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British Patient Capital announces £20m commitment to Connect Ventures’ fourth fund

Press release 05 September 2023

British Patient Capital announces today a £20 million commitment to Connect Ventures Fund IV, the firm’s fourth fund, which has closed at $80 million with a final close to come later this year.

British Patient Capital is joining other existing investors including De Agostini, Big Society Capital, Top Tier and Molten Ventures. The investment follows a cornerstone commitment by British Patient Capital to Connect’s third fund in 2020.

Connect is a London-HQ’ed pre-seed and seed focused venture capital firm. Often the first institutional investor in the companies it backs, Connect has built a distinctive reputation for its expertise in empowering product-obsessed founders to build venture scale companies. The firm has previously invested in category-defining product-led companies such as Typeform, TrueLayer, Lifebit, Oyster and Kheiron.

Their investment team invest across a range of specialisms, including B2B SaaS, Fintech, Consumer, Healthcare and Web3. Connect has already started deploying the fourth fund with recent investments in B2B Health, generative AI, payment infrastructure, B2B SaaS and developer tools.

Connect Ventures invests in some of the UK’s most promising early-stage companies to provide both the capital and operating expertise they need to help them scale and realise their full potential. This aligns closely with our mission of driving investment in innovative companies led by ambitious founders. We are delighted to continue our relationship with Connect as they build on their successes and help entrepreneurs develop their products as successful, high growth companies. Catherine Lewis La Torre CEO of British Patient Capital

Commenting on the firm’s strategy

At Connect, we’re low volume, high conviction, high support VCs. We don’t spread ourselves too thin. Each of the partners leads 2-3 investments per year so we have time for our founders. Connect Ventures is an intentionally designed, single-stage VC. We are pre-seed and seed stage specialists. We are the first believers and we love the 0-1 phase which is why we do so many first rounds. Pietro Bezza Co-founder and Managing Partner, Connect

Further Information

Notes to Editors

About British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital Limited is a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. Its mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative firms led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build large-scale businesses. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has more than £3bn of assets under management, investing in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses in accessing the long-term financing they require to scale up. Find out more about British Patient Capital.

British Business Bank plc and its subsidiary entities are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party of Tenpoint Therapeutics or its products or services.

About Connect Ventures

Connect Ventures is a thesis-led venture capital firm based in London and investing across Europe. We lead seed investments in purpose-led founders obsessed with solving hard problems at scale by creating products and companies that people love.

Our thesis is that in both B2B and consumer software companies, product and user experience are critical to building category leaders. We look for founders with global ambitions who put product and user experience at the centre of what they do.

Established in 2012, Connect is led by its three General Partners, Pietro Bezza, Rory Stirling and Sitar Teli. Connect has backed over 50 startups from a range of industries across both B2B and consumer software. Our current portfolio includes Citymapper, Typeform, Soldo, Truelayer, Curve, Kheiron and Fiit.

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