Since 2020, we have launched four funds, invested in more than 30 UK technology startups, and built a growing community of founders, investors, advisors and partners. Along the way we have faced both headwinds and tailwinds:

Fund I, launched in 2021 at the height of a frothy VC cycle, achieved a top quartile graduation rate to Series A but also taught us hard lessons on portfolio failure and the risks of B2C dependence.

Fund II has seen standout progress, with companies such as Tembo and Kato raising significant rounds from multi-stage growth investors and expanding rapidly.

Fund III is off to a strong start, with early portfolio performance putting it among the top quartile of funds globally based on Carta data, and our first exit already on the horizon.

Fund IV has been fully deployed, giving investors a diversified portfolio of early-stage companies, with momentum already building across its investments.

Through all of this, one constant has remained: our conviction in backing founders who are building solutions to the UK’s productivity crisis across fintech, future of work and consumertech.

Time has flown by and it’s sometimes hard to remember the early days of starting with a couple of laptops, Adrian part-time initially, and working out how to actually launch a VC fund. We were initially a ‘mentor’ to our first fund from a regulatory perspective and are very grateful for the helpful advice we received from other General Partners on getting started (you know who you are).

At the heart of Love Ventures are the entrepreneurs who trust us as partners. Their vision, ambition and resilience inspire us daily:

Tembo is now one of the UK’s fastest growing consumer fintechs, with more than £2bn of assets under administration just five years in, and a £12 million Series B led by Goodwater Capital, who previously backed renowned UK fintechs Monzo and Tide. The company has also been recognised as the UK’s Best Mortgage Broker at the British Bank Awards for five consecutive years.

Kato is transforming the way the real estate industry operates, working with global players such as Knight Frank and JLL. The company has expanded into 17 countries, is achieving consistent sales growth and is firmly establishing itself as a category leader. 

Just Move In has partnered with IKEA to launch its new home move and setup service, now managing more than 15,000 moves per month.

Fifth Dimension is the AI-powered operating system for document-heavy industries. Since raising a £5.65 million seed round led by Speedinvest, it has signed major clients including Eastdil Secured, Grainger and Canary Wharf Group, with usage growing fivefold year-on-year.

Detected is building the trusted name in KYB (Know Your Business). They help companies consolidate all business and individual identity verification, AML screening, compliance workflows and ongoing monitoring.

Mojo is on a mission to elevate the world's sexual wellbeing by tackling psycho-sexual issues that are on the rise, as we encroach on a global crisis of connection with falling male fertility, growing social isolation and declining populations. With over half its users in the US and its latest product growing rapidly month on month, the founders are looking to do to sexual well-being similar to what Calm and Headspace have done to mental well-being: make it cool, expected and mainstream. 

Nothing embodies the magic of early stage investing more than working with one of our founders to completely reimagine their product based on user feedback, turning what seemed like a setback into their breakthrough moment - it's exactly this kind of rapid evolution and founder adaptability that makes us excited to invest at the earliest stage. Bringing vision to life and seeing real world impact.

We have always believed that founders need more than funding to succeed. That is why we are hands-on investors who step in with close and committed support when it is needed, and step back to give founders the freedom to grow when it is not.

While every founder journey is different, our value-add typically centres on three areas: fundraising, go-to-market, and network introductions. Our community is uniquely rooted in the combination of the Fund’s advisors, more than 200 investors and founders across our funds, and strong relationships with top-tier VC firms.

To make this support tangible, we have built tools and programmes that help founders scale faster and smarter:

Workshops and Resources: We run regular founder workshops on topics that help founders and their leadership teams grow their business, drawing on the expertise of our community. Alongside this, the Love Ventures Founder Resource Hub will soon be launched, providing practical guides, templates and playbooks for getting Series A ready and running a top-tier fundraising process.

Co-Investment Service: Launched in late 2024, the Love Ventures Co-Investment Service enables our investor community to double down on top-performing portfolio companies through off-market opportunities. Its first investment gave our investors access to Tembo’s £12 million Series B round, led by Goodwater Capital, backers of Monzo and other global fintech unicorns. Tembo is on a remarkable growth trajectory. In the past year the company has helped more than 4,000 first-time buyers purchase their first home, increased customer numbers from 35,000 to 120,000, and surpassed £2bn in assets under administration in its savings products, all while maintaining a Trustpilot score of 4.6.

Growing Support Network: We are actively developing a network of operators, advisors and business leaders from Europe to Silicon Valley who are ready to support our founders as they build and scale.

Being hands-on isn't just about offering advice - it's about rolling up our sleeves when founders need it most. Whether it's jumping into strategy sessions during a pivotal product launch, helping introduce or negotiate a critical partnership deal, or simply being the sounding board during those inevitable moments of doubt, we want to be the first person our founders call when things are going well and just as importantly, when they're facing their toughest challenge. 

As the firm has grown, so too has the infrastructure around it.

Our core team has grown to seven, with plans for further expansion. Over the past year, Alice Knibbs and Bill Corfield were promoted to Principal, while we welcomed Olly Norman and Orissa Uppal to strengthen our Investor Relations function. The core team is backed by a growing roster of Venture Partners who support both the firm’s growth and the success of our portfolio companies.

Love Ventures is now directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a Sub-Threshold Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM) and we have internalised key compliance functions (AML and KYC) as part of this process. This step allows us to bring operations fully in-house and provide a more streamlined experience for both founders and investors. We are grateful to our previous partners at Sapphire Capital Partners LLP and Frank Investments, whose support was invaluable as we scaled Love Ventures and embedded strong customer-centric practices.

We have also brought strategic growth investment into the Love Ventures business, which provides additional firepower to diversify our products, deepen portfolio support and grow the team.

Our Investment Committee, predominantly consisting of exited founders and operators, brings deep expertise from across global tech, including Dan Cobley (ex-MD of Google UK/I and co-founder of ClearScore and Salary Finance), Kelly Ducourty (Workday, ex-Google and UiPath), Rob Hamilton (ex-Instant Group), John Lunn (ex-PayPal) and Jules Pancholi (ex-Skyscanner). Their guidance has been instrumental in supporting both our investment decisions and our founders’ journeys.

In addition, we are proud to have Andrew Hynard (ex-UK Deputy Chairman of JLL) and Carolyn Maddox (ex-Bridges Fund Management) as Senior Advisors, further strengthening the breadth of expertise available to our portfolio companies.

We have continued to bring our community together through our flagship event, London Live. What began as a relaxed gathering of the Love Ventures investor community has since evolved into a bi-annual marquee event, featuring fireside chats with industry leaders and panels with portfolio founders. The March 2025 edition introduced a new format, combining thought-provoking conversations with practical insights on how technology is reshaping work and productivity in the UK. This September, London Live will return to central London, with a focus on the real-world impact of AI on productivity across industries. We look forward to bringing our community together once again on 16 September. Register here for tickets.

While only around 20% of UK VCs have actually worked at a startup or scaleup themselves, we recognised early on that this lack of operational experience creates a fundamental disconnect between investors and the founders they're meant to support. At Love Ventures, we've intentionally built our team with empathetic, founder-friendly investors who are former operators themselves, because we believe that having walked in entrepreneurs' shoes makes us better partners in both the successes and the inevitable challenges of building a company.

In July 2025, we unveiled the next chapter of Love Ventures’ identity. More than just a visual refresh, this rebrand signals a renewed focus on the mission that underpins our work: backing the founders driving a more productive, inclusive and forward-looking Britain.

The new identity is cleaner, more confident and founder-first in its tone. It balances modern simplicity with a clear sense of purpose, reflecting the evolution of our investment thesis across fintech, future of work and consumertech.

Alongside the rebrand, we relaunched www.loveventures.co.uk from the ground up. The new site is designed to serve our core communities of founders, investors and advisors with a more intuitive experience. Over time, it will grow into a central hub where founders can submit opportunities, investors can track fund participation, and advisors can access key updates and tools.

This evolution is more than aesthetic. It reflects our role in the ecosystem: ensuring that our online and offline presence actively supports portfolio success, deepens investor confidence and attracts high-quality founder deal flow for future funds. Early feedback from both founders and investors has been overwhelmingly positive, and we will continue to build on this foundation as we scale our visibility and reach.

We’re super proud of Love Ventures 2.0. We’ve got through our teenage years and have now reached adulthood and this rebrand shows a maturity and new ambition that we’re excited to have launched this summer. For us as General Partners personally, it’s also been about ‘letting go’ and trusting experts which is important as we scale the business.

Looking forward, our focus is sharper than ever:

1. Backing founders who are addressing the UK’s structural challenges in wealth creation, productivity and the future of work.

2. Driving returns through a growing portfolio of companies that are scaling rapidly across fintech, future of work and consumertech.

3. Growing our investor community and building stronger ties with the adviser market through new distribution partnerships.

4. Supporting founders with not just capital, but the strategic guidance, networks and community needed to scale their businesses.

The most exciting thing about the next five years is that we’re just getting started. Venture capital is constantly evolving and we see a future of further challenges to the traditional 2 and 20 model, driven by financial and technological innovation.

It’s also a future full of opportunity, both for us and other emerging venture capital brands, companies and platforms, both in terms of investment and also talent as we see more established partnerships evolve or even dissolve over time. We are building Love Ventures brick by brick and are here for the long term.

Five years in, we know this journey would not be possible without our founders, our investors and the wider community that surrounds Love Ventures. Thank you for your trust, your support and your belief in building something better.

Here is to the next five years, and to the founders shaping the future and propelling UK productivity.

Adrian and Marcus