A new venture capital firm, populated by old hands, has today closed one of Europe’s largest ever seed funds with £80m.
Kindred Capital’s debut fund is also pioneering an “Equitable Venture” model new to Europe, in which every entrepreneur backed also gets a stake in the fund.
This means that, rather than Kindred taking such a hefty share when the companies are later sold on, 20 per cent of the fund’s profits are shared out between investors.
“While it’s early days, our Equitable Venture and founder-centric approach seems to be paying off, with many of our first investments going on to raise further funding at significantly higher valuations,” said Kindred’s Russell Buckley, who was part of the founding team of AdMob which sold to Google in 2010.
Buckley is one of four partners at Kindred who also include Leila Zegna, part of the founding team of genomics firm GenapSys, former MMC Ventures investor and Llustre co-founder Tracy Doree, and Mark Evans – who has a history of early stage investment in companies such as Betfair and Oaknorth.
The team committed £16m, while the commercial arm of the British Business Bank – British Business Investments – was a major investor in the fund.
Buckley told City A.M. that the first £40m was raised relatively easily from the partners’ network of contacts, while the latter half came mainly from interested family offices.
Read more: London's tech scene pulls in record £2.5bn in 2017 venture capital bonanza
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