Portfolio Ventures

I’m excited to share the news about our recent fundraise. Our journey is just beginning and this funding allows us to accelerate the change we are driving in the credit information market for customers, and lenders.   I’m eternally grateful to our investors AlbionVC, 13books Capital, Outward VC, Form Ventures, Portfolio Ventures and all the incredible angels who believed in this from the beginning. If you want to be a part of this join us - we are actively hiring for roles in product, engineering, and commercial Andy Milligan James Bryce-Lind Joshua Allday João Aldeano Francis Rooney Yichuan Fan Georgina Kennedy

Woweeee, big news! Excited to share that Neil Shah and Abhi Thanendran at Tilt have closed an $18m Series A led by Balderton Capital. Portfolio Ventures invested in Tilt last summer. On our first call, myself, Will Martin and James Pringle were blown away by their data-led and gamified approach to real-time shopping, a multi, multi-billion $$ opportunity. Tilt's growth over the last 12 months has been extraordinary, adding 500k customers, and in Balderton and Daniel Waterhouse they have incredible investors to continue to scale and dominate the market. We're excited to see what the next 12 months look like! Always nice to be investing alongside friends at TQ Ventures, Seedcamp, Earlybird Venture Capital and sequel.

We've just raised £1.5m to bring our platform and vision for more appropriate eCommerce to market. And we are buzzing! A huge shoutout to Mercuri, Portfolio Ventures and Haatch for believing in our mission. You can find the full story in the comments. Since our beta launch last September, clients like ERNEST JONES and Rapha are already seeing a 9.4% revenue increase on average. All by treating customers like real people—who would’ve thought it?! We hope it’s clear by now, but in case it’s not: We’re trying to build more than a platform. We’re trying to challenge the perspective of eCommerce. And this raise will help us continue to do just that. We’ve got big things in store, so if you aren’t already, be more like this drone with David Mannheim, and give us a follow. #startup #seed #raise

Well this is awkward 👀 I’m posting this as a public rebuttal to my business partner Nick Telson-Sillett's post from yesterday on angel investing… Firstly here’s where I agree with Nick: 1. Angel investing is not for everyone (and this post is not financial advice). 2. If you want to do it well - it can be extremely time intensive. Like sport or business - it’s competitive and the rewards are unevenly distributed to those who are the best. 3. It’s illiquid - it takes time to generate any returns and it can be painful waiting as your losers ripen before the winners. However here’s where I disagree - and my case for angel investing: 1. It’s not like spinning the roulette wheel in a casino 🎰 If done properly, with rigorous process and time invested in accessing the best deals - the odds (unlike roulette) are in your favour. This isn’t just a ‘feeling’ I have. It’s backed by peer-reviewed research (linked below). Venture (unlike other asset classes) is an asset class where returns persists across multiple funds for the top quartile of VCs. This demonstrates that there is an aspect of skill involved in attracting and picking the best startups to invest in. It is also the only asset class where you can have a significant direct impact on your investment (at the early stage). 2. 2024 is a good time to angel invest ⏲ ‘Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.’ The best venture vintages of the past 2 decades were in the years 2010-2012 - just after a significant recession - when valuations were depressed. Valuations have come back down to earth and the 2023 and 2024 vintages for venture may prove to be excellent vintages. I’m putting my money where my mouth is  - I personally invested in 8 venture funds in the past year and more than 10 startups. 3. It’s not just about financial returns 🌍 Yes you can put your money in an index tracker or buy another property and extract rent from a fellow citizen 😏 Those investments are not nearly as productive for society or rewarding for you as making an impactful investment like: taking homeless people off the streets and into jobs through investing in Beam or literally saving people’s lives with an investment in Scan.com. Yes there is some pain involved with investing. But anything worthwhile involves struggle. A few ways to make it less painful and time intensive: - Invest in a venture fund (eg EIS funds like Haatch or Portfolio Ventures or an emerging manager) - Invest in a publicly listed venture fund like Molten Ventures - Invest through a syndicate like Matthew Roberts' Nodes or Ventures Together on a platform like Odin Or if you’re lucky enough to have competed professionally at sport - have the sequel platform and team do the hard work for you… p.s. I still love you Nick

Exciting news just announced this morning!   LoopFX & Portware, a FactSet Company, today announce plans to integrate LoopFX into FactSet's Foreign Exchange execution management system in early 2024.   Renowned for its market-leading data, analytics, and innovative technology solutions, FactSet will embed LoopFX's ground-breaking ‘Peer-To-Bank’ matching engine technology into Portware, providing FactSet’s clients easy access within their existing workflows directly on their trading screen.    LoopFX serves both the buy-side and sell-side by sourcing large block liquidity in a dark pool, eliminating information leakage. Matching asset managers and banks at an independent market mid-rate, LoopFX reduces trading costs and improves execution processes for large FX trades in excess of $10m.   Blair comments: “We are delighted to partner with another global award-winning FX industry-leading platform on this innovative and client-led idea. Portware is a trusted hub for some of the world’s largest asset managers whose clients now have direct access to LoopFX functionality within their preferred workflows.”   “Our open architecture makes it easy for clients to use and access LoopFX. Establishing cross market support is essential for a good user experience and the end benefit for our partners."   The full LoopFX & FactSet press release is available below 👇   https://lnkd.in/gMsaAp5p   This is one of many exciting announcements for LoopFX in the coming months - watch this space! 👍 👇 #fx #fxtrading #peertobank #loopfx

Last chance to secure your shares! Final 24 hours to become a shareholder of Prosper! Invest now here: https://lnkd.in/eVCYYFNx Important to remember: if you are not an existing Crowdcube member you will need to register TODAY in order to be able to invest before we close. And in case you missed it: you secure 30% tax relief on your investment via EIS, zero capital gains, and secure a shareholding in our first ever offering to the public! We do hope you will join us as we work on tilting the balance of power toward you, the customer, in the world of savings and investments. Exciting times ahead! Team Prosper Capital at risk: Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high risk investment.