insights and news

The consumer technology (ConsumerTech) sector is entering a new era, shaped by advancements in technology, shifting consumer behaviours, and a now-established focus on sustainability and wellness. From hyper-personalised services that improve health outcomes to decentralised platforms that empower creators, startups are evolving to meet the demands of a hyper-connected, value-driven generation of customers. In [...]

The global workforce is undergoing a seismic shift towards flexibility, remote work, and project-based hiring. Yet, traditional insurance products remain tethered to outdated, localised frameworks that fail to address the cross-border, dynamic nature of modern work. Recruitment agencies and managed service providers (MSPs) often bear the administrative burden of onboarding contractors while ensuring compliance with [...]

The FinTech industry has seen exponential growth over the past decade, and with a current global market value of $245bn that is projected to reach over $1.5tn by 2030, huge opportunity remains. Yet, within this rapidly growing sector, female founders still face notable disparities, particularly in securing venture capital funding. In 2022, less than 10% [...]

The FinTech sector has undergone remarkable growth over the past decade. The UK’s status as a FinTech superpower, set against a conducive regulatory and investment backdrop, has led to a flywheel of talent and adoption. At Love Ventures, FinTech companies make up a core part of our portfolio, with a number of active investee companies [...]

Productivity among knowledge workers across the UK, and much of the Western World, has remained largely stagnant since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Despite sitting on vast amounts of valuable unstructured data, many real estate firms struggle to leverage it for making better and faster business decisions. Highly paid property professionals often find themselves [...]

The Future of Work is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements, societal changes, and shifting generational preferences. As we look ahead, the opportunities for better outcomes for individuals and businesses are growing, especially in the UK, where there’s a significant productivity challenge. At Love Ventures, the Future of Work is one of our core investment [...]

Today marks a special milestone for us - Love Ventures turns four years old. It’s hard to believe how much has changed since we launched. Do you remember what the world looked like four years ago? It was a time of profound change and upheaval. Lockdowns, face masks, Zoom calls, and social distancing became the [...]

It’s commonplace for Client Services companies to use empirical data to win new customers, and yet rely on gut feel to renew and grow existing customers. The modus operandi entails Client Service teams building excel sheets to track client relationships and satisfaction with RAG statuses and recording where each team member’s time is spent manually [...]

This week, we published a new report looking at the world of Corporate Venture Capital funds accessible here. The report provides insights from 100+ global CVC investors with over £20 billion in assets under management deployed into over 600 startups and VCs per year. It’s the first time such a comprehensive analysis has been conducted [...]

We’re always on the lookout for startups that not only have the potential to disrupt industries but also to create meaningful change in the world. As technology continues to shake up every aspect of our lives, from financial services to e-commerce, the world of philanthropy has really struggled to keep up with the pack. [...]

The food sector represents a third of global greenhouse gas emissions; from production and processing through to transportation, feeding the world causes a huge amount of pollution. As such, food companies are under mounting pressure from customers, investors, and regulators to reduce their carbon emissions. And fast. In response, many are making lofty commitments [...]

We’re big believers in try-before-you-buy. For us this means testing out all of our consumer-facing products ourselves before we ‘do the work’ on it as a potential investment. So when we came across a little known food marketplace called HomeCooks way back in August 2022, we did exactly that. And it didn’t work. No [...]

Productivity of knowledge workers in the UK has been largely flat since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. There is too much noise, too much content and not enough genuinely game-changing innovation that has breathed new life into the status quo of decades old real estate firms who ultimately have very similar propositions. Meanwhile these [...]

More than half of UK adults worry about how they'll fund their retirement. Meanwhile there's £20bn worth of missing pensions in the UK and it's only rising as people switch jobs more and more frequently, all set against a backdrop of new pension auto-enrolment laws. This switching (9% are now [...]

All your income and employment data is still locked in bank statements and inaccessible HR & Payroll systems. This very same data is also required at almost all major life events. Whether it's getting a job, taking out a loan, or buying/renting a home, you'll be asked to prove that you are who you [...]

Love Ventures invests in Tembo’s £5m investment round led by Aviva and Ascension Ventures. House prices have increased at an unprecedented rate in the UK: over 227% since the 1970s. At the same time, wages have remained stagnant, the cost of living and renting is on the rise, and lender criteria [...]

We see a huge number of PropTech solutions that are making the home buying process slicker, easier, more cost efficient, faster, and so on; these are all extremely worthwhile and welcomed but rarely get to the crux of the housing crisis. So when Wayhome’s founder Nigel walked in (virtually) and declared they’d worked out [...]

Love Ventures invests in Connect Earth’s £4.5m seed round to democratise access to sustainability data for financial institutions. Consumers and companies are waking up to the realities of the climate crises and its business implications. This is primarily due to: i) Changing consumer spending behaviours The environmental values of a company [...]

As a founder raising capital, choosing the right investors is hugely important. You’re going to be wedded to them for many years to come, through the good and the bad times, so make sure you’re really comfortable with them.When talking to investors, treat it as a two way process. We’ve thought carefully about how we [...]

You generally hear murmurs about founders like Liam before you meet them; in this case, it was the ex rugby player turned KYB (Know Your Business) specialist that was shaking up business onboarding. We’d been looking for a company playing in this space for a little while. KYB is a huge and deeply broken [...]

Half of all the Fortune 500 companies were created in a crisis. Closer to home, 12 of the UK's Unicorns were founded in the aftermath of the ‘08 Financial Crisis alone, with 4 of these exiting so far (Wise, FARFETCH, Funding Circle UK, Zoopla), and a further third of the UK's ‘Soonicorns’ also born in [...]

Marcus joins James Ker-Reid from Sales for Startups on the Crossing the Void podcast to share how Love Ventures approaches investing and how founders can better navigate the gap between Seed and Series A. Here is the link to have a listen. And if you're a founder 'crossing the void', we'd [...]

Love Ventures leads Grubby’s £3m investment round to facilitate society’s transition to plant-based eating. Un-fun fact: Meat and dairy account for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consumers are taking note. The rise of plant-based diets Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the ethical, environmental and health implications associated with [...]

We're delighted to share that we’ve been named as finalists for the Best EIS Investment Manager - New Entrant at the 2022 Growth Investor Awards! These awards celebrate the role of the UK startup investment community in job and wealth creation, focusing on impact beyond investment. You can find out more about the awards [...]

Whilst perched on the side of a volcano in Guatemala negotiating my contract (!), it could have felt like a pretty big leap of faith to be leaving a bulge bracket bank of 90,000 people to join an up-and-coming VC fund called Love Ventures. The fact that it didn’t I’d put down to two factors.First, [...]

Tom Allason is a serial marketplace entrepreneur. He’s best known for having founded eCourier and more recently Shutl, which sold to Royal Mail and eBay respectively. And now for his next trick, he’s taking on the rental market. The $2tn global ​​long term home rental market is the largest and [...]

The future of work looks different to that of 10 years ago. The traditional notion of having one job for life has become obsolete, with Millennials and Gen-Zs less loyal to their employers than ever before. Covid’s mark on job satisfaction We are in the middle of what's called the 'Great [...]

General Partners Adrian and Marcus arrived safely on Sunday in Giresun to complete Leg 9 of #Ride25’s London to Sydney charity cycle ride. 🇹🇷 It was the latest stage of the Pioneers Round The World Cycle Adventure. Leg 9 from Ankara to Giresun in Turkey was the 9th of 25 [...]

We first met Leon when he rocked up at our PropTech event in Borough earlier this year and we knew straight away they were onto something, in a space that has been totally overlooked until now. As it stands, anyone wanting to lease out an office space faces a [...]

We are often asked by investors what EIS is and why they should care. The EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) is a scheme introduced by the government in 1994 to help small companies raise funds and grow by offering generous tax reliefs to investors. Below we’ve outlined what these tax reliefs looks [...]

Love Ventures leads Secret Spa’s £1.5m fundraising round to make beauty and wellness treatments a more convenient and quality experience. Beauty and wellness is a big market. The sector is worth +£270bn annually in the UK, Europe and US, with the fast-growing UK market accounting for £8bn. Until recently, personal care [...]

Love Ventures invests in Banked’s £2.4m investment round joining investors Acrew Capital, Backed VC, Force Over Mass Capital and Kuvi Capital to build the global payments network on modern banking rails. Card payments come at a cost to both merchants and consumers Legacy debit card operators Visa and Mastercard traditionally offer merchants [...]