Based out of London, Hoxton Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in European technology startups that can scale into large, global winners. It focuses on startups that either disrupt existing industries or invent entirely new market categories.
Hoxton Ventures II L.P
Recently, the UK VC firm has closed its second fund – Hoxton Ventures II L.P. The second fund saw support from investors in the first fund, alongside commitments from new British, Swiss, and U.S. institutional investors. New limited partners include British Patient Capital, the largest investor in U.K. venture capital.
Hussein Kanji, a partner at Hoxton, said: “We set up Hoxton to address a market gap at a time when few venture firms wanted to invest at the early stage in Europe. Success stories like Darktrace and Deliveroo show that our region can produce large, global tech winners.”
One of Europe’s top-performing VC
According to Dealroom, Hoxton Ventures is one of Europe‘s top-performing early-stage VC firms. The firm’s first fund has the highest ratio of unicorns to investments. It’s worth mentioning that the new early-stage fund will build on the firm’s record of finding and investing in “unicorns,” which includes seed investments in Babylon Health, Darktrace, and Deliveroo.
The new fund began investing in early 2019 and has made 20 investments across a range of sectors, including seed investments in FabricNano, a next-generation enzyme business, Fy!, a homewares marketplace, Kheiron Medical, an artificial intelligence radiology startup, and Preply, an online education company. In fact, one-sixth of the fund’s investments were made after the start of the COVID-19 crisis.
Pre-seed, seed, and Series A stage companies!
Founded by Hussein Kanji and Rob Kniaz, the VC firm focuses on leveraging its partners’ connections to the U.S. market. The fund expects most of its investments will target the U.S., either by opening offices in the U.S. or building a sales presence in the U.S.
Co-founding partner Rob Kniaz, said: “The availability of venture capital is still far lower per capita here than tech markets like Israel and Silicon Valley. We’re delighted to help fill this funding gap and deliver top-tier returns for our investors.”
It’s worth mentioning that Hoxton typically invests between $500,000 and $5 million into pre-seed, seed, and Series A stage companies, and follows its capital through the life of the company.
“As Silicon Valley costs have skyrocketed and quality of life in the Bay Area has decreased, it makes more sense than ever to build engineering in Europe,” said Kniaz. “But European entrepreneurs cannot underestimate the importance of America.”
Catherine Lewis La Torre, CEO, British Patient Capital said: “Our mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative companies across the UK, led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build successful world-class businesses. Hoxton’s approach to investing early, and then supporting founders with business know-how, access to global markets, and connections to later-stage growth capital investors is well aligned with that mission.”
Main image credits: Hoxton Ventures