Ada Ventures

We believe VC should be open source. That's why we're releasing the first ever 💥Ada Ventures Impact Report today 💥 To read the report: https://lnkd.in/erFbK5M7 Since we launched, we've tried to be as transparent as possible about how we're building Ada Ventures and how we make our investment decisions. We do this because: 1️⃣ We believe being open helps VCs do better by removing places to hide 2️⃣ We want other people to see, adopt and evolve our ideas 3️⃣ We want to be held to account and know where we could do better Today we're taking that one step further. This report dives into our thesis, our impact, and the current portfolio in a ton of detail. We're laying it all out on the table. Insights include: 1️⃣Progress against our Inclusive Alpha® goals 2️⃣How our Ada Scout and Angel programmes are developing, inc.: 👉 In Ada Fund II, 6/19 (32%) investments so far have been sourced by Ada Scouts  👉The Ada Scouts have helped us reach 6x more all-Black teams and 10x more all-female teams than the UK benchmarks 3️⃣Diversity stats for our portfolio, inc.: 👉78% of Fund I and II companies have an underrepresented founder 👉56% have a woman founder (vs 28% of wider market – IWC 2024) 👉76% have a founder from an ethnic minority 4️⃣Growth stats from a selection of our portfolio companies - showing that inclusion and outsized returns go hand-in-hand.  Thank you to everyone who helped bring this report to life including: Francesca (Check) Warner (Founding Partner), Shanika Amarasekara MBE (Venture Partner: Impact) Xun Ning Choong, (Head of Operations and Impact Lead) and Carla Adol Designs. We are also grateful for the support we’ve had from the Limited Partner community. Thanks to their belief and backing, we now have £120m of assets under management. We’d like to highlight and thank the LPs who contributed to this report including: Joe Shamash, Investment Director, Better Society Capital Ken Cooper, Managing Director, Venture Solutions, British Business Bank Tamara Savic, Senior Investment Manager, Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO)  Dr Catherine Martin, Vice-Principal, Corporate Services, The University of Edinburgh Betsy Zimmerman, Co-Founding GP, First Close Partners The report highlights case studies of the high impact companies and founders we’ve backed including: The ESTHER team led by Carol Rossborough The Flexa team led by Molly Johnson-Jones The Organise team led by Nat Whalley The Greenworkx team led by Mat Ilic  The BlakBear team led by Dr. Max Grell PhD The Oxford Medical Products team led by Dr. Camilla Easter  The Toothfairy ™ team led by Dr. Deepak Singh Aulak The R.grid team led by Dr. Amber Michelle H. We would love to hear your feedback on these metrics and insights. 👇

At Ada Ventures we are taking action to create an on-ramp for future fund managers and foster and train future VCs through our Ada Scout and Ada Angel programmes. The programmes are part of our re-thinking of venture capital's structure from end to end, embedding inclusion in every part of the investment process, to drive best-in-class returns and impact. As the scout and angel community lead, I'm delighted to share that Ada Angels Arfah Farooq 🇵🇸 and Zandra Moore have been announced as the most influential women in UK Tech 2024 by ComputerWeekly.com Arfaf co-founded Muslamic Makers in 2016 as a networking group for Muslims in tech, design and development, and Zandra co-founded data analytics and AI firm @Panintelligence in 2010 with the aim of helping firms properly organise their data to more easily adopt AI. Here are some key stats on our Ada Scout and Ada Angel programmes: 👉🏽12-14% Total deal flow from the Ada Scout network average per quarter. 👉🏽32% Fund I & Fund II Investment from Ada Scout or Ada Angel referrals. 👉🏽112 Ada Scouts 👉🏽35 Ada Angels 👉🏽58% Women & 36% Men

What are some of the best practices for emerging fund managers to secure Limited Partners (LPs)... Diverse emerging fund managers are key to diversifying venture capital. So how can we help them approach potential limited partners (LPs) and what exactly are they looking for? Head to the comments to read the insight we captured on the night 👇 Ada Ventures is looking to have a positive impact on the whole industry. By 2030, as part of our impact goals, we aim to catalyse VC to make it more inclusive and help diversify the check writers in UK VC. One of our initiatives is a series of dinners to nurture conversations and relationships between some amazing diverse emerging fund managers and established LPs in our network. Some of these LPs have invested in Ada Ventures; some of these emerging fund managers are part of the Ada Ventures network. I wanted to thank Abel + Imray, the patent and trademark attorneys. We’re delighted by our partnership with them and their commitment to support diversity at the fund manager level. The night was a winning combination of talent, expertise, and potential. I’ve included everyone’s LinkedIn profiles so you can look them up and see what they’re doing. Limited partners: 👉 Dave Neumann, Molten Ventures 👉Michael Joyce, Isomer Capital 👉Sergio Ung, Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation 👉Scott Mackin, Emerging Manager LP, PE Partner. Fund managers: 👉Vera Elizabeth B., 4P CAPITAL 👉Rupa Ganatra Popat, Arāya Ventures 👉Gosbert Chagula MBE 👉Rebecca Hunt 👉Andy Davis, 10x10 👉Joy Jack, Nexterra Capital

#parent + #founder Last year, we were incredibly proud to have been the first VC in Europe to offer childcare support to #parentfounders. But when you’re the first to do anything, you can never be sure how it will be received. That’s why it’s such a joy to see the industry respond so positively, topped off by last night’s recognition as ✨Initiative of the Year✨ in the Investing in Women category at the Growth Investor Awards🏆. Awarded in partnership with British Business Bank. Head to the comments to see more about our approach 👇 In partnership with Ada portfolio company Bubble, we’re acknowledging one of the biggest barriers to entrepreneurship for parents, and mothers in particular. Yesterday’s recognition is a testament to our Inclusive Alpha® approach and our commitment to investing in the whole founder. We’ve been thrilled to see other funds model the initiative over the last year👏. Awards like this help spread the word and, we hope, inspire even more funds to take similar steps. Most importantly, to all the #parentfounders out there who are building category winners alongside raising happy and healthy humans: 👉 The frequent guilt and sacrifices 👉 The eternal time management struggle 👉 The sleep deprivation 👉 The herculean task of getting out of the door on time 👉 And the joy that your kids bring you as you continue to drive your high performing team forward We see you and we salute you!

What’s good Slush? ☃️

Europe's funding gap is gaping. According to today's Atomico State of European Tech report, gender metrics are either relatively stagnant or heading in reverse. ⬇️ At Pre-Seed, the number of all-women founding teams securing VC funding between 2021-2024 dropped to a paltry 4.9%. This is down from 13.2% between 2017-2020. ⬇️ At Series A, the numbers have dropped from 4.6% to 3.2% ➡️ At Seed and Series B, numbers are slightly up (now 5% and 1.7% respectively) but it's still a drop in the ocean Women are being funded less, paid less, promoted less. These numbers do not reflect the quality of founder talent we are seeing at Ada Ventures. ✅ 19% of Fund I and Fund II Ada Portfolio companies have an all-women founding team ✅ 56% have a woman founder ✅ 78% have an underrepresented founder The conclusion? Too many VCs are continuing to overlook women-led teams in the industry, whether consciously or unconsciously. Our approach to investing, Inclusive Alpha®, helps us find a truly diverse spectrum of founder talent whilst still driving outsized returns. 

This week, whilst much of the VC & tech industry is in Helsinki for Slush, London plays host to a major Healthcare conference, Jefferies. So big in fact that the conference has had to take over a third hotel this year, so many people wanted to be there. The Jefferies conference gave me the opportunity to bring together heathcare & techbio founders in the Ada Ventures portfolio, alongside co-investors, Limited Partners and friends in central London last night. The subject of the dinner was 'Promoting Health Equity' and, prompted by Tamsin Berry, Founding Partner at Population Health Partners and Chief of Staff at the Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford, we discussed four thematic areas: - Access to data - Next generation diagnostics - Race and gender disparities in healthcare - Mental Health and young people There were optimistic and practical discussions including ideas like creating an 'Open Health' system replicating the success of Open Banking, integrating Patient Participation and Involvement (PPI) into company strategies early on, restructuring the data compliance responsibilities so they don't fall so heavily on primary healthcare practitioners and many more. We will be sharing a full write up of these ideas here soon. Thank you to the founders, coinvestors, LPs and researchers who attended: Julia Fan Li co-founder & CEO, Micrographia Bio Dr camilla easter, CEO, Oxford Medical Products Arya Tandon Hana Janebdar, co-founder & CEO, Juno Bio Dr Jason Mellad Estia Ryan, Eka Ventures Akshata Agarwal, Frog Capital Katherine Jones, Hummingbird Ventures Dr. Vivienne Heyhoe, Wellspring Global Nadav Rosenberg, Saras Capital Matt Lomas, Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation Nicole Lai, Legal & General Professor Miranda Wolpert MBE, Wellcome Trust Jimmy Volmink, Wellcome Trust Jack O'Meara Matt Penneycard Alasdair Thong Jasmin Thomas Fleur Macdonald

#Portfolionews  #Healthequity  #Dinner Ada Fund II company Multiomic Health, a leading AI-enabled drug discovery company, announced discovery of novel endotypes and biomarkers for diabetic kidney disease. 👇 Head to the comments section to read the release and why we invested in MultiOmic Health These discoveries allow for precise patient segmentation and could significantly improve both clinical trial success rates and personalised care for DKD patients. “The discovery of these biomarkers marks a significant milestone in our mission to advance precision medicine for serious complications of metabolic dysfunction,” said Robert Thong, CEO of MultiOmic Health. “Our ability to identify patient endotypes and predict different progression rates and timelines at an early stage of the disease will help enable a shift from reactive to proactive care.” Robert will be attending our Pre-Jefferies Health Equity quarterly dinner this week in London. Featuring a fireside chat between Tamsin Berry OBE and our Founding Partner, Francesca (Check) Warner, we have brought together #founders, #LPs, #researchers and #investors to discuss how we can drive towards a more equitable healthcare system. #Founders Dr. Julia Fan Li, co-founder & CEO, Micrographia Bio  Dr. Camilla Easter, CEO, Oxford Medical Products  Arya Tandon Hana Janebdar, co-founder & CEO, Juno Bio  Dr Jason Mellad   #Investors  Estia Ryan, Eka Ventures  Akshata Agarwal, Frog Capital  Katherine Jones, Hummingbird Ventures   Chantal Noble Haldorsen, Freya Ventures   Dr. Vivienne Heyhoe, Wellspring Global   Nadav Rosenberg, Saras Capital    #LPs & #Researchers  Matt Lomas, Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation Nicole Lai, Legal & General  Professor Miranda Wolpert MBE, Wellcome Trust  Jimmy Volmink, Wellcome Trust #TeamAda & #Growthangels  Jack O'Meara Matt Penneycard Alasdair Thong Jasmin Thomas

#TeamAda are heading to Slush 🇫🇮 Michael Tefula and Diarra Smith are heading to Helsinki this November for Slush. If you’re an extraordinary talent building a breakthrough idea across climate equity, economic empowerment and healthy ageing contact the team to say hello. As a first cheque investor, we find and fund UK and Nordic technology companies solving the hardest problems we face. You can catch the team in Helsinki pre-Slush for the The Impact Office (TIO)’s second edition of the House of Impact (HOI) which brings together a new breed of family offices. Michael will be speaking on Day 1 on “The Power of Diverse Ownership: Unlocking Value and Innovation through Inclusive Strategies” alongside Andy Farquharson (a better monday) Linn-Cecilie Linnemann (LUMO Labs) and Kasia Piasecki, (European Women in VC).

At Guildhall this morning discussing how capitalism can help humanity flourish, building businesses with a noble purpose. Some stats shared by Douglas Sloan this morning - ImpactVC is the largest Impact Organisation of its kind with over 650 members, Better Society Capital has invested over £1bn in 100 funds. The UK represents 8% of the impact investing market. The gathering this morning brings together impactful funds including Zinc Monik Pham Paul Kirby Elodie Broad Balderton Capital Jon Coker Eka Ventures Ada Ventures Eva-Maria Dimitriadis The Conduit Iulia Tudor Ascension Ventures, and LPs and ecosystem builders Legal and General Rothschild M&G BVCA Impact Investing Institue & CEO Sarah Teacher City of London Corporation and many more.