Silicon Roundabout Ventures connects capital with next-generation technologies in computer and physical science.

Silicon Roundabout Ventures

Our Mission at Silicon Roundabout Ventures (SRV) is to back entrepreneurs who are to shape the next-generation of technology and to provide superior returns to our investors through our Venture Capital funds.

We do this by capturing the explosive growth of early stage Deep Tech startups in the UK.

Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Distributed Ledgers and Cybersecurity are among our key investment themes.

SRV in a Nutshell:
* Founded in 2011, our monthly Silicon Roundabout meetup is now the largest tech community in Europe with 14,000+ tech startup entrepreneurs, engineers and founders
* In 2019 alone our network made us reach 5000+ startups, of which we
reviewed 1000+ and selected to present and/or work with about 100
* We also work with several tech incubators, accelerators, universities
and established corporate sponsors across Europe, including Oracle for Startups, Oxford University Innovation Centre, Cambridge University Accelerator, DataPitch, Founders Institute, Google for Startups, etc.
* Proprietary networks that give us access to a huge selection of Deep Tech talent, software developers, corporate decision makers and companies that are to shape the 4th Industrial Revolution
* Notable Seed / Series A startups selected to present at Silicon Roundabout in recent years: Humanising Autonomy, Medopad, Oxbotica, Fluidly, BlueVision Labs, VividQ, Monzo, Crypto Quantique among others.

Last week Dave Neumann and I hosted an AMA on raising £5m for a 1st time VC fund. Here the key akeaway lessons:

🚀 Where Should You Start? 

Anywhere. And embrace failure. I began by experimenting with different approaches, like running a syndicate and raising from governments.

I failed. And pivoted.

Start somewhere and learn by doing. 

Pivot and adapt as you go.

🎯 What’s Your Niche?
  
Find your unique edge based on your thesis and network. I focused on #deeptech because of my background and community.

Have a clear and distinct focus that sets you apart. You need to believe you are THE best in the world at doing what you are doing. 

Your belief needs to start "consuming you from the inside"

💡 Can Solo VCs make good decisions?

Even as a solo GP, I developed a structured process for evaluating deals, including writing detailed investment memos.

But the idea that "solo" doesn't work is flawed. 

Solo founders and individual investors can make as good or even better decisions than a group only moving with consensus.

🥇 Which Investors Should You Target?
 
Early on, I wasted time with LPs who weren’t a fit for a first-time fund. Focus on those interested in emerging managers—high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and certain funds of funds.

Know who you’re targeting.

🏆 How Do You Build Relationships?

Engage potential LPs by sharing your journey and vision, not just asking for money. I found success with LPs who were genuinely excited about my focus on deeptech and the community I’ve built.

Since I didn't have much of a personal network I used both cold outreach on LinkedIn and attending events. 

I avoided paying for big conferences, preferring organising or going to side events and on cold outreach I wanted to be specific to the kind of profiles who better fit my size, story and focus.

💪 What’s the Minimum Raise?

Know the smallest viable fund size you can work with. I was ready to close at £3 million but aimed for £5 million. This creates urgency and keeps you focused on your goals.

⚡ How Did You Manage To Set Things Up Without A Wealthy Background?

Sometimes you need to bet on yourself. I took a personal loan to cover legal fees before securing my first close.

It was a risk I don't recommend you take.

But I believed in the fund’s potential.

Understand the risks you’re willing to take.

...CONTINUES IN THE COMMENTS BELOW 👇👇👇

30 days to conquer my post fundraising catch-up & productivity hangover 🤢 

After 6 months of brutal fundraising to final-close my £5m solo VC fund, I have scars.

No not physical or mental health ones.

Of accumulated catch-up work, a productivity stack to rebuild, an overflowing inbox (I was at 0 in Feb 😭) and a firm to basically upgrade but with hyper-limited resources...

...and as a solo founder 😅 

So I want to set myself the challenge to get to inbox 0, rebuild myself into an execution machine, fix our tech stack (enhanced by our very own Ralph King 's AI), and set the foundation of our deeptech investment firm.

Here is the idea 💡

In April I shared a day by day diary of my fundraising tour ahead of the final fund closing: 

How about I do the same now as a 30 day live challenge?

🤔

Happy to share tips and lessons.

No idea how it will end.

What do you reckon?

Useful to anyone?

This would be day 0 if you shared some ♥️ and comment away :) 

Lmk if it's a dumb idea or you'd like to follow the journey💡

_____________________________________________


#deeptech #familyoffices #limitedpartners #venturecapital #angelinvesting

I'm a soloVC building my firm & community in public. 📢

On a mission to build a new kind of tech-driven VC firm at the intersection of Venture, Science and Community 👩‍🔬 👨‍💻 👫 💹

❤️ & Follow+ to keep up with the journey 🛣️

🚀 Quantum Consciousness? Buckle up! 🧠

Every now and again, a scientists proposes links, but quickly gets dismissed by the mainstream neuro-biology world.

One of the most notable was probably Penrose, with his Orch-OR theory proposed with anaesthesiologist  Hameroff.

But every now and again, a paper surfaces, and evidence keeps building up.

What's new, now?

🧠 💡 ⚛️ 

New research out of China makes another link in their "Entangled biphoton generation in the myelin sheath"

🧩 Here’s the wild part:
- Scientists have found that entangled photons —those quirky particles that can communicate instantly across any distance—might be generated inside the myelin sheath of our nerve fibres.

Yep, the same myelin that wraps around our neurons could be hosting quantum events!

- Photon entanglement in the brain could explain how neurons synchronise so quickly, faster than we ever thought possible.

- A couple of months back I had posted about another paper, from the Trinity College Dublin: Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures:

Which in short demonstrated that tryptophan networks in microtubules can exhibit superradiance, a quantum optical phenomenon and suggested that quantum coherence might be more prevalent in biological processes than previously thought. 

💥 Why it matters:

- If this minority (but growing) group of scientists is right, it could change how we think about the brain and consciousness—no more relying on classical physics alone, but possibly requiring quantum models to be truly understood.

- The implications?

As Richard Feynman said "Nature isn't classical, damn it, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly, it's a wonderful problem because it doesn't look so easy"

So if more research eventually validates a fundamental link between quantum mechanics effects and consciousness, there may come a time for Quantum Computers to be able to help in modelling and understanding consciousness, just as we hope they can model other fundamental aspects  of nature as a whole.

🌀 Isn't research like this not a further  reasons to be pushing for a working, fault-tolerant quantum computer to come together? Either way, it’s a thrilling ride to be considering phenoma so intimately link to being human as the workings of consciousness itself.

What do you think—quantum consciousness and potential usefulness of quantum computers in exploring the field: 

The real deal or just sci-fi?

Let’s talk! 

---

PS: Meanwhile , with Riverlane's series C, Cambridge here in Europe becomes the 2nd centre for quantum VC funding in the world after the Bay Area. 

Despite many #VC influences here or on X constantly predicating why Europe is irrelevant in tech, I beg to differ: 

Especially  in #deeptech ─European research and startups will be key to unlocking fundamental breakthroughs such as commercially viable quantum computers.

Deeptech founders, VCs: We are SOOO BACK! 🎉 📣 For all the nerds, the "I-Build-Hard-Shit" types, the European true tech and science founders and the investors backing them, we present you: The Deeptech Demo Day 2024 🤯 

Just days after messaging around, we already got support confirmation from some of the top Venture Capital firms investing in European deeptech companies. 💸 

Startup founders: this is your chance. 🚀

Make sure you drop a comment and a re-share to support ❤️ and keep up to date for when applications open.

But today, it's time for us money-folks! 

📣📣📣 Calling all fellow investors who are not afraid to write those early cheques in Hardware, Defence, Climate, Life Science and all those hardcore world-changing technologies VCs have been ignoring for too long.

We say: Enough! ✊ 

It's time to back more deeptech in Europe.

And if you agree and are an active investor not already on the list, feel free to apply on the first comment link below. 👇 (also in the pic)

👇👇👇

Last year the Deeptech Demo Day made over 100 direct introductions where VCs actively approached applicants (not counting all the off the record connections on pitch day!)

We couldn't track all the people since, but since I myself ended up investing in some of those amazing quality founders, we can tell you that the goal was hit: plenty of rounds did take place after those chats. 😻 🤟 💰 



Powered by Frontier Deep Tech (Dr Cristina Esteban Pardo) and Silicon Roundabout Ventures, and sponsored by Mishcon de Reya LLP and OVHcloud: the Deeptech Demo Day is free for all startups and open to anyone from any European country (not just EU).

❗ If you work with startups and want to help making this 2nd edition an even more skyrocketing success by joining our amazing sponsors, drop me a DM to find out more.

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🙏  Thanks to the early VC signups from both sides of the Atlantic (in no particular order): Giant Ventures Amadeus Capital Partners Bloc Ventures Earlybird Venture Capital Par Equity HV Capital IQT (In-Q-Tel) SCVC HCVC Manumit Capital 7percent Ventures imec.xpand VIGO Ventures Aloniq Unruly Capital QAI Ventures Begin Capital Dorilton ACT Venture Partners FP Solutions, LLC 

---

#deeptech #venturecapital #europeantech #hardware #climate #resilience #lifescience #familyoffices

Corporations have $ billions of dollars to invest, all the credibility, the experts, the track record...

And yet...

They fail.

Only a few startups become scaleups.

But when they do, the edge they have on innovation is so large that they, over and over, prove the old saying wrong: "you never get fired for hiring IBM".

Well. Actually, you should (not hire the corporate, hire the startup instead).

And if we are serious about Deeptech, we need a whole new cohort of tech companies to emerge to do what SpaceX did as an early pioneer: 

Take over challenging and hardware based industries.

While the final word will be with NASA, if the 2 astronauts who flew with Boeing return with SpaceX, it would mark the biggest setback to date for Boeing's space program, as the century-old company continues to reel from the safety crisis affecting its commercial jets.

"Both Boeing and SpaceX were awarded multibillion-dollar contracts in 2014 to provide the US space agency with rides to the ISS following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, which left the United States reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry its crew.

SpaceX succeeded in its first crewed test in 2020 and has carried dozens of people since.

Boeing's program, by contrast, has faced numerous delays amid setbacks ranging from a software bug that put the spaceship on a bad trajectory on its first uncrewed test, to the discovery that the cabin was filled with flammable electrical tape after the second."

It's a lesson for governments and other corporations alike when reviewing their supply chain procurement:

Be careful with IBMs.

Nvidias and SpaceXs actually win.

🔐 Unlocking Product-Market Fit in Challenging Industries - For Deeptech founders and investors 🤖

With Silicon Roundabout Ventures we've just published the full video from my keynote at the The AI Summit Series @ London Tech Week 2024

Sharing my insights from a decade of running the largest deeptech meetup community in the UK and now as General Partner of my soloGP deeptech VC.

I'll link the video in the comments below 👇 

Here the key highlights:

📊 Market Understanding:
- SMEs vs. Startups: SMEs play the game of improvement; startups play the game of step-change: you can't have a good idea or a good product ─you need to find what is it that you do ABSURDLY better than the status quo.
- Competitive Analysis: Identify anomalies to exploit.

🔧 Industrial Manufacturing Challenges:
- Complex Supply Chains: How to penetrate intricate global supply chains.
- Solutions: Modular design approach, pilot programs, and turning challenges into assets.

💡 Energy Market Insights:
- High CAPEX: Projects often require large upfront investments. Think: can you turn a challenge into a moat?
- Strategies: Align with global sustainability goals, focus on government support, and leverage partnerships.

🛡️ Defense Sector Navigation:
- Regulatory Compliance: Turn compliance challenges into competitive advantage by working with people who have insider contacts.
- Government Partnerships: Help agencies tackle critical needs with ready-to-deploy solutions.

🚀 Key Milestones for Product-Market Fit:
- Identify compelling value propositions. Why would an incumbent almost NEED to work with you.
- Segment the market (beachhead vs. long term): figure out Proprietary feedback mechanisms.

🌍 Post-COVID Adaptation:
- Regulations into Moats: Incorporate regulatory wins into your business model.
- Early Revenue: In a post 2021 world, even in deeptech you should prioritise early revenue streams to prove demand above revenue-less competition.
- Be Different: Dare to be different, avoid crowded spaces.

🤝 Partner Leverage:
- Early Wins: Secure early wins and build trust for larger projects.
- Customer Centricity: Map and segment customers to find innovative ways to win them over.

💬 What did I miss?

Share your thoughts!

_______________________________________________________
#deeptech #familyoffices #limitedpartners #venturecapital #angelinvesting

I'm a soloVC building my firm & community in public. 📢

On a mission to build a new kind of tech-driven VC firm at the intersection of Venture, Science and Community 👩‍🔬 👨‍💻 👫 💹

❤️ & Follow+ to keep up with the journey 🛣️

SILI

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