Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Community Updates April 24
Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Community Updates April 24
Our Community & Fund update, with fresh fund highlights, community events, and deeptech market insights. Written by our AI. Edited by our humans.
In this edition
Upcoming Events: Join us in Berlin for a tech-drive VC summit during the SuperVenture week, and an exclusive LP dinner in London in May, featuring insights into tech-enhanced VC practices and high-level networking opportunities
Community Highlights: Insights from Suzanne Heywood's journey from a challenging upbringing to COO of Exor
Investment Updates: Status of the portfolio, including Greenjets' advances in aviation technology and [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] progress in medical diagnostics
Market Insights: Dive into the startup race to win a slice of the $ half-a-trillion battery market, and the role of graphene in EVs from an article by our own team.
GP Update: A reflection on personal growth and validation of our investment thesis through the insane revenue growth by the GP’s pre-fund angel investee Ori.co.
A reminder of what we are about
Silicon Roundabout Ventures is a Super-Angel Seed fund in the UK investing in European Deep Tech startups. It leverages their community of 15,000 entrepreneurs and engineers, through which the team previously attracted, selected and helped launch 33 Deep Tech and Big Data startups now valued at over £6 Billion.
The fund is backed by top-tier VC Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW) and exited founders, engineers and execs: including ex googlers, amazonians and from 2 unicorns.
📅 Upcoming Events and Community Updates
On June 5th in Berlin, venture capitalists and limited partners will gather at the Redstone VC Office for a conference focused on integrating technology into VC practices.
The event will explore data-driven investing and operational enhancements through technology. Detailed sessions and panels with industry experts are planned, with opportunities for networking. Full event details will be announced soon.
Sign up here: lu.ma/technovc24
LP Dinner Invite
(For Active LPs Only!)
Hosted by Frontier Deep Tech and Silicon Roundabout Ventures: an intimate evening at a legendary restaurant in the heart of London with live music and spectacular private dining experience.
We’ve got limited places available, if you’re an LP or Family office and interested in attending, reach out to our GP directly: francesco@siliconroundabout.ventures
From our community this month:
This month Suzanne Heywood, COO of Exor N.V., joined our meetup event.
Suzanne shared her incredible journey from a challenging childhood to managing billions at Exor. She highlighted how resilience shaped by early adversities equipped her for high-level leadership roles and discussed the value of self-education, which led her to Oxford and beyond.
Her top tip for founders and investors? Look past traditional credentials when hiring: valuing potential and the ability to overcome obstacles. Her insights into using personal adversity as a strength were particularly impactful for leaders and entrepreneurs alike.
Fund rundown
New investments since last update: 0
Total Portfolio Companies: 8
Fund: 1
Vintage: 2023
Top-of-the-funnel Pipeline: 5
Key Deeptech Areas: Computing, Climate, and National Security Infrastructure
Markups
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] completes an angel round pricing the company [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]. An increase of 2.5X on our investment price.
Greenjets and Anaphite have both secured convertibles with a higher cap (which we don’t count for pricing) and are each in discussion for a priced up-round.
Performance Snapshot
Here is each fund’s performance to date. These numbers are taken directly from Vauban’s back office and represent our ownership position based on the most recent priced rounds, including any down rounds to better represent the current market value.
Note: We do not book non-priced rounds as markups.
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP Fund 1
Vintage: 2023
Status: Open for new LPs (via equalisation)
Fund Target Size: £5M
Currently invested: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
First closing: Dec 2022
TVPI: n/a
DPI: n/a
Net IRR: n/a
MOIC: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
Most Valuable Positions: n/a
Investments: 8
Target Pipeline Closing soon: 5
GP’s Angel Portfolio + 4 “Fund 0” SPVs
Vintage: 2020 (H2)
Investments: 15
TVPI: 1.2X
DPI: n/a
Highlight Companies: Ori.co, Aegieq.com, Kaizan.ai, Nanusens.com, rnwl.co.uk, Ecosync, Axiom.ai
Status: closed
Community “Virtual” Portfolio
Vintage: 2016
Companies considered: 26
Method for selection: Silicon Roundabout community pitch winners until the beginning of the GP investment activity
Assumed “virtual” investment: £200,000 cheque into each company; No follow-on
Simulated TVPI: 6-6.9X
Simulated Most Valuable Positions: 50-58X
Notable companies: Monzo, Zego, BlueVision Labs, Sano Genetics, Admix, Humanising Autonomy, CausaLens, iProov, Proximie, Senseon, VividQ
Portfolio
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]* is a snapshot of the current portfolio.
*Link to a private Airtable base with a list of all portfolio companies and include the company’s name, short description, why we invested, URL, and category.
➕ New Additions
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
Co-investment Opportunities
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
🚀 Portfolio Updates
Anaphite
Anaphite has been named in the FactoryTech 50 for its innovative tech in battery manufacturing, enhancing both cost efficiency and sustainability.
Greenjets
Greenjets has made significant advancements in the IPM500: their larger scale electric engine for regional aviation. Developed with Ricardo plc, the technology features an advanced immersion-cooled battery pack. Greenjets is now preparing for ground and wind tunnel tests, aiming for commercial deployment by 2030 with the goal of de-carbonising aviation at scale.
The company has also begun delivery of their engines to Ukraine, with the order expected to ramp up to thousands of unit as the year progresses.
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] is advancing discussions with clinical customers, finalising terms with a large Pathology Lab in India. Additionally, they've received [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] in new commitments, and are planning to finalise their fundraising this month to match Innovate UK funding.
Archangel Lightworks
Archangel continues to secure grant funding to commercialise their software and hardware platform for high-capacity laser communication between space and ground. Their total equity-free funding now exceeds their first £4m equity raise where we backed them alongside Oxford Science Enterprises.
The Deeptech Lowdown (Market update)
Francesco Perticarari and Yash Gaikwad recently unpacked the world of EV batteries in a new article. They discuss our first investment in this area, emphasising innovations in lithium-ion technology and the promising role of graphene. This is transforming how we think about energy storage and the future of electric vehicles.
Continuing the energy theme, a significant advancement in nuclear fusion has been achieved in a small tokamak reactor, where researchers successfully increased the plasma density beyond the previously assumed limit while maintaining stability.
GP Personal Updates
This month I chipped away a little more at my “GP impostor syndrome” :)
You know, that European / geek feeling of second guessing your life choices all the time, whereby I kept wondering whether my startup truffle hunting abilities would transition over from picking startups for the community to picking founders as an investor.
Why?
Ori.co, one of my angel investments in the 15 I did to test my thesis before launching Silicon Roundabout Ventures, just announced they shot past $40m in revenue and are on target to hit $100m. Wild?
Yes, but whilst it’s good to receive this news as an investor under any circumstance, it’s particularly great in this case: Ori’s founder Mahdi perfectly fits our thesis of a super-driven operator with deep insights into how an industry would develop and the capacity to devise and build an incredible R&D heavy technology to anticipate its turns.
And Ori (until NOW!) has not been exactly that flashy startup that all the so-called “top tier” investors would jump onto. They were not a Web3 or vanilla B2B SaaS gig when I backed them, and they were not a GenAI startup last year. Plus, they had to pivot their go-to-market a couple of times.
But Mahdi didn’t give up.
And the team is now reaping the rewards 👏
Still early days for Ori, and even earlier for the founders in the fund’s portfolio. But another encouraging sign that we might be on the right track. Onward!