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Balderton Capital 2019
Finance and Risk Capital
Impact for scaleups
42
Companies backed
45%
Follow-on investments
14%
Investments outside of London
30
Growth-stage investments
Key sectors
Balderton Capital focuses on Series A and B investments into European and US technology companies. In late 2019, it was cited as Europe’s most active Series A investor.
Balderton typically invests between $1-$20m into “companies with the potential to disrupt huge industries, and the ambition to scale globally.” Two-thirds of their investments in UK companies between January 2013 to June 2020 were at growth stage. A notable scaleup investment has been The Hut Group, (THG) in which the firm made five investments totalling £24.3m between 2010 to 2012, and whose IPO on the London Stock Exchange Main Market in 2020 was the UK’s largest tech IPO in the past five years.
The fund primarily invests in businesses based in the UK, US and Europe. It takes a broad sector focus on technology and the internet as a whole but does not invest in life sciences or cleantech. Investments in UK scaleups this year include KBox, smol and WageStream.
Last year the firm launched Liquidity I, a new $145m fund dedicated to buying equity stakes from early shareholders in European-founded, high growth, scaleup technology companies. At the close of 2019, it launched a $400m early-stage fund to support Series A rounds across Europe.
The firm has a “Build platform” to provide talent, marketing, finance and legal services to support companies as they scale, and to connect founders and their team to an active peer community. The firm provides guidance on talent acquisition and global expansion, as well as publishing guides on topics such as employee equity schemes and optimising board structures. Scaling portfolio companies have access to the firm’s executive council, which consists of leaders in the global technology industry.
