Jens Lapinski, an old colleague from Library House, and now CEO of a start up so secret I am not sure I can name it, (it cannot have launched or I know he would have had a party), AI Hit, has just published an open list of UK and European VC investors.
Jens' list of VC funds
Great list although there is always room for more and I would urge anyone else with info should post it to his list here.
Some notes of caution.
- Not all of these VCs are currently active in the UK. Some have made a single investment then collapsed, or refocused their activities in other regions.
- It does not cover funds closed before March 2007 (although in general, the older the fund, the less likely it will be to have spare capital).
- Not all of these funds are actually active or ready to invest. One announcement does not make a fund close, particularly with respect to some of the government funded initiatives.
- This list does not cover private equity funds or other sources of capital.
A couple of thoughts on additional fields.
- I would love to know the size and date of the most recent NEW investment in a company. This gives a useful indicator of the real activity in the fund.
- It would also be useful to know how many investments a fund expects to make.
Thanks for making the list public Jens. Typically thorough.
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
Thanks for the link to the list, Mark.
Couple of points:
1. UK activity: all of these funds have made investments in the UK. You can use the office location to figure out the ones that are very likely to make future investments in the UK.
2. Pre March 2007 coverage: I aspire to fix this over time 🙂 I have a more or less complete list…but the more people expand the list, the better and more complete it will become.
3. Funds active: simple rule of thumb is this: the more recent the fund, the more likely it is to be still ‘active’. This is a list of closed funds. So, the more you go into the past, the less likely a funds is to make investments in new portfolio companies. I don’t need to track VC firms, the question of whether they are active or not can be approximated by the funds that they manage.
4. And yes, this is a lost of VC funds with activity in the UK, not a list of all the money in the world 🙂 However, in time, I would like this list to cover all VC funds in the world.
PS: Could you also link to my blog post from which the text was taken? Cheers!