Post by Katie Lockwood

Yesterday I was delighted to be 1 of 18 funds out of 377 applications to pitch to a room of LPs. I'd like to thank the team at Onstage for putting this together as well as the sponsors (Cooley LLP, Key Finance Harmonic Novabook Words+Pixels). For any institutional investors who want a glimpse at this shortlist, look no further. A highlight for me was the pitch from William Morgan, PhD who I thought was highly differentiated on thesis: backing artist-founders (not my world at all but I thought it sounded very cool). Good luck to all my fellow GPs on your raise. Here you go: - Twin Path Ventures: AI specialist, investing early to win the race to multiple recursion points. $50m deployed since 2023 in 36 early stage startups. Around a third are spin-outs from the UK's university ecosystem. - Cornerstone VC - pre-seed and seed with a people first approach. People assessment is seen as a core edge. - Yvonne Bajela of EverTrue Capital: proven unicorn investor, previously backed Marshmallow. Looks at deals no-one else is looking at. - Resurge Growth Partners- addressing the VC-PE gap, bringing the PE playbook to VC. - Shapers - investing in fintech with strong claims that this sector is not dead and has huge room for growth. - Never Lift - investing in Logistics, Mobility, and Critical Infrastructure. - Navid Meyer of fund OTF - invested in pre-seed deals like Lovable - ellipsis - early stage defensible AI with operators from Google and Apple. - JamJar Investments- huge focus in consumer, backed companies like Wild, Deliveroo, Runna - redalpine - established fund, 20 years of top quartile returns, over 100 investments across 8 flagship funds. - Common Magic- Sarah Drinkwater - investing pre-seed in products with community at their core. - William Morgan, PhD of a fund called Restless Egg. Investing in artist founders with a six-month incubator program. - Empirical Ventures - investing pre-seed in deep tech venture scientists in the UK and Europe. Deeply technical team. - rule30 - algorithmic VC fund - no humans in IC - Odyssey Ventures- investing pre-seed and seed in AI and deep tech with a unique angle of providing US access. - Boost Capital Partners - investing in companies that build competitive advantage through superior customer experience. -BNVT Capital - GPs with proven track record at Gates Foundation and Hedosophia. Data driven approach. -Left Lane Capital- late seed to series B. Focus on high growth and excess unit economics.