British Patient Capital makes cornerstone commitment to Connect Ventures latest fund

25th June 2020, London: British Patient Capital, a subsidiary of the British Business Bank, has made a cornerstone commitment to Connect Ventures’ third fund as it announces its £65m close today.

The Fund will invest primarily at the seed stage, backing ambitious, purpose-led founders across all B2B and consumer software categories including SaaS, fintech, digital health and the future of work.

Connect has already started deploying the fund with recent investments in a talent enablement platform, a personal finance app and a childcare platform.

Sitar Teli, co-founder and Partner at Connect Ventures said: “We’ve intentionally created a low volume, high conviction, high support investment firm to back founders for the long-term. British Patient Capital’s commitment has been central to raising our largest fund yet. The larger fund, targeting the same number of seed investments as before, will enable us to get the right amount of capital and support to founders.

Our early investments in Citymapper, Kheiron and Truelayer are a demonstration of the success of this approach.”

Catherine Lewis La Torre, CEO, British Patient Capital said: “Our mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative companies across the UK, led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build successful world-class businesses.

Connect’s focused support to some of the UK’s highest potential early stage companies with knowledge, networks and significant capital, has been instrumental in accelerating their scale-up journey from seed to Series A and beyond. As the UK’s largest domestic venture LP, we are able to make significant commitments to individual funds, ensuring managers with compelling strategies, like Connect, can back their companies through multiple rounds.”

ENDS

About British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital is the trading name of British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. It forms part of the British Business Bank’s commercial arm.

Its mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative firms led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build large scale businesses. British Patient Capital has been given new resources of £2.5bn and will deliver a programme designed to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses in accessing the long-term financing they require to scale up. Find out more at britishpatientcapital.co.uk.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. Neither British Business Bank nor its principal operating subsidiaries are authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc websiteLink opens in a new window.

British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

The investment from British Patient Capital into Connect Ventures Three, LP does not amount to any endorsement or warranty from British Patient Capital, the British Business Bank PLC, or the government of the UK.

About Connect Ventures

Connect Ventures is a thesis-led venture capital firm based in London and investing across Europe. We lead seed investments in purpose-led founders obsessed with solving hard problems at scale by creating products and companies that people love.

Our thesis is that in both B2B and consumer software companies, product and user experience are critical to building category leaders. We look for founders with global ambitions who put product and user experience at the centre of what they do.

Established in 2012, Connect is led by its three General Partners, Pietro Bezza, Rory Stirling and Sitar Teli. Connect has backed over 50 startups from a range of industries across both B2B and consumer software. Our current portfolio includes Citymapper, Typeform, Soldo, Truelayer, Curve, Kheiron and Fiit.