Fund I closed December 2020. Fund II, November 2021. Fund III, April 2023. We moved to an evergreen structure, became FCA regulated in July 2024, and this year we saw our first capital returned to investors: a full-arc exit, from early-stage conviction all the way through to a result. Five years of patient work, visible at last.

Patience in this business isn't passive. It's the hardest active choice you make, every single day.

That lesson didn't come from a textbook. It came from becoming a father.

The same month Adrian and I started dreaming up Love Ventures, I met the woman I'd go on to marry. I didn't know that then, and yet, looking back, the timing says something. She was already building her own thing, a solo consultancy she'd put real conviction behind. Two people who'd each decided to back themselves, finding each other mid-leap.

What that meant in practice was that we both understood the other's world without having to explain it. The late calls, the quiet anxiety before a big decision, the way a deal or a client can colonise your headspace at the worst possible moment. There was no illusion on either side about what we were each carrying.

It also meant that when our son arrived in January 2023, and our daughter in March 2025, we had to figure out - together, imperfectly, on the move - how two people building demanding things make space for a family that deserves their full attention. We're still figuring it out, there are points of conflict and there are weeks that don't balance. However, there is an understanding, hard-won and ongoing, about what we're each trying to do and why.

Kicking a ball around the garden with my three-year-old son, holding my daughter's hand as she takes her first wobbly steps, and knowing both of them are going to grow up in the world your portfolio companies are helping to shape - that changes something. Longevity stops being an investment principle and becomes something you feel.

There's a version of impact investing that trades returns for conscience but that's not what we do. The founders we back are building for durable, real-world problems, and durable problems make for durable businesses. The most resilient companies we've seen are the ones solving something that doesn't go away when sentiment shifts or a macro cycle turns.

Parenthood didn't soften my investment lens, it focussed it. We ask harder questions now about whether a problem is real and lasting, whether the founder has the conviction to stay in it for the long game, and whether the business is built to compound, not just to exit quickly and expensively.

Longevity has always been a core value at Love Ventures and now it's also something I feel in my bones.

I want to say something about doing this with a co-founder who is also my brother, because I think it matters more than most people acknowledge.

Adrian and I have disagreed, pushed back on each other, divided and conquered, and shown up for each other across six years of building. There is a particular kind of trust that comes from a lifetime of knowing someone: their blind spots, their strengths, what they sound like when they're worried even when they're saying they're fine.

The founders we back are often building with co-founders too so we understand that dynamic from the inside. The relationship at the centre of a company is as important as anything else, maybe more so. We look for it, and we invest in it.

Six years in, I don't have a tidy conclusion - and that's sort of the point. The uncertainty hasn't gone away. What's changed is that I'm no longer waiting for it to resolve. I've got two good reasons to stay in this for the long run, and a portfolio of founders I believe in just as much.

To every founder building through the doubt right now: we see you.