James Wise

VC @Balderton, formerly in social enterprise, policy and technology

Start-Up Century, interview with Bloomsbury Business Press.

As a Partner at Balderton Capital, James Wise has met with 1000s of founders and worked with some of the most successful technology companies of the last decade. He is a member of the UK Government’s Industrial Development Advisory Board and a trustee of Demos. All this experience made

How AI is changing product roadmaps everywhere

One of the most noticeable changes in how the best product teams are using LLMs is in lowering the barrier to entry for people to get the best from their products. In short, LLMs are massively expanding TAM (total addressable market). The demand to test new generative AI tools has

Investing in Deepset: Giving every enterprise it’s own AI platform

For over twenty years now, our team at Balderton have been investing in open-source solutions, machine learning applications, and enterprise software. Whether it was our early days supporting a new era for databases with MySQL and ETL with Talend, or our investments in Sophia Genetics, leveraging AI for cancer diagnosis,

The real risk of Generative AI - cyberfraud

This post was originally printed in the Guardian This year, I was sent a link to a video of myself, passionately explaining why I had invested into a new technology company. In the video I spoke enthusiastically about the great faith I had in the company’s leadership and encouraged

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

Why we need a new UX for AI to succeed

This post was written as part of our series on investing in AI with my colleague Sivesh. For those new to this space, we’re undergoing one of the biggest technological shifts since cloud computing. We won’t spend too much time on this shift as there are many great

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 Government'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