Seed Stage VCs in London

One complaint I hear from startup founders raising seed rounds is that it's often hard to know which VCs are open to doing early stage seed round investments and what size of investments they make.

Hence I've been doing some research and the following is a list of all significant VC funds who've made angel investments in London over the last year and a list of the companies they've invested in - in many cases the VCs in question have done a mix of seed and later rounds; the companies I've listed are specifically ones they've invested in at a seed level.

Where a fund has explicity stated the size of investments they make I've used those numbers, in other cases the numbers are estimates based upon the reported size of investments they've made in their previous portfolio companies.

Two VC funds in particular stand-out from the crowd in terms of the number and nature of the investments made: Passion Capital (who primarily focus on early stage investment) and Index - both of whom are definitely worth considering for any startups seeking to raise significant seed rounds.

The List

Passion Capital (typical seed investment size: £300k-£500k)

2011 Investments: Luluvise (female social network), WireWAX (video tagging), EyeEm (photo sharing), Adzuna (classified ad aggregator), Pusher (realtime web infrastructure), GoCardless (payment system)

Other notable investments: Mendeley (academic social network), smarkets (gambling), flattr (micropayments)

Accel (typical seed investment size $500k+)

2011 Investments: FantasyShopper (social shopping game), QRiously (real time sentiment analysis)

Amadeus (typical seed investment size: ~1m)

2011 Investments: TrialReach (clinical trial recruitment), oneDrum (Document collaboration)

Atomico (typical seed investment size: £300k-£550k)

2011 Investments: Ge.tt (file sharing), Silk (structured content), Siine (virtual keyboard), Fashiolista (fashion discovery), Hailo (taxi app)

Index (typical seed investment size: $300k-$2m)

2011 Investments: Reality Jockey (augmented music), EDITD (fashion trend analytics), Lightbox (photo app), Geckoboard (information dashboard), Lanyrd (conference discovery)

Other notable investments: SnapTalent (job ad network), netvibes (social media dashboard)

Octopus Ventures (typical seed investment size: £250k-£800k)

2011 Investments: CertiVox (secure content control)

Previous investments: TouchType (virtual keyboard), Secret Escapes (luxury travel), True Knowledge (natural language expert system) and Graze (postal snacks) (I've been told the last two were later than seed stage)

Profounders Capital (typical seed investment size: £500k+)

2011 Investments: Luluvise (female social network), Applifier (ad network), Lanyrd (conference discovery)

Wellington Partners

2011 Investments: EyeEm (photo sharing), Hailo (taxi app)

I've not included the following VC funds because I've been unable to identify any seed round investments they've made since the start of 2011: Balderton Capital, Dawn Capital and Eden Ventures, The Accelerator Group.

Apologies to anyone I've missed out or any mistakes in the above; feel free to contact me with corrections/additions at imranghory@gmail.com or @imranghory on twitter.

11 responses

From what I know, Balderton makes on avg. 1 Seed stage investment a year of ~£100k

Accel would say they do Seed also but likely in the ~1m range

— Avi Patchava

Hi Imran,

I think you missed a few funds. A very good example that comes to mind is Eden Ventures (they invest heavily in the £500k range, they did in multiple companies). Another possible one is Dawn Capital, which say (on their website) they invest starting at £100k, but I not sure how many early stage they investments they did. Kima Ventures is another one, although it's not based in London, it certainly invests in London.

Also, I think that funds like Wellington and Octopus Ventures focus mainly on later rounds. They might have exceptions, but I wouldn't put them in the same bucket as Passion Capital or PROFounders. I think it's a long shot for a seed startup to get investment from Weliington, or the likes.

— horatiumocian

Also, the link for Wellington is not correct. The right one is: http://www.wellington-partners.com/wp/index.html

Great list - thank you for compiling.

I hear that DFJ Esprit also invest seed stage. Unfortunately I can not provide any details but @Oli_Ashness might be able to as he works there.

http://foundum.com/o/dfj-esprit

— Matthew Slight

Very useful, Imran. Do we have a sense of their product cycle and revenue generation at the time of investment?

Thanks!

— Brynne Herbert

Thanks for this information. I've added it to my list of UK entrepreneur resources here: http://www.lion.co.uk/community/4f1f2f40cc20d505cf000002

Hope you don't mind and it would be great if people could add to it.

— Alexander MacGregor

Accel, typically $500K+

Eg FantasyShopper and Qriously

Disclaimer: my employer

— Max Niederhofer

Max: Weren't those Series A rather than seed investments (I appreciate definitions can vary though!) ?

— Imran Ghory

#1seed provides seed stage funding for those raising betweek 50-300k, not a fund two investors Raj Ramanandi and Lee Pickrell investing their own money in early stage companies. You can check out our investment criteria and apply online here http://www.1seed.co.uk/submit.php - hope this helps!!

— number1seed

Imran -

You don't mention Ariadne Capital on this list, which I'm fairly certain does angel and seed investing. Their tagline is "entrepreneurs funding entrepreneurs", so I'd be surprised if not.

Deborah

— Deborah Huisken

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