Jon Coker

Taavet Hinrikus and I made the Financial Times Due Diligence email. https://lnkd.in/ez2AuGQx One 'unintended consequence' is that if there is a 45% tax on carry and CGT (raising £40m per year, remember) it for all intents and purposes closes the door on new VCs in the UK. Especially started by teams from non-traditional backgrounds. To meet the GP commit, you need to be already part of the 'wealthy' as you cannot rely on the value you create - nearly half of it will disappear - to fund it. We have both had extremely successful startups which are few and far between. The smaller number of new VCs will therefore more likely increasingly be for people who have inherited the capital or can draw it from their already rich family. Probably not want they have in mind with this policy.

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🚨 🚘 An exciting day here at 8090 Industries as we ‘roll out’ our latest investment in ENSO - 2023 Earthshot Prize Finalist, to revolutionize a stagnant industry undergoing the largest shift since its inception, with no solution in place, an aging workforce, lacking ingenuity and a business model out of touch with the dynamic needs of its customers - TIRES. World, meet Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, the industrialist pioneering a new dawn for the tire industry. But first, a quick history lesson: __________________________ In 1898, Franklin "Frank" Seiberling, jobless, with a wife and three children, borrowed $3,500 for a down payment from his brother-in-law, to purchase an old strawboard factory in Ohio, to open a rubber company. A science and history nut, he named it after Charles Goodyear, the pioneer of vulcanization, the main method of how rubber was produced. Over the next decade, they brought mechanization and technology to the cumbersome and time-consuming process of hand building tires — enabling one man to produce 60 tires in ten hours as opposed to five tires built by hand in a day. His Seiberling State machine revolutionized tire building and led to an explosion in tire production output. By 1907 - it caught the attention of Henry Ford who purchased 1,200 sets of tires for the Model T. And as they say, the rest is history. By 1913 - Over half the tires made in the U.S. were manufactured on Seiberling’s machines. By 1916 - The The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company became the largest tire producer in the world. _____________________ Today much has changed. @Goodyear is no longer the largest tire producer and tire manufacturers no longer own the direct relationship to fleets. That capitalistic, swashbuckling energy and entrepreneurial spirit that built Goodyear and pioneered the tire industry is in short supply, just when it needs it most as a global transition towards EVs compels the greatest growth opportunity for the tire industry in over a century. Led by Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, Enso produces tires perfectly fit for a world increasing run on EVs - that are tailored to endure the heavy weight and torque, last longer, cheaper and increase range by more than 10% today while bringing circularity to the supply chain and data through owning the direct relationship with fleets.  Don’t just take our word for it, some of the largest fleets in the world from Amazon to city cab fleets in Europe are already running on Enso tires and this is just the beginning. 👀 Stay tuned. Much to come! cc Kerem Ozmen Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Garuth A. Andrew Irwin #climatetech #decarbonization

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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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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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NOTWICS would like to alert founders to this lovely message I got from my good mate Tom Britton @ SyndicateRoom This excellent Cambridge based pre-seed and seed stage VC is looking for top founders and hopefully this is the first of many funds ringing the bell saying they are now deploying 💥 - akin to top man Dan Bowyer’s LP post yesterday. The winds of change are coming - funding is coming back From Tom “Hey Chris - We've partnered with Carbon13 to launch their next Climatech SEIS fund. The fund will open to investors on Tuesday and aims to deploy in the current tax year. And on Carbon 13 Carbon13 companies have gone on to raise up-rounds totalling more than £38m. The average age of their cohort participants is 37, a quarter hold PhDs and 63% of their teams are mixed gender”. Their portfolio now has 71 ventures across five key sectors: chemicals and materials, energy, food systems, enabling platforms and the built environment. Founders find out more here and get applying https://lnkd.in/es6EvuN5 Or Direct Message Tom for more Apologies for spelling mistakes - rushing to host a huge defence tech breakfast with FieldHouse Associates and others #startups #scaleups #vc #angel

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We are super excited about our latest investment; one that has had us excited from the first meeting... The First Thirty has participated in a £3.5m Seed round into Cerve. At TFT, we are grounded in data and intelligence being an unlock for systems change in food systems and ultimately in human health. But data in a silo will not be sufficient in changing how ALL stakeholders in the supply chain operate or how end users consume data. The data needs to move, to be exchanged efficiently and to be meaningful in today's context with the opportunity to drive future contexts. We have for a long time been looking for a company building the digital infrastructure that could solve for this data efficiency and transport problem in the food system. While we have met some great companies, there has always been a mismatch on scope, approach, domain knowledge, ambition, vision or impact. Then we met Dan Mazig🎗️. There was a sharpness rare to see and a lazer focus on a problem he understood well. But with that was also a calm thoughtfulness around the opportunity Cerve had in front it. Today Cerve tackles an unstructured data inefficiency problem that is a major contributor to food waste. Tomorrow, a structured data exchange can expose new meaningful data to make food systems more sustainable, efficient, healthy and productive. We knew immediately this was what we were looking for. Dan and commercial leader David Walker were the right team, with the right backgrounds, the right approach in today's supply chain context and with ambitious vision about the potential for transformation. TFT and Cerve share a vision that through their platform technology the supply chain can be more efficient today and decommodified tomorrow. Cerve is a platform that has the potential to reshape our relationships and decision-making processes throughout the food system. We are keen to continue to work with an incredible group of investors from the lead SuperSeed to our fellow participants Zenith Ventures and Ponderosa Ventures. Special thanks to Stephanie Mathern and Eric Walters for playing your parts. Congrats Dan Mazig, David Walker, and the Cerve team! Let's Go! #sustainability #foodsystems #humanhealth https://lnkd.in/e7gmEHpt

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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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Stop this removal-only obsession in the carbon markets. What kind of hare-brained approach is that? We need avoidance even more than we need removals. This article reminds me of the analogy I made a few months ago about a sinking boat. No amount of bailing water with buckets will save you if the hole in the hull is getting bigger. Remember, if deforestation was a country, it would be the world's third largest emitter. And no, you cannot just demand/legislate that poor rural people stop deforesting without providing alternative income. That is why forest carbon exists. It takes some form of totalitarian mindset (and/or total lack of understanding of rural economies)to think one can just ban things they do not like. https://lnkd.in/eCddBRwt

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Glen Mella has been an advocate of RevRoad from the beginning, for which we are grateful! You'll see why. Entrepreneurship runs deep in his veins and he is really good at it! In this episode he gives entrepreneurs tremendous advice about the importance of product market fit and finding the right co-founders. This is an episode you don't want to miss! Happy Holidays! 🎄 🎁 #founder #investor #CRO #tech

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Welcome to the club! At Antler, we are proud to announce that we have just invested over £1m into nine new British tech startups. Our tenth residency in the UK attracted more than 1,100 ambitious founders, with 66 founders taking part. Representing 27 different nationalities, with women comprising 24% of the cohort, it was truly a diverse group of amazing people. Spending 10 weeks with us allowed us to undertake over 200+ hours of due diligence, helping us make high-conviction investment decisions, in which we end up investing in 1% of all applicants. We are delighted to welcome the following eight startups to Antler’s portfolio, and we’re excited to be on this journey with you! ⚙️ AlphaLoops - Automating investment management operations using AI ⚠️ BankBridge - Bridging the due diligence gap between financial institutions 🔎 Capsa AI - AI Operating System For Private Equity 📝 Falco - powered platform that empowers financial firms to identify and translate regulatory changes into actionable insights 🚚 Fleevo - The AI-driven Operating System for Modern Commercial Fleets. Driving Efficiency, Uptime, and Sustainability 🛍️ frnt - Optimising retail operations with digital workers 🎯 Intriq - Transforming businesses with the power of AI through the use of private equity playbook strategies 🦾 RoboMinder - Elevating industrial robot uptime with AI-powered computer vision In addition, Antler has made one seed investment in the first quarter of 2024, into a tech startup that is currently in stealth mode. Check out the press release in the comments section! #VentureCapital #Investments #Founders #TechStartups

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Fresh out of the oven!! Check out this post I have written to find out more about the story and the history behind our new Acurio Ventures name https://lnkd.in/dv3vNdNk

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The secondhand and alternative goods market is growing at a clip. Think Facebook Marketplace and Depop. Shopfront one of Antler's recent investments, is capitalising on this growing market, with a new platform that enables users to do everything from creating listings and selling products across multiple marketplaces in one place. Launching within the APAC region where competition is still limited and green, Shopfront is striking at the right time to succeed. With already 50 users using its MVP and plans to secure 500 sign-ups for its waitlist and roll out its beta platform next month, this business is certainly one to keep an eye on. Read more via Startup Daily👇 https://lnkd.in/gyD5St6e

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I'm speaking at SuperVenture 2024 on the 5th of June in Berlin. The topic of the panel is emerging VC managers: time to shine or out of their depth? Are LPs fleeing to established names and those that cut their teeth during previous cycles? Or is now the time for emerging managers to bring something different to the table? Is volatility leading to true innovation and disruption? We’re on track to see approximately 44% of the total LP capital committed to US VC funds since the start of the year go to just two large established VC platforms, according to PitchBook data. While many established VCs maintain their allure, there is a subset of LPs who are making a deliberate choice to increase their allocations to specialist emerging VC managers - managers who have spun out from established funds and have an attributable track record, founders with deep operational experience turned funders or academics with deep domain expertise. There is non-trivial added complexity when it comes to emerging VC selection – given the large number of funds needed to be screened and the more complicated referencing and DD process. Data highlights how important it is for GPs to identify & back ‘big winners’ early on to drive fund returns. Typically, ~5% of invested capital in a few winners drives most of the return (>50%). The VC model is built around investing in early-stage companies each with the potential to more than return the whole fund. Who has the right to win? Who will the best founders (and LPs) decide to partner with? #SuperVenture #VC SuperReturn

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When the first alphabet in these conversations changes from 'M" to 'B', you know the funding winter is transforming into spring 🌱 #VC #VentureCapital #Earlystagefunding Read more about the latest monthly funding report for VC funding in July 2024 here: ttps://https://lnkd.in/dhdWF8fP

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🌿 A question that I get asked often is "Why is there a sudden global interest in natural capital and agriculture from the investment community?". 😎 Its true, there is growing interest in #naturalcapital and #regenerativeagriculture 👨‍🌾 . In the past two decades, there has been significant investment interest in #renewables and #carbonavoidance, and this has now expanded to include #carbonremoval (an essential form of #climatemitigation), leading to the growing interest in #naturalcapital investment and important diversification for #impact investment. 👨‍💻 This has been facilitated by better tracking of nature 🦅 and natural forms of #carbonsequestration 🌲 through #technology and #innovation. Innovation in this area is essential to continue the develop natural capital investment. Regenerate Asset Management combines the benefits of sustainable agriculture with the monitoring precision of natural capital in its regenerative agriculture investment themes. Essential to facilitating better tracking of our investment's positive impact on #nature. Making food, impactful 🌻 It great to be coming back to World Agri-Tech for a second year in London to discuss the technology development for agriculture and natural capital. I'm looking forward to joining the 9.50am panel on "Financing the Green Transition in Food & Agriculture" chaired by Gemma Cranston with fellow panelists Johnny el Hachem, Laurent-David Charbit, Maria Carvalho and Peter Bachmann. If you are joining the event next Monday and Tuesday, come and listen! Regenerate Outcomes, Tikehau Capital, Edmond de Rothschild, Pollination,NatWest, Gresham House, Mad Capital, Trailhead Capital, Rebalance Earth, MERIKA ADVISORY, Ryan Cameron, David Bates, Nicholas Burlington, Addy Windsor-Clive, Jeremy Stroud, Ananya Manna, Matt Jordon Agenda: World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit, September 26-27, 2023 (https://lnkd.in/emiN5AMh)

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We had the pleasure of speaking to the inimitable Gordon Sanghera, co-founder and CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, valued at around $6.8bn in 2021. Gordon somewhat accidentally ended up as an entrepreneur, breaking the conventional VC wisdom around 'born founders'. The technology is wild - democratising access to genomic sequencing giving us a new understanding of living organisms. In the episode of Riding Unicorns, we cover: 00:00 Defining Entrepreneurship 00:55 Understanding Oxford Nanopore's Technology 06:10 Gordon's Journey to Founding Oxford Nanopore 12:09 Commercialization Challenges and Strategies 16:27 Building a Strong Founding Team 20:55 Navigating the Ups and Downs of Deep Tech 25:54 Innovative Applications of Nanopore Technology 28:57 Company Culture and Operational Insights 35:05 Attracting Talent in a Competitive Market 37:22 The IPO Experience and Future Outlook https://lnkd.in/eQZVSGeK

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Is VC really dead, as people would like us to believe? I think it's (rightly) transforming and setting up roots. Before writing VC's obituary, let’s look at the data. It's quite enticing to be a pessimist proclaiming all is gloom and doomed but it fundamentally misreads how venture capital evolves. All previous 'dying' periods birthed some of the world's most iconic companies, examples like LinkedIn from 2000's crash, Airbnb and Uber from 2008's winter. The 50% dip in overall funding in 2023 isn't death; it's a cleansing of 20-21's tourist VCs who jumped in mistaking momentum for value, lured by the uptrend. Resets are always a good thing for value creation and skill to come to the party. The top quartile firms are still raising oversubscribed funds. Why? Because real VC was never just about capital deployment. Just as mobile and cloud computing emerged from previous downturns, the AI revolution is catalyzing VC to evolve into something more nuanced, more specialized, and ultimately more enduring. The fat is being trimmed, but the muscle is getting stronger. Building enduring companies requires smart capital, strong network effects, and operational expertise, which AI is nowhere close to disrupting. Funds in India itself, deployed over $6.5 Bn+ in 2024 Q2 and Q3. Recently spoke to a VC stalwart who in addition to being long on India also mentioned on how India is ripe and brimming with the world’s finest talent — talent that needs capital to fuel its ambitions. India’s startup ecosystem is in its early years. This is the time when it needs nurturing, and VCs have an important role in that I believe VC is just strengthening its roots to become more thoughtful, value-added - driven by empathy, shared purpose and long-term alignment. Far from dead; alive and excited for what's to come!! Karthik Prabhakar Rohit M A

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Liquidity or exit planning is often taboo leading to many companies being ill prepared. Successful outcomes are years in the making - they start and end with proactive prep (e.g. getting your house in order, developing strong relationships with strategic partners, potential investors and advisors). With Scott Colvin & Paul Perrett we lay out some key actions you should embed now that can set you up for exit success and also make you a better run business today Big thanks to Bree Fedele 🖋

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