotation are making sustainable fashion more accessible and prolonging the life-cycle of high quality items already in circulation. 💡 User experience (gamification and personalisation) and social network aspect is driving By Rotation’s competitive edge. 💡 High customer loyalty and vast organic growth. 💡 The product successfully fosters community. 💡 The team has a deep understanding of their customers and they are quick to respond to consumer behaviour. 💡 Whilst By Rotation have proven their peer-to-peer approach reduces waste and increases an item’s lifespan, it is their light operational structure — which further strengthens their sustainability claims. Excited to continue supporting you on your mission to challenge and transform overconsumption habits ♻

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“The pipeline of female founders in fintech is overflowing with talent and innovation across the globe. It is crucial to discard the myth of the ‘pipeline problem’ and start calling it what it is: a funding gap problem.” See our research below with a useful Airtable list of all female-founded and co-founded fintech companies over the last couple quarters.

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Does anyone know an 'impact investor', 'seed capital' or 'accelorator' that ACTUALLY does real, seed capital for start ups? We've raised 600K+ Euros for InsectBiotech Group but cannot find a single one of these outfits that actually does seed capital. Our start up cash is from founders, individuals and friends. Many outfits say they do this, but don't actually seem to. Now it might be that our plans suck, but we know they don't. So what am I missing? How does one find climate/agri/start up investor groups that actually do seed capital, rather than coming in later for Series A etc? Love to hear your thoughts. (staggeringly, every single UK investor outfit will only look at things under EIS/SEIS no matter what the opportunity. So much for innovation!)

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Investors often get asked what we’re currently looking for as we evaluate early stage companies - how do we build conviction that a company can succeed? This is how I think about it ⤵ There are lots of different aspects that can and should be underwritten when evaluating an early stage company. These aspects range from team > traction > TAM > product > incumbent dynamics > product > competitive landscape > cap table > valuation and the list goes on. My current framework is to spend most of my time on one of two things: > Previous experience > Current traction When I think about previous experience, I’m particularly interested in how the founder handled challenges while building a previous business. I had a conversation recently with another founder-slash-investor, and we talked a lot about how being a successful founder is all about pain tolerance. Like how many proverbial punches in the mouth are you able to take before you give up, surrender, wave the white flag and move on? This founder-investor told me he will really only work with founders who have already gotten beat up. The founders who are battle-tested. This is important for a couple of key reasons. > First, it’s easier to believe battle-tested founders have the pain and stress tolerance required to be able to build a big business and endure all of the highs and the lows and the ups and downs that come with it. > Second, I'm very interested in working with second- and third- and fourth-time founders because they know where the landmines are. The good ones have made the mistakes, and they've learned lessons from them that make them even better the next time around. Now let’s look at traction: If you’re a first-time founder, the traction bar for me is considerably higher. If I can’t check the battle-tested box, then I am looking for a lot more traction than I might from a repeat founder in the early stages of building. Unpacking this a little further, these two buckets are my answer to the “what are you looking for” question above: > Battle-tested, repeat founders who have a big disruptive vision in a market that has dynamics that allow you to build a moat. Earlier on in their journey is fine in this scenario. > Founders who have positive unit economics and meaningful traction with a product, service or good in the market, ideally growing their number one KPI by 20% MoM. If you’re a founder building in the Built World and fit one of those buckets, let’s connect. For investors, I’m interested in how you think about this framework and what you spend the most time on during your diligence process. #builtworld #venturecapital #startupfounder

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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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Taking Windward public in London was a significant milestone, but the landscape has shifted dramatically. The startup and VC world is facing a silent recession as severe as 2008, yet it’s flying under the radar. Funding is scarce, and many promising companies are quietly closing their doors. But this isn't just about survival—it's about adapting and thriving. In tough times, resilience is key. The startups that emerge from this storm will be the next Airbnb, Uber, or Microsoft. How are we positioning ourselves to not just survive but lead in this new era? For us - it’s very clear. Leveraging our blue chip customer base, proprietary data and mature tech platform to build #generetiveai first products (stay tuned!) Don’t take anything as trivial . Success requires a combination of so many factors. Every day is day 1! Link to the full piece on Forbes : https://lnkd.in/e-5kENaT #wnwd

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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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Congratulations 🙌 Annalee Bloomfield, Mike Hanrahan and the entire Sustain.Life (now part of Workiva) team for an impressive acquisition by Workiva after only three years in. It has been a true pleasure to work with you and witness your meteoric, triple-digit growth over the past quarters. You should be extremely proud of your achievements. This also marks the first acquisition of a KOMPAS VC portfolio company since our launch at year-end 2021 🌎. Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK) is a leading cloud platform for assured, integrated reporting to meet stakeholder demands for action, transparency, and disclosure of financial and non-financial data. This acquisition marks the launch of Workiva Carbon, which will simplify the management of net zero targets that thousands of organizations have established voluntarily to meet international guidelines, respond to stakeholder demands for transparency, and better compete in the global economy. Onwards and upwards! Sebastian Peck Andreas Winter-Extra Summit Rosenberg https://lnkd.in/dm3T9Nni

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Developing an investment framework was one of the first things we did when starting Silence. Nothing is set in stone, but having this set of principles has proven to be really valuable throughout all the changes in VC markets over the last years.

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