The Oscars for the world of entrepreneurs and investors.” - CNBC
This year, the Investor Allstars Awards will be held as a virtual event on Thursday 1 October 2020 from 4pm to 5pm BST.
We are proud to present the shortlist for this year's Investor Allstars Awards.
Voting was open to the public for the following categories:
ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR
INVESTOR OF THE YEAR
SERVICE PROVIDER OF THE YEAR
To view the full shortlist, please scroll below or click here.
Winners will be announced in the virtual award ceremony on Thursday 1 October at 4pm BST.
Alex Chesterman, OBE
Founder & CEO of Cazoo
Alex Chesterman is one of Britain’s leading tech entrepreneurs and angel investors. He is currently Founder & CEO of Cazoo, the leading online car retailer and one of the fastest growing digital businesses in the UK, which is rapidly transforming the way we buy used cars.
Since May 2019 Alex has:
Outside of Cazoo, Alex has also backed and mentored dozens of early stage British tech start-ups and was awarded an OBE in 2016 for his services to digital entrepreneurship.
Founder & CEO - Babylon Health
I started in Babylon 2014 with one mission in mind: to put an accessible and affordable health service into the hands of every person on Earth. 6 years ago, this was seen as an idealistic ambition. But in these surreal times, it’s more important than ever.
I see my role as an enabler, to inspire and help my team to go out and do everything it can to make our mission a reality. From a handful of like-minded dreamers, we’ve scaled up to a team of more than 2,000 people across the world. We’ve localised our technology for 13 countries so we can cover 20 million people across the globe, and so far, we’ve delivered more than 8m virtual consultations and AI interactions.
By combining technology and the best available medical expertise, I believe we can transform healthcare. I’m proud of everything Babylon has achieved so far in 2020:
Founder & CEO - Infarm
At Infarm, we’ve always been committed to finding a better way to feed the world’s growing population without destroying our planet. Instead of building large-scale farms outside of a city, our approach is to distribute the farms themselves throughout the city. Our modular farms are easily scalable, rapidly deployable and can transform any space. We set them up in stores and nearby distribution centers, restaurants and other spaces to match the needs and variety of the urban environment. Consumers have access to nutritious produce so fresh it is still living, right at the point of sale.
Before COVID-19, we were growing fast. Since May 2019 we’ve built partnerships in new countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, while adding to our footprint in existing markets like Germany and France. But it’s been the pandemic that has reinforced the need for food that is more affordable, nutritious, and secure. A few milestones of the past year:
Our mission is to grow a smart worldwide Infarmnetwork that brings farming to the people. Over the next several years, we’re building a farming-as-a-service model that can deliver the technology, processes and expertise to enable an entire ecosystem of partners— from distribution centers, to schools, to hospitals. We believe this ecosystem will help fulfill our mission and make it a reality.
In a post COVID-19 world, technology and food innovation will be increasingly important to tackle the urgent agricultural and ecological challenges of our time. We’re proud to be on the frontlines of this groundswell of social, environmental and technological change.
Founder & Board Member - Vivino
Heini Zachariassen is the founder and CEO of Vivino, which provides users with any wine's rating, review and average price. Vivino is the world's largest wine app with over 46m users and 10M monthly active users, allowing users to remember good wines they drink and seamlessly order these and similar wines through the app & marketplace.
Without a clear business model in place, in the beginning, Zachariassen managed
to build up a growing marketplace, selling wine for over USD 150m with a Net revenue from wine sales amount to >USD 25m (late 2019) with very strong growth and trajectory to also become the largest global wine merchant. The company saw massive growth due to the global lockdowns.Vivino’s global sales grew about 300% year over year. For its U.S. sales, the increase was 220%.
With more than $72 million in funding, Zachariassen continues to drive Vivino’s global expansion, via users now in 227 countries and on every continent around the world. Having co-founded several startups, Heini was also part of building the antivirus software company BullGuard, Zachariassen from the early days. He has a varied background in software development and mobile innovation and a track record for building successful global businesses. Heini and Vivino’s story is featured in an independent documentary, “Disrupting Wine, The Life of an Entrepreneur.” on Amazon Prime. Heini also hosts the YouTube series Raw Startup, which offers candid advice for entrepreneurs and startups.
Co-founder & CEO - Onfido
Onfido is a world-leading provider of identity verification and authentication technology, building trust in an online world by helping businesses verify users' real identities.
Having worked on the business idea while undergraduates, Husayn along with his two co-founders, launched the company in 2012 and has seen explosive momentum since. Recently, Onfido announced revenue growth of 130% year-over-year, with 264% year-over-year growth in the US coupled with our first US acquisition and partnerships with leading digital identity and access providers, Okta and ForgeRock. The company has a 70% trial win-rate, meaning that 7 out of every 10 prospects that run a trial to compare Onfido's performance with others, choose Onfido.
During the Covid-19 global pandemic, Husayn led Onfido's $100 million funding round from TPG Growth (early investors of Uber, Spotify and Airbnb). The funding process proceeded with enthusiasm in large part because of the relevance in digital access becoming a lot more meaningful a lot faster. There were surges in demand for digital services across multiple industries, accelerating the need to verify users remotely to get them critical goods and services. This will lead to lasting changes in how many consumers access business and services.
Onfido are seeing the application of digital identity being used in multiple places, from financial services, online healthcare and trust marketplaces, to self-check-ins at airports, car rentals and eVoting. Following the global pandemic, Husayn launched Onfido's Covid-19 relief initiative providing identity verification at no cost to charities and organisations supporting the relief effort. Husayn is also consulting with businesses and governments about health certificates, helping individuals safely prove their health status but with a privacy-first approach.
In July 2019, Onfido partnered with the Center for Data Ethics and the UK's Information Commissioner to build a Privacy Sandbox to systematically measure and mitigate algorithmic bias in AI technology. As a result, Onfido's face-matching False Acceptance Rate is now 0.01%, and has a False Rejection Rate of 1% - a market-leading accuracy score for establishing proof of ID ownership.
In addition, Onfido recently joined wider initiatives such as the World Economic Forum advising on the Passwordless Future, and working with the City of London on the FinTech - the start-up ecosystem in the UK supporting the new wave of financial services.
To date, Onfido automates verifications on over 4,500 ID document types across 195 countries, with over 1,500 global companies using its product daily. Out of the 400 team members spread across seven countries, 35 different nationalities are represented. Furthermore, a fifth of the company is owned by employees.
Husayn is leading Onfido's growth, with the mission to standardise the way we prove a person's real identity, similar to how Facebook has standardised social identity, and LinkedIn has for professional identity.
Founder & CEO - Contentsquare
Contentsquare empowers brands to build better digital experiences. Our experience analytics platform tracks and visualizes billions of digital behaviors, delivering intelligent recommendations that everyone can use to grow revenue, increase loyalty and fuel innovation.
We have experienced tremendous growth over the past 12 months, during which our CEO Jonathan has successfully:
CEO - Depop
Maria Raga is the CEO behind Gen Z’s favourite shopping app: Depop, the world's leading marketplace for vintage street fashion and apparel with more than 15m registered users of whom 90% are under 26.
She joined Depop in 2014 as COO, when she was 35, after having worked as a Groupon executive before. In 2016, three years after the founding CEO stepped aside, she was asked by the board to take over. Depop was already building a huge community of young users, but had zero monetization. Under Raga’s direction, Depop has surged remarkably, though most of its growth remains organic. The company is now active in 147 countries and, though it is headquartered in the UK, where most of its 196 full-time employees work, its popularity is rising faster in the US, where Maria Raga has overseen the opening of two bricks-and-mortar shops and the rollout of traditional marketing campaigns. She implemented the business model, taking a 10% cut of every item sold through the app. Today, depop has handled more than $500m of gross merchandise value since its launch in 2011.
Depop has a GMV of > USD 400m and net revenue of USD 37m. The company grows more than 70% year over year with only single-digit percentage points paid growth and the remaining organic, because influencers chose to sell their gear on the platform, using it as an extension of their online persona.
With her entrepreneurial spirit, Maria Raga drives the company’s mission to empower young, entrepreneurial, and creative people.
CEO - Snyk
Peter McKay was named CEO of Snyk in June 2019. In just a year McKay confidently took the reins of the business and steered the fast-growing startup in an upward direction. Then came 2020. Despite civil unrest, economic uncertainty and a global pandemic, McKay used his experience as an entrepreneur, executive and investor to overcome some of the biggest hurdles businesses faced in the 21st century. During this time, he not only kept Snyk on a positive trajectory, but he grew the company exponentially helping it scale to meet the demand of its increasing customer base. Listening to the world around him, he also made a conscious effort during this time to facilitate the development of the company’s cultures and values understanding that Snyk is nothing without its people.
When it comes to growth the numbers speak for themselves. Under Peter’s leadership Snyk surpassed 200 percent YoY ARR growth. This was supported by triple digit growth in the number of new accounts acquired and a global expansion that led to sales in over 50 countries.
Seeing many companies struggle during the COVID-19 crisis and knowing that cybercriminals often use times of vulnerability to profit McKay wanted to help and so he coined the Safeharbor Program. Announced in March the program offered customers and prospects in impacted sectors (healthcare, hospitality, travel and entertainment industries) the opportunity to utilize Snyk’s cloud native application security solution free of charge for six months. It is this type of leadership and business acumen that helped Snyk achieve +150 percent customer retention through the months of the ongoing pandemic.
McKay was one of the first leaders to act when the world transitioned to remote working and he quickly had all 300+ employees working safely from home. But for McKay supporting employees through the pandemic was not just about their job performance but creating a culture that puts employees health and safety first. On May 15th as the pandemic entered its fourth month, Peter McKay announced a company-wide mental health day and encouraged his employees to exercise their work-life balance. Through it all, productivity from Snyk’s employees also increased by over 20 percent from February – June, measured as ARR/Employee. It is this type of leadership that has drawn praise from the likes of the Comparably Awards group, crowning Snyk for Best Professional Development, Best Leadership Team, Best CEOs for Women and Best CEOs for Diversity.
Snyk’s values and rich diversity are at the heart of Peter’s leadership, as he strives to impart a culture of caring for each other, a passion for the work that they do and a workplace that feels included and equally part of the community. Peter McKay is focused on a strong foundational culture that scales as the organization continues to thrive and grow, helping developers use open source code and stay secure. As a leader, McKay credits the success of the business to the strength and diversity of the global Snyk team. It is the people that breed the success.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Davor has led 4 new investments in the last 12 months for Eight Roads
- ScyllaDB ($25m) – next generation big data database
- Gloat ($25m) – internal talent marketplace for large enterprises
- Otrium ($26m) – online fashion outlet marketplace
- Cazoo (£100m) – online used car retailer
Total amount invested (LTM)
$50-100m
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Our portfolio company AppsFlyer, where Davor led the Series B and has served on the board for over 5 years now, raising $210m round led by General Atlantic at $1.6bn valuation. This is a great example of a thesis-led, sweet spot scale-up investment for Eight Roads. We had identified the emergence of mobile apps’ driven economy in 2013-14 and marketing attribution as a key enabler. We then looked at all the players and picked AppsFlyer as the best one. It is great to see them having become a global market leader with ~70% market share, and one of the fastest software growth stories to $100m ARR, in just 5 years. As the company continues to do well during Covid-19, our current mark-to-market return is well above 10x and trending toward 20x and beyond hopefully.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Total amount invested (LTM):
$65m in past 12m (over $100m in total in deals over)
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Glovo over 1bn, revolut over 5bn, fiveAI over 200m, and stealth deal to be announced will be a leading deal in future if food (led with $35m of a large round tba). Brought momentum to lgt lightstone effort and connected them into market - impact meets tech, growth $10-40m developed and developing markets. Our thesis centres around sustainable capital with superior returns - which is where the market is heading.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Elliptic - Series B (co-lead)
Credit Kudos - Series A (lead)
WeGift - Series A (lead)
Koru Kids - Series A (follow on)
Panaseer - Series A+ (follow on)
Black SWan - Series B+ (follow on)
Quantexa - Series C (follow on)
Total amount invested (LTM)
£25m
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Quantexa Series C – the company is 4 years old and only sold its first licence 2 years ago. We invested in March 2017 and this £52m round closed at 20x the valuation then. Not sure I can take much credit though – incredible team!
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Shapr3d (new investment)
KRY (follow-on)
Virta Health (follow-on)
Depop (follow-on)
Total amount invested (LTM)
18M €
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Fredrik co-led the Series A round in Spotify back in 2008. Since then, he has led Creandum’s work with an outstanding portfolio of successful exits such as Cint (sold to Nordic Capital), Videoplaza (Ooyala), 13th Lab (Facebook), Autobutler (PSA Group). His actual portfolio includes a number of rapid-growth companies such as KRY, Kahoot!, Depop, and Virta Health. In late 2019, Fredrik ranked 8th position in the European Midas list and in early 2020 he made it for the first time to the global Midas list.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Total amount invested (LTM)
$27 million
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Final close of Kennet V, a new $250 million fund.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Thinksurance (German Insurtech)
Total amount invested (LTM)
€13m
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Supported all my portfolio companies through Covid including hosting a number of sessions specifically for CFOS; helping them navigate the various government support schemes in all countries, choose how to reforecast and adjust their business plans, and supported them to keep culture & team morale as a top priority despite difficult times.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
ThoughtMachine - £15m (£100m Ser B)
Concirrus - £8m (£20m Ser B)
AudioAnalytic - £0.5m (£5m Ser B2)
Fluidic Analytic - £0.7m (£5m Ser B2)
Closed Loop Medicine, £1.4m (£6m Ser A)
Cambridge Communication Systems - £1.2m (£6.5m Ser A)
M:Qube £2m (£8m Ser A)
Total amount invested (LTM)
£30m
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Total amount invested (LTM)
c. €25 million
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Personally led two soon-to-be-announced new investments: an operational risk management business with tier 1 banking clients and a disruptive commodities hedging platform; plus follow-ons into: ArQit (breakthrough quantum encryption provider), GoCardless (fintech leader), Paddle (market-leading software commerce platform), Novatiq (innovative MNO data monetisation), Panaseer (category-defining cyber security co), Tradeshift (fintech unicorn) and VirtualStock (streamlining NHS supply chains during COVID).
Plus, as Managing Partner of the wider Notion, I assisted new investments into: Claimsforce (insuretech), Dixa (CRM), Element (secure messaging), ForestAdmin (software admin panels), Mya (recruitment chatbots), Upvest (blockchain tokenisation), Yulife (insuretech), plus an unannounced traveltech company and follow-ons into multiple other Notion-backed companies.
Total amount invested (LTM)
£25.5m by me directly / a further >£50m by the wider firm
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Aside from navigating Covid 19 (which will apply to all) then Identifying breakout quantum encryption company, ArQit, leading the seed round and developing the strategy culminating in a £30m award from the European Space Agency and a £50m Series A with a 11x mark up for Notion.
Investments made in the last twelve months (LTM)
Habito - £5m (new investment)
Grover - €6m (new investment)
Receipt Bank - £7.5m (new investment)
Onfido - £3.8m (additional investment)
Monese - £4m (additional investment)
Tide - £5m (additional investment)
Total amount invested (LTM)
£32.8m
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Tim is a leading voice in the fintech and fintech investment industries. He works tirelessly to promote the fintech industry and practices what he preaches around innnovation, founding and leading the UK's only publicly listed fintech fund. Tim speaks regularly at leading industry events (in person and recently, virtual) and his unique experience of a strong entrepreneurial pedigree (Flutter/Betfair and Crussh) combined with technical and investing experience and an incredibly strong network mean he regularly receives glowing praise from portfolio CEOS and others across the industry. Tim is regularly asked for comment on fintech in e.g. FT, webinars (London Fintech Podcast), events (Paris Fintech Forum), books and research pieces (KPMG Fintech Focus). Tim works closely with government and has been heavily involved in supporting the SME and fintech industries during COVID-19, and goes above and beyond e.g. hosting 1:1 sessions with entrepreneurs advising on how to manage in the challenging economic environment of 2020. Tim also judges e.g. Tech Nation Fintech programme. Tim has led Augmentum to achieve great success to date, joining the FTSE All Share earlier this year and industry commentry e.g. Investors Chronicle's Simon Thompson calling Augmentum "A fintech winner... There is no doubt in my mind that Augmentum is performing well" in July 2020, despite the COVID-19 challenges. A true leader in every sense of the word.
This entry was submitted on behalf of Alvarez & Marsal
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Significant share working with a number of growth and private equity firms to transform the financial due diligence landscape away from the traditional Big 4.
Code & Co. is an independent advisory firm specialized in advising funds in the global alternative investment industry. Code & Co.'s expertise is modern and holistic technology and product due diligence. From outside-in audits and confirmatory due diligence to portfolio audits, exit preparation, and vendor due diligence, Code & Co. provides clients with crucial insight across the entire investment life cycle.
This entry was submitted on behalf of Code & Co.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
As trusted Technology & Product Due Diligence advisors, Code & Co. has been an essential partner to Investcorp and Investcorp Technology Partners for several years. Code & Co. has advised us on roughly ten technology & product due diligence (DD) projects in the last 12 months. They were particularly helpful on our recent acquisition of a German cybersecurity asset.
Based on Code & Co.'s thorough understanding of an investment target's underlying engineering (talent), product, and technological capabilities, Code & Co's DD reports detail risks and opportunities that matter to us as investors:
Moreover, we believe that Code & Co.'s approach is innovative because Code & Co.'s work is augmented by proprietary software to deliver better and benchmarked results faster – allowing us to sign deals even on the most challenging timelines with confidence.
Code & Co.'s ability to deliver reports that provide insights and value for non-technical stakeholders has helped to put the importance of technology DD "on the map" for many of our colleagues in the industry that have so far often neglected the importance of technology & product DD, driving overall investment quality and confidence.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Cooley advised Decibel Insight, a digital experience analytics solution platform, on its Series B round led by Draper Esprit in November 2019. This was an extremely complicated deal due to a number of factors: (i) the amounts being invested (ii) the inter-play with existing investors (iii) clarity required around the Investor Majority threshold (iv) an extension to the round and the subsequent involvement of a private equity fund (v) the need to provide innovative, creative solutions to structure the deal in order that other company transactions could seamlessly carry on. This is one of a number of significant financing rounds the London team has acted on in the last year including Snyk’s latest $200 million Series D round valuing the company at $2.6 billion. In total Cooley’s London office has acted on 120+ venture capital financings since May 2019 with an aggregate value of more than $2 billion.
Cooley is committed to supporting the emerging companies sector and is heavily involved in keeping that momentum through these uncertain times. This includes our involvement with the UK Government’s Future Fund to help startups continue their expansion in light of Covid19. The London office also contributes and provides a variety of forum, mentoring and tools to the community in the UK and globally. Specifically some of the ways in which we contribute include:
Cooley London Emerging Companies and Venture Capital partner Aaron Archer was part of a task force of four lawyers selected by the UK Government to consult on the establishment and structure of the Future Fund in April 2020, which was set-up to provide funding for UK start-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cooley is the main partner to Diversity VC, an initiative started by five British venture capitalists in a continued effort to strengthen diversity in the venture capital community. Cooley has supported this since its establishment in 2017.
Cooley is a supporter, sponsor and pro bono adviser to Founders Pledge, a programme where entrepreneurs make a commitment to donate at least 2% of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. Since launching in 2015, they have raised $400 million for charity across 1,100+ pledges in 27 countries.
Since 2016 the firm has been the exclusive legal partner to Tech Nation’s Upscale programme, which is focused on mentoring and supporting UK emerging companies at or around Series A stage and in showing its commitment to Tech Nation, has now also become the exclusive legal partner to its next stage Future Fifty programme.
Cooley is global partner and sponsor to the Techstars accelerators worldwide, and, in addition, providing mentoring and coaching to the cohort companies in the London Techstars and Barclays Techstars programmes in the UK.
Illustrative of Cooley’s commitment to the emerging companies, venture capital and startup community, Cooley GO launched in the UK in 2016 off the back of the huge success of the Cooley GO platform, the firm's award-winning, mobile-friendly online resource centre for investors and entrepreneurs at technology companies at all stages of the growth cycle. Additionally Cooley GO Asia has been launched in 2020.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
As the reality of the Covid-19 forced businesses to rapidly re-examine their processes and procedures, particularly those that involve face-to-face interactions, it was clear that some guidance would be useful for early-stage Founders, CEOs, hiring executives and investors. The ‘Lessons from Lockdown’ series launched in April 2020, focused on sharing knowledge across the community to the benefit of everyone.
Erevena worked with our clients and investor partners to develop ‘Lessons from Lockdown’ – a series of articles examining alternatives to those critical in person interactions; sharing best practice and offering advice on how remote methods can best be implemented.
The ongoing interview series shares how Erevena clients have successfully hired and onboarded senior executives during this time, plus offering advice on how to best approach investors and predicting which lessons learnt will be carried forward once the initial lockdown period is over. A wide range of founders, CEOs and investors contributed from the UK, Europe and USA, including Beamery, Personio, Sqreen, Zenly, 8Roads, Kheiron Medical and Octopus.
The feedback we’ve received clearly demonstrates that early-stage Founders, CEOs, hiring executives and investors have found the articles and the experiences and advice offered both reassuring and of practical use.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Industry leaders in the broader tech community due to their knowledge and experience. Recently, when the UK government was trying to figure out the best ways to assist emerging and innovative companies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they turned to Goodwin lawyers for guidance and leadership.
Specifically, Goodwin partner Adrian Rainey and associate Adam Thatcher assembled and led a task force of prominent technology-focused lawyers that included Taylor Wessing, Cooley and Orrick. Over the course of several weeks, the task force worked around the clock to devise and structure an unprecedented support package that had to be practical, sustainable and fiscally responsible, while still meeting the needs of struggling companies and protecting the UK’s long-term positioning as a world-class center of innovation and technological expertise.
According to Adrian, a London and Cambridge-based partner in Goodwin’s Technology and Life Sciences groups who specialises in financings and M&A transactions, “The current crisis has created an unprecedented need for Government support, including in the technology and life sciences sectors. We have been supporting the UK Government to expedite a support package to ensure that the innovation economy continues to grow and that the UK remains a leading European hub for tech and life sciences companies.”
On April 20, 2020, the UK Government announced the establishment of the Future Fund, £250 million from the government for investment through the scheme, to be matched by private investors, with the Treasury making clear the amount could be increased if needed. The Future Fund features a highly innovative structure where convertible loans issued directly by the government in amounts ranging from £125,000 to £5 million are matched with an equal or greater investment by third party investors. Eligible recipients for funding include UK start-ups and scale-ups which are facing financing difficulties due to the coronavirus outbreak and have previously raised at least £250,000 in equity investment from third party investors in the last 5 years. The program officially began taking applications on May 20th and plans to be open for applicants until September 2020.
Not only is the Future Fund extending a lifeline to struggling companies, it also plans to address diversity concerns in the male-dominated, London-centric UK tech industry. In order to ensure that founders and investors from backgrounds and communities across the UK will benefit from the Fund, it will provide monthly reporting on the diversity of recipients as well as the regional spread. The Fund has also become a signatory of HM Treasury’s Investing in Women Code, and strongly encourages co-investors to do the same.
The UK Government greatly appreciated Goodwin’s insights, leadership and desire to give back to the community during a period of unprecedented challenges. According to Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Britain is a global leader when it comes to innovation. Our start-ups and businesses driving research and development are one of our great economic strengths, and will help power our growth out of the coronavirus crisis. This new, world-leading fund will mean they can access the capital they need at this difficult time, ensuring dynamic, fast-growing firms across all sectors will be able to continue to create new ideas and spread prosperity. The support Goodwin Procter have provided in devising this scheme has been invaluable."
Goodwin has continued its support of the Future Fund even after the ending of the task force. Not only have our lawyers advised several interested clients regarding participation, but on May 28th Adrian and Adam, along with London partner Sophie McGrath, hosted a Webinar addressing the current status of the Future Fund, the terms of the Convertible Loan Agreement, the next steps after a company is selected for funding, and they answered numerous audience questions regarding the Fund’s parameters.
We believe Goodwin being selected by the UK Government to lead the Future Fund task force is a testament to our positioning as a leader in the tech community, while the countless hours our lawyers spent working on the pioneering initiative speaks to their expertise, creativity and problem solving skills. That is why we believe we are deserving of consideration for the 2020 Service Provider of the Year.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Kreos Capital was the first and is still the largest provider of flexible debt solutions to equity sponsored, high-growth, disruptive companies in the UK, Europe and Israel. We are currently investing out of our €711m Fund VI. As well as maintaining our core focus on €5m - €20m term loans established over the past 22 years, with our larger fund size, we are now the only lender able to provide the full spectrum of facilities to all industry sectors, all stages, all geographies and all sizes from €1.5m to €50m+, to both private and public companies. And, alongside our traditional strength in disruptive technologies, with our expanding platform, we have also become the leading lender in the European life science growth space.
Kreos Capital has literally grown up with and been an integral part of the success of the UK, European and Israeli VC and growth ecosystem renaissance. Since we began 22 years ago, Kreos Capital has invested almost €3bn in +600 individual companies across 16 jurisdictions of the UK, Europe and Israel.
One of the keys to our success is that we do not make money from financial engineering. Our success is solely driven by the successes of our management teams and co-investors. As a result, we have an unbroken reputation for transparency, consistency, reliability, flexibility and commitment in supporting our companies. This has remained through the COVID-19 pandemic where we not only honoured all of our pre-COVID-19 Term Sheets, but we have not missed a single capital call from any of our new and existing portfolio companies.
In fact, over the last 12 months between May 2019 and May 2020, Kreos Capital has committed more than €425m to 45 companies and through the COVID-19 pandemic from January 2020 to May 2020, Kreos Capital has defied the rest of the market and committed over €200m to 22 new companies.
The other key to our success is the team. With a core partnership that has been together since foundation and lived through at least 2 other seismic market crashes and our team of over 30 professionals based in London, we had the historic muscle memory and depth to stay one step ahead of COVID-19. We therefore did not have to take a cookie cutter approach to our existing portfolio where one size fits all. Instead, we took the time to work with each company in our portfolio individually alongside each equity syndicate to tailor bespoke solutions to maximize each unique opportunity and reduce the uncertainty created by COVID-19. As well as financing working/expansion capital to both private and public companies, Kreos Capital has also consistently evolved our lending model to now provide finance to M&A deals, acquisitions large and small as well as roll-up strategies, and pre-IPO refinancing and even post-IPO financings. Kreos Capital has even raised dedicated money to participate in equity rounds in some cases.
In fact, Kreos Capital has brought over $2bn of institutional, long term, top-tier LP investor capital into the European high growth market including many first-time US and Asian investors.
A selected example of transactions that Kreos Capital has supported over the past 12 months from May 2019 – May 2020 in alphabetic order;
Aircall –a software platform that automates voice telephony. Kreos led an expansion line alongside recent investments from Balderton and Draper Esprit.
Applicaster – a cloud-based platform managing distributed content through formal integrations or an open app plugin environment. Kreos closed this facility in 3Q19.
Brandwatch – a leading UK social-intelligence platform offering a portfolio of social and content marketing technologies. Kreos led a sizeable facility in 1Q20.
Decibel – a UK-based digital experience analytics SaaS platform enabling companies to measure digital customer experiences online. Kreos led a double-digit million facility in 2Q20.
Orrick
Despite the ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Orrick has continued to dominate the European venture capital market by supporting clients in complex, high value financing and investment opportunities. Orrick has retained its #1 ranking for European venture capital for the eighteenth consecutive quarter, completing more than 45 deals in Europe in Q2, nearly double the runner-up firm (Pitchbook, Q2 2020).
In the last 12 months, our London VC practice has completed 225 VC deals, raising over $5.5 billion for some of the most disruptive new companies, and has helped three clients to achieve unicorn status and four investor clients on their investments which achieved unicorn status ($1 billion-plus valuation). These include:
1. Advising Kinnevik (STO:KINV:B) and Vostok New Ventures (STO:VNV-SDB) on digital health start-up Babylon’s Series C investment round, which raised c. $500 million. The round, the largest ever European digital health raise and one of the largest fundraisings in UK venture capital history, makes Babylon one of the UK’s newest unicorns now valued at $2 billion.
2. Advising Salesforce Ventures on its investment into the $150 million Series C financing of Snyk, bringing its valuation to over $1 billion and making the company the UK's newest unicorn.
3. Advising Sprints Capital on its investment in Vinted’s €128 million Series E financing round, valuing Vinted at more than €1 billion, making them Lithuania's first unicorn.
We help clients innovate, disrupt and diversify:
Named as Financial Times' Most Innovative Law Firm 2016-18 and runner-up in 2019, Orrick has a distinctive focus on meeting our clients’ demands for quality and value through the development of innovative legal solutions and initiatives. We recently launched our Series A Tool, a first-of-its-kind assessment tool and resource hub for start-ups raising capital, and we are in the midst of launching Joinder, a first-of-its-kind cloud-based collaboration tool to revolutionise the way our clients connect with and access external legal counsel.
Orrick has also co-founded the Move the Needle Fund in partnership with Diversity Lab: a five-year, $5 million effort that will apply research-backed methods to drive meaningful change in diversity and inclusion. This includes a three-year commitment as a firm to strive to be the most diverse and inclusive law firm serving the technology and innovation, energy and infrastructure and finance sectors — and to ensure that diversity is reflected in the composition of our leadership, partnership, incoming talent and client teams.
We protect clients:
At Orrick, we are helping to protect the future of the European tech ecosystem by developing innovative solutions to some of the key issues for our clients caused by the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. Advising HM Treasury on the design and implementation of the UK Government's Future Fund for start-ups facing funding difficulties and devising FAQs for VC and PE-backed companies.
2. Hosting online events addressing important market issues and opportunities, from Fund Finance for Private Equity, to definitive terms of the Future Fund and Term sheets in the age of COVID-19, in partnership with SaaS investor, Oxx.
3. Developing a practical CISCO-powered solution to host virtual shareholder/AGM meetings, in partnership with Meet Me In The Cloud.
4. Creating a UK Return-to-Workplace Checklist covering COVID-19 related employment issues and key considerations for employers.
5. Creating a UK COVID-19 Resource Centre for clients addressing ongoing and developing UK legal issues, and key considerations for businesses and employers.
Biggest achievement (LTM)
Shoosmiths’ biggest achievement in the last 12 months has been its response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The difficult times provide a real test of character and show the true culture of an organisation.
Since the outset of lock-down the VC team at Shoosmiths has utilised the experience it has had in its own business to provide help and support to the VC community. This has included:
1. Developing the “Shared & Halved” initiative in order to provide a forum for investors / companies to discuss the challenges they were facing as a result of COVID. Recognising that its own people were feeling isolated, anxious and overwhelmed by a global lockdown Shoosmiths immediately realised that it needed to provide the best possible support to help companies and investors navigate their way through the Coronavirus crisis. This has included:
• hosting seminars, virtual round table discussions, facilitated conversations and other engaging media to help get people talking and interacting in a direct way (not just reading doom and gloom news sent on another email circular); • creating a series of bespoke ‘Community Spaces’ – on which to host recordings of the events, any other content relevant to investors / companies and a Q&A forum space for investors / companies to post questions/observations/ideas which can be responded to by Shoosmiths and, crucially, other participants in the conversation; • generating thought leadership pieces to reflect the real-time concerns and issues as expressed by the participants to the Shared & Halved events.
2. Connecting clients together with advisors and experts to discuss the issues, share experiences and anxieties, come up with collective solutions, and provide useful contacts and opportunities. More than ever having a network of contacts and support has been crucial over the last few months. Shoosmiths has continually looked to put clients in touch with useful people in order to help them through the crisis. In particular, various investment opportunities have been shared with Shoosmiths’ contacts in the VC community, helping founders/companies build a network of investors and ultimately helping them to assemble and close investment rounds during a challenging and uncertain time for companies that were fundraising.
3. Responding on the Future Fund. This has included:
• advice around the initial outline terms so that clients were able to understand the likelihood of whether their potential investment round / investors would meet the criteria and therefore consider whether to amend the terms or proceed without the Future Fund; • raising concerns with the initial proposals given the challenges they presented for EIS / VCT investors; • advising on structuring rounds to conform with the detailed terms once announced; • assisting numerous VC houses / companies with the process of applying for and securing Future Fund monies; • since the launch of the Future Fund in May Shoosmiths have been market leaders in developing VCT qualifying loan notes that replicate the terms of the Future Fund note (to the extent possible under the VCT legislation), in order to allow VCTs to participate in the same funding rounds.
4. Supporting the VC ecosystem by providing sensible and pro-active advice and getting deals done quickly and efficiently to ensure urgent cashflow needs were met and allow companies to survive and come out the other side of this crisis. Shoosmiths have steered clients from term sheet phase to closing on circa 40 VC deals since lockdown. This has involved providing pragmatic advice and challenging aggressive terms that did not appear “market” and seemed to be opportunistic.
5. Looking to the future by developing the “New How” and challenging how lawyers can work better going forwards, which will benefit all users of their services (founders, companies, investors). The New How is about doing things differently and embracing change. This includes numerous innovative client-facing products, services and processes such as:
• Cia: contract intelligent analysis, which saves 4 – 6 hours of contract review time per contract.
• Automated drafting: initial drafts of key investment documents can be generated for serial investors by completing a 10 minute questionnaire.
• Live working: an online platform that acts as a client dashboard and covers the whole client/lawyer relationship (including latest drafts, status update, fee information) in order to provide a smarter way of communicating and reduce the number of inefficient emails everyone receives.
• Exit readiness: a product that enables a company to conduct a pre-sale health check by completing a 30 – 45 minute questionnaire. The results are interactive, easy to understand and allow companies to address material issues before a sales process becomes all encompassing.
Exit: Process Systems Enterprise
www.albion.vc
CEO
Second Nature
CEOs & Founders
Kolibri Games
Co-founder & CEO
Kry
Co-founders
Trouva
CEO
Bolt
Co-founder & CEO
Crisp
Founder
Streetbees
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