In a personal capacity, Catherine is an investor in some exceptional early-stage tech companies across the UK, US and Israel, investing alongside
Jonathan Lenson. Their portfolio includes:
PURPOSE AND SUSTAINABILITY
LIMITED PARTNER INVESTMENTS
OUR THESIS
Focus Sectors
Although Catherine and Jonathan don’t limit themselves to specific sectors, the companies they’ve been the most excited about tend to follow into one or more of the following three categories.
- HR Tech / People Leadership. Given Catherine’s professional background in the people space, and both of our experiences building companies and teams from scratch, we’re excited about tools that help drive the HR sector forward and create a better employee experience. We believe Progression is an outstanding solution in this space.
- Sports, media and entertainment. Jonathan has spent many years in and around this space, and we’re thrilled to be dipping our toes into the metaverse with Condense and the digital media world with xigxag.
- Female tech (broader than FemTech). We’re super interested to talk to teams who are building products that contribute to achieving gender equality; and more than a little obsessed by exploring how technology can be used to solve societal challenges standing in the way of women’s full economic participation.
Where we’re excited by the potential in a space, but we don’t feel like we have enough expertise ourselves to justify direct angel positions, we back other investors at a fund level to get exposure, as we’ve done with Air Street Capital, Common Magic and Creator Fund.
Businesses where our professional skillsets can be particularly helpful
Specifically, businesses with significant communications, public policy, and reputation challenges; or where practical experience in the Talent, Reward, and DE&I spaces can make the difference.
Doing the right thing
- Female and underrepresented founders. Building on Catherine’s background leading SoftBank’s diversity-focused funds in the US and Europe, and continuing work on diversity at Phoenix Court, we’re excited about putting our money where our mouth is in terms of doing something about the shocking stats on funding going to female and underrepresented founders.
- Social purpose. We’re excited by great commercial opportunities which have a core purpose of solving social challenges. Tandem and Shellworks are great examples in this space. We’re focused on not being London-centric, and the Creator Fund gives us access to the brightest innovation coming out of the world class universities across the country.
This will definitely be a work in progress over time, so we’re not feeling the need to limit ourselves to these spaces just yet, but this has been a helpful way to start structuring our thinking as we build our personal portfolio.
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