A new venture platform that will fund all stages of the digital technology business lifecycle, from entry to exit, has been launched.
Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) is being funded by three institutional investment partners — the British Business Bank, Legal & General (L&G) and Woodford Investment Management — and plans to deploy an initial £150m in investment to help British businesses to startup, scaleup and succeed, supercharging growth across all UK regions.
Jamie Coleman, founder of Codebase is to be Investment Lead and CodeBase will provide scaleup support and space in multiple technology clusters around the UK.
ADV’s reach and expertise will extend to digital technology hubs across the UK including Belfast, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford and Sheffield.
ADV will inject evergreen patient capital at early stage (via microfunds, accelerators and incubators), growth stage (Series A), and late stage (Series B, C and beyond). It will also deploy funding and expertise to accelerate the scaling of its portfolio companies.
ADV’s long-term aim is to invest upwards of £200m every year into UK-based startups and scaleups via its evergreen platform.
Lee Strafford, CEO of ADV, said: “We have established ADV to help more of our emerging startups and scaleups to ‘scalebig’. There are world class innovators in every corner of the UK. We intend to seek out the best investment opportunities at scale and ensure these companies, irrelevant of size and location, have the support they need to supercharge growth.”
Keith Morgan, CEO of British Business Bank, said: “This new venture platform, supported by our Enterprise Capital Funds programme, will help innovative digital technology businesses to startup and scaleup rapidly and successfully throughout all stages of their development. We are pleased to be a part of this exciting new venture, and look forward to seeing businesses across the UK benefiting from the much needed long-term funding it will provide.”
The ADV team is made up of industry experts and proven entrepreneurs with extensive experience of scaling businesses across all stages and across the globe.
The team includes:
Lee Strafford, CEO – founder of Plusnet and Dotforge.
Keith Teare, Chair – founder of Easynet, RealNames, Archimedes Labs and co-founder of TechCrunch.
Mike Dimelow, VP Investment – formerly VP of Strategic Business Development at ARM Ltd.
David Carr, VP Finance and Operations – co-founder of Dotforge and CitiLogik, formerly SVP Access for AOL UK.
Frank DiGiammarino, VP Ecosystem Development – formerly Director in the World Wide Public Sector Team at Amazon Web Services, and Deputy Director of the US Recovery Implementation Office which reported to US Vice President Biden.
Andy Mulvenna, Investment Lead – founder of Brightpearl.
Jamie Coleman, Investment Lead – founder of Codebase.
David Fogel, Investment Lead – formerly Deputy Director and Head of Acceleration at Wayra UK.
ADV will also work closely with the following strategic partners:
CodeBase, the UK’s largest technology incubator, which will provide scaleup support and space in multiple technology clusters around the UK.
Venture capital firm Northstar Ventures, which will deliver investment operations.
Corporate advisor Numis Securities, which will offer ongoing financial advisory support, initially via its Venture Broking team.
