Passion Capital

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Passion Capital is a London-based early stage venture capital firm. [1] [2]

London Capital of the United Kingdom

London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

Venture capital start-up investment

Venture capital (VC) is a type of private equity, a form of financing that is provided by firms or funds to small, early-stage, emerging firms that are deemed to have high growth potential, or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake, in the companies they invest in. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments do have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from the high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

Contents

History

The venture capital firm was launched in March 2011 as a private-public hybrid fund with an initial fund of $60 million, of which $40 million was from the United Kingdom government. The fund partners were Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero, who were described by VentureBeat as being among Europe's most prolific investors. [3] They put out reports in 2012 (on their first year of operation) [4] and 2013 (on their first two years of operation). [5] The firm announced, at the end of May 2015, that they raised their second fund in the sum of $69 million (£45 million, of which £17.5million is provided by the United Kingdom government) this was controversial after the conviction for sexual assault by Stefan Glaenzer [6] . [7]

United Kingdom Country in Europe

The United Kingdom (UK), officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Eileen Burbidge MBE is an American venture capitalist resident in London and a founding partner of Passion Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that has invested in the likes of Monzo, Go Cardless and Lulu, a private social network for single women. In July 2015 she was appointed as the British Treasury's "special envoy" for fintech.

Companies

Passion Capital has invested in Ravelin (a machine learning fraud detection company for online businesses), [8] Lulu (an app with information about men, including ratings by other women, for women interested in dating), [9] Smarkets (a United Kingdom-based peer-to-peer betting exchange), [10] [11] Swipe (a cloud-based tool for creating and consuming slide deck-style presentations), [12] Wedo (a London-based online furniture store), [13] Coinfloor (a London-based Bitcoin trading exchange), Car Throttle (a London-based media platform for car enthusiasts), [11] [14] [15] [16] [17] Mondo [18] and many other companies. [1]

Lulu (app)

Lulu is a mobile app formerly available for iOS and Android that allowed female users to make positive and negative evaluations of male users on the basis of their romantic, personal, and sexual appeal. The app allowed only female users to access the evaluation system, and evaluations made through the app are attached publicly and anonymously. The New York Times described the service as a "'Take Back the Internet' moment for young women who have come of age in an era of revenge porn and anonymous, possibly ominous suitors".

A betting exchange is a marketplace for customers to bet on the outcome of discrete events. Betting exchanges offer the same opportunities to bet as a bookmaker with a few differences. Gamblers can buy and sell the outcome, and they can trade in real-time throughout the event, either to cut their losses or lock in profit. Bookmaker operators generate revenue by offering less efficient odds. Betting exchanges normally generate revenue by charging a small commission on winning bets.

Transparency initiatives

Passion Capital has pioneered a number of transparency initiatives with relation both to company operation and to investment. In June 2013, they announced that they would have a "plain English term sheet" eschewing the use of legal jargon, and put up their sample term sheet online. [19] Passion Capital also publishes information annually on the status of its current and past investments, as well as its average salaries and other expenses. [4] [5] In October 2012, Passion Capital announced joint office hours in London with ten other venture capital firms including Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, and Eden Ventures. [20]

Index Ventures

Index Ventures is an international venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion.

Accel Partners Venture capital firm

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.

Balderton Capital venture capital firm

Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies, primarily in Europe.

Media coverage

Passion Capital has been covered extensively on TechCrunch . [6] [4] [5] [21] GigaOm described it as one of London's premier seed investors in an article where they published advice from the people running Passion Capital. [22] An article by Jessica Furseth about fundraising in London included Passion Capital. [23] VentureBeat included Passion Capital in an article on London's thriving startup ecosystem. [24]

TechCrunch Technology industry news website owned by Verizon Media

TechCrunch is an American online publisher focusing on the tech industry. The company specifically reports on the business related to tech, technology news, analysis of emerging trends in tech, and profiling of new tech businesses and products.

VentureBeat American technology news and analysis website based in San Francisco

VentureBeat is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos.

Twitter Global micro-blogging Internet service

Twitter is an American online news and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, this limit was doubled for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface, through Short Message Service (SMS) or its mobile-device application software ("app"). Twitter, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world.

References

  1. 1 2 "Passion Capital" . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  2. ↑ "Passion Capital". CrunchBase . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  3. ↑ Byrne, Ciara (March 28, 2011). "The U.K. gets a $60 million early stage fund" . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 Butcher, Mike (May 3, 2012). "One Year On, Passion Capital Proves Its Mettle As A Go-To Seed VC In Europe". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 O'Hear, Steve (June 27, 2013). "Passion Capital Cracks Open Data On Investments, Deal-Flow, Founder Salaries, And More". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Butcher, Mike. "High Profile UK VC Stefan Glaenzer Faces Jail After Sexual Assault Conviction | TechCrunch" . Retrieved 2017-08-26.
  7. ↑ Lomas, Natasha (May 28, 2015) - London’s Passion Capital Raises $69M For Its Second Early Stage Fund/
  8. ↑ "Ravelin raises £1.3M". Ravelin Raise.
  9. ↑ Butcher, Mike (February 5, 2013). "Lulu Raises Another $2.5M From Yuri Milner And Angels For Its Girls-Only App To Rate Guys". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  10. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (February 21, 2013). "Deutsche Telekom's T-Venture Takes A Punt On P2P Betting Exchange Smarkets, Leads $2.3M Funding Round". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  11. 1 2 Wauters, Robin (February 21, 2013). "UK-based betting exchange Smarkets lands $2.3m from Deutsche Telekom's T-Venture, Passion Capital". The Next Web. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  12. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (November 21, 2013). "Swipe Launches To Save You From Death By PowerPoint". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  13. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (December 2, 2013). "Wedo Raises £3 Million Led By MMC Ventures. Because Furniture". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  14. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (January 19, 2015). "Car Throttle Raises $1.6M To Move Beyond Cars And Become A 'Vertical Media Platform'". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  15. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (October 29, 2013). "Coinfloor Is A New UK-Based Bitcoin Exchange Backed By Passion Capital And Transferwise Founder Taavet Hinrikus". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  16. ↑ Solon, Olivia (October 29, 2013). "London-based Bitcoin exchange Coinfloor opens for business". Wired . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  17. ↑ Meyer, David (October 29, 2013). "Bitcoin regulation? New London-based exchange Coinfloor will worry about that later". GigaOm . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  18. ↑ "Mondo gets Passionate". Techcrunch . October 29, 2015. Retrieved Feb 20, 2015.
  19. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (June 20, 2013). "A Term Sheet Written In Plain English? Put That In Your Silicon Valley Pipe And Smoke It". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  20. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (October 22, 2012). "London VC Love-In: Index, Balderton, Eden, Passion Capital & Others Holding Joint Office Hours This Week". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  21. ↑ "Passion Capital". TechCrunch.
  22. ↑ Johnson, Bobbie (May 3, 2012). "Five lessons from London's hardest working VCs". GigaOm . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  23. ↑ Furseth, Jessica (January 4, 2013). "London startups: The fundraising experience" . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  24. ↑ Farr, Christina (July 2, 2013). "Why London has all the ingredients for a successful startup ecosystem". VentureBeat . Retrieved January 22, 2014.
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