Passion Capital

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

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). [6]

Companies

Passion Capital has invested in Ravelin (a machine learning fraud detection company for online businesses), [7] Lulu (an app with information about men, including ratings by other women, for women interested in dating),[8] Smarkets (a United Kingdom-based peer-to-peer betting exchange),[9][10] Swipe (a cloud-based tool for creating and consuming slide deck-style presentations),[11] Wedo (a London-based online furniture store),[12] Coinfloor (a London-based Bitcoin trading exchange), Car Throttle (a London-based media platform for car enthusiasts),[10][13][14][15][16] Mondo [17] and many other companies.[1]

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.[18] 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.[19]

Media coverage

Passion Capital has been covered extensively on TechCrunch.[4][5][20] GigaOm described it as one of London's premier seed investors in an article where they published advice from the people running Passion Capital.[21] An article by Jessica Furseth about fundraising in London included Passion Capital.[22] VentureBeat included Passion Capital in an article on London's thriving startup ecosystem.[23]

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. ↑ Lomas, Natasha (May 28, 2015) - London’s Passion Capital Raises $69M For Its Second Early Stage Fund/
  7. ↑ "Ravelin raises £1.3M". Ravelin Raise.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. 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.
  11. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (November 21, 2013). "Swipe Launches To Save You From Death By PowerPoint". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  12. ↑ O'Hear, Steve (December 2, 2013). "Wedo Raises £3 Million Led By MMC Ventures. Because Furniture.". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  13. ↑ 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.
  14. ↑ 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.
  15. ↑ Solon, Olivia (October 29, 2013). "London-based Bitcoin exchange Coinfloor opens for business". Wired. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  16. ↑ Meyer, David (October 29, 2013). "Bitcoin regulation? New London-based exchange Coinfloor will worry about that later". GigaOm. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Mondo gets Passionate". Techcrunch. October 29, 2015. Retrieved Feb 20, 2015.
  18. ↑ 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.
  19. ↑ 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.
  20. ↑ "Passion Capital". TechCrunch.
  21. ↑ Johnson, Bobbie (May 3, 2012). "Five lessons from London's hardest working VCs". GigaOm. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  22. ↑ Furseth, Jessica (January 4, 2013). "London startups: The fundraising experience". Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  23. ↑ 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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