In recent weeks, we have seen a new NCM client, Ada Ventures close their fund Ada Ventures I LP at £27m with cornerstone investment from British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Fund. Equality and diversity are values that run deep within the mission of Ada Ventures and NCM is delighted to have been part of the journey and have its first fund which has a female founder.
The new fund was founded by Francesca Warner and Matt Penneycard who have been investing together for 5 years and have over 40 companies in their portfolio including Trouva and Papier. Together they believe that “talent is evenly distributed but, at present, opportunity is not” and as a result, aim to invest in companies that are overlooked and under-represented for reasons including but not limited to gender, race and sexual orientation.
Ada Ventures has been built around three principles coined “Open Venture”:
· founders come from anywhere;
· investment decisions should be objective, transparent and fair; and
· venture capital should be invested responsibly and for the good of society, without compromising on returns.
Ada Ventures will focus on UK Technology companies with particular interest in women’s health and preventative health for ageing populations. Other areas include fundamental aspects of society like food, agriculture, cities, mobility, property and finance. Ada Ventures is a pre-Series A investor. Investments will range between £100k to £1 million and the aim is to reserve around half the fund for follow-up investments.
Kathleen McLeay, CEO of NCM commented, “I am delighted that we have finally seen the launch of Matt and Check’s fund as it has been a long journey for them and they have worked extremely hard to overcome the various hurdles first time funds can face. As a female CEO it is also fantastic to finally have our first fund client with a female co-founder and named after Ada Lovelace who was arguably the first female tech visionary. The NCM team very much look forward to a fruitful and successful partnership with the Ada team supporting them on this fund and hopefully successor funds too.”
Watch the video TechCrunch shared of Ada Ventures founders, launching the fund with Mike Butcher at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in December here -
You can also read Ada Ventures full fund thesis here - http://bit.ly/38mSo26