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Image Credits:Ada Ventures / The Ada Ventures team, 2024
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U.K.-basedAda Venturesis an strange VC . Instead of just talking about SaaS or AI , it hunts down founder addressing inclusivity and diversity . Instead of befuddle L-P with this methodological analysis , it ’s attracted them , thus hitting the $ 80 million mark for the final close of its second investment firm ( it reached $ 44.7 million as its first finale in October last year ) .
LPs in this fund include British Business Bank , The University of Edinburgh , Big Society Capital , Legal & General Capital , Atomico , The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark ( EIFO ) and Molten Ventures .
to boot , beginner investor have backed this novel fund , admit Taavet Hinrikus ( founder of Wise ) , and Illusian ( the family office of Ilkka Paananen , co - founder and CEO of Supercell ) .
With the second fund , Ada say it will invest between £ 250,000 and £ 1.5 million in pre - seed and seeded player - stage startups , with a “ significant amount ” allocated for follow - ons . So far , 12 investment have been made from the second fund . These will concentrate on climate equity , economical empowerment and healthy senescence .
Companies in the second fund so far admit Alive , BlackBear , Glowb , Greenwork , Materials Nexus , MultiOmic , Boldr and Juno Bio .
Launched in 2019 , Ada Ventures has also made it its mission to pay up attention to the diverseness of the founding team it backs . To that conclusion , it claim its portfolio is 14x more divers than the mediocre U.K. VC in term of gender and race / ethnicity . However , take that with a catch of salt , as that ’s its own resume data .
How does it go about hunting down divers founding teams , a chore that so many other VCs are seemingly unable to plight with ?
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The short answer is a diverse Scout and Angel web . The Ada Scout program comprises nigh 100 scouts and a 20 - strong cohort of “ Ada Angels ” who each have access to an investment toilet of up to £ 50,000 . Ada claims 30 % of the investments from Fund I and Fund II were sourced this way .
carbon monoxide gas - founder and CEO Check Warner told me : “ That Scout and angel programme is made up of people who ’ve never been angel investors before , who are new to hazard , and they ’re very diverse . People are often leader in various communities . That ’s produced 10 time the turn of all distaff team than diligence benchmarks . ”
Ada also has program for father to bring in hand brake childcare if they want it , provide by a startup calledBubble .
Warner said : “ We have launched this European - first offering for founders around , giving them all backup exigency child care . So if your nursery say you necessitate to pick up your kids and you ca n’t , we allow them to use this backing and we pay up for that . It ’s the first time that a VC has done that and we call back that ’s softheaded . We intend by offering inclusive sustenance to founders , we ’re going to help them be good business sector leaders . ”
Since diversity is such a core tenet of the Ada oblation , I asked Warner what she thought about the recent contestation involving Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures .
Asked bySiftedwhy Hoxton still did n’t have a distaff mate , he gave a long and winding answer which amounted to there being too few distaff spouse deserving poaching in Europe and U.S.-based I were better .
Did she consider Hoxton has make a leadership trouble itself ? “ I think every leader of every VC fund needs to do whatever we can to attract the best natural endowment in the diligence . There are lot of great chance and venture . It ’s going to farm in the next few years . And I think we all just need to check that that we make it as attractive as possible to work in VC for anyone . ”
