insights and news

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 [...]