Focus This month marks my tenth year at Balderton, and my 12th year investing in and supporting UK & European technology companies. I've been fortunate to have met and worked with Europe's best technology entrepreneurs, and their teams, in an exceptionally broad range of industries. I've worked with businesses as they have
Tibber raises another $100M to help us use less energy. The round was led by Summa Equity, with existing investors including Balderton, Eight Roads and Schibsted Ventures. Tibber [https://tibber.com/en] is a smart energy provider that is revolutionising the energy industry with its innovative business model. As I have written about before [https://www.jameswise.com/untitled-9/], instead
Epic Games acquires Sketchfab in a $100M+ M&A deal We're delighted to congratulate the team at Sketchfab [https://sketchfab.com/], who today announce their acquisition by Epic Games. Balderton first invested in Sketchfab in late 2013, leading the companies seed round and I joined the board as part of that round. Today, Sketchfab is the leading global platform for
Depop joins Etsy in a $1.63B acquisition As shared on Balderton.com Etsy, which operates two-sided online marketplaces that connect millions of passionate and creative buyers and sellers around the world, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Depop for $1.625 billion. Following the closing of the transaction, Depop will continue to be headquartered in London,
Protolabs acquires 3D Hubs to build the world's largest distributed manufacturing platform Today we're happy to announce that 3D Hubs, a Balderton portfolio company, has been acquired by Protolabs in a deal worth $330M in cash and shares. Amsterdam-based 3D Hubs [https://www.3dhubs.com/] was founded with a single goal in mind, to connect designers and manufacturers to give anyone, anywhere
Tibber and the future of home energy consumption Home energy consumption is amongst the most critical industries in the world. It provides us with access to the fundamental necessities in life from heating to refrigeration, but at the same time contributes to 20% of the West’s Green House Gas Emissions (GHGs). It also makes up between 11%
Building, sustainably As run on TechCrunch, April 2020 Marc Andreessen, Florence Nightingale and Building in a Vacuum. If you want to get a structural engineer excited, ask them what they could build in space. Freed from the constraints of gravity and aerodynamics, a single human could move skyscrapers like lego bricks. A
Cracking the City Code This was a guest edit of the exceptional Exponential View [https://www.exponentialview.co/], a weekly series of essays and podcasts run by Azeem Azhar. Challenging the power structures of megacities Hi, I’m James. I feel particularly fortunate that Azeem asked me to contribute to Exponential View this week
How more patient investors can help tackle the climate crises As printed in the Sunday Telegraph [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/05/05/investors-must-realise-evolution-much-better-option-extinction/] - 5th May Climate change deniers still exist in the City. Increasingly financiers accept that man-made climate change is a danger, but they are still in denial of an equally obvious truth: that climate
Our investment in Kaia Health: how software can tackle chronic pain Working in technology, you see plenty of graphs. But one graph bothers me more above all of them: While new markets, practices and technologies have seen the cost of many goods fall over the last few decades, healthcare has remained stubbornly expensive. And even more worryingly, the length and quality
What big tech can learn from the financial crash As syndicated with The Daily Telegraph 9/1/2019 After the financial crash of 2008 many bankers looked back and wondered how they became one of the most disliked industries in the country. While there were bad actors in every company, most employees were decent people just trying to make
Announcing Sophia Genetic's new funding round After a very strong 2018 for our portfolio company Sophia Genetics, in which they achieved many technical and commercial firsts, we are happy to announce our participation in their latest $77M funding round, led by Al Gore's Generation IM and supported by IdInvest. As we noted in our original investment
The Chancellor’s tax on tech is the right diagnosis, but the wrong prescription As published in The Telegraph 10th November 2018 While the last year has been one of the most successful ever for the UK’s fast-growing tech sector on the international stage, the industry has also faced a ferocious backlash at home. From the disgraceful conduct at Cambridge Analytica to legal
How to make calls with us useful Your time is your most important asset, so to make the most of calls or first meetings with Balderton we have a few recommendations of how to prepare in advance, things we've learned from looking at over 5,000 pitch decks a year. 1) Everyone at Balderton is a decision
How online could be the high street’s saviour, not its executioner **As syndicated in the Telegraph url:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/07/11/online-high-streets-saviour-not-executioner/ ** Vincent Van Doodle doesn’t sound like a rival to Marks & Spencer for retail space. In years gone by the Birmingham-based company might have sold its bespoke art designs at a local market stall.
Why the NHS could be a global leader in A.I. As syndicated in the Sunday Telegraph Can robots really save the NHS? Last week Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for health and social care doubled down on ambitious plans for the deployment of artificial intelligence software across the NHS, with a particular focus on cancer detection. The idea that
Lord's review highlights the real danger of AI: Automating Inequality As syndicated in the Sunday Telegraph While the Lords may have made headlines last week voting against the Government’s latest Brexit Bill, they were also tackling an issue that could prove to be an even greater challenge for the UK in the coming decade. The Lords select committee on
How a data-rating agency for apps could build confidence and competition As syndicated with the Daily Telegraph Do you know how much salt you should eat for lunch? Neither do I, but thankfully, the introduction of food standards and clearer information on labels means that many consumers can easily judge a food’s salt content without requiring a chemistry degree. Food
Why the UK shouldn't be afraid of regulating bigtech Syndicated in The Sunday Telegraph London’s tech-friendly mayor last week turned up at South by Southwest, the annual celebration of new technologies in Austin, Texas, with some party-pooping words for the big platforms. This year Sadiq Khan became the first British politician to make a speech at the conference,
2018 will be the software industry’s seatbelt moment As published in Venturebeat.com, December 2017 Sixty years after the first Ford Model T rolled off the production line, Congress passed a law requiring the installation of seat belts to address public safety concerns. Many auto manufacturer lobbyists claimed this would be the end of the U.S. car
Conferences are quiet on the UK's start-up nation Syndicated in the Sunday Telegraph 'Voice of Business' section The party conference season has finally ended and despite some grand plans put forward, notably a national house building scheme, the technology sector felt overlooked this year in a way it hasn’t been for decades. In the past, leaders as
Why we’ve invested in Sophia Genetics ( and why the world is obsessed with your genome) TL:DR Genetics is a software problem, and there’s plenty of problems to be solved Today I’m happy to announce we are leading an investment of $30m in SOPHiA Genetics. SOPHiA has developed a platform used by over 300 hospitals and 1000s of clinicians globally, to help diagnose
Start-up President Macron lays claim to Europe’s technology crown As published in The Sunday Times, 25th June 2017 This week President Macron spelled out his vision of France as a country that “thinks and moves like a start-up”. The President, whose own meteoric rise resembles that of a Silicon Valley start-up, claimed that France would become the home of
The European Talent Landscape - Report Today we are proud to unveil 'The European Talent Landscape', and I am delighted to be on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to reveal the findings. You can view the full report and key findings here [http://talent.balderton.com] In this report, we’ve set out to identify where people
Technology that can make us all better citizens In my lifetime, British politics has never felt so divided. From a nation-splitting referendum, to political turmoil amongst our top representatives, it is easy to feel helpless in the face of national and global events. But despite blogs laden with feelings of alienation from the political process, there are many
