We had an awesome time catching up with Sarah, the CEO of Jenson Funding Partners, one of the UK’s largest and most successful SEIS investors. Sarah was particularly keen to tell us about their new £60m Aurora fund, for pre-seed to Series A companies helping the transition to Net Zero.

Chris first met Sarah in his Bloomberg days in 2013, when she highlighted the early intentions of Jenson, so it was great to catch up on their progress and what progress there is. They’ve notably become a Certified B Corp recently as well.

Sarah covers an array of topics and has some great opinions on the following:

===> The way Jenson select and invest in leading UK founders, how the team interact and support this large portfolio of businesses. About being clear about what they can and can’t help with.

===> The current state of the investment landscape for UK Founders – circa November 2022 and thoughts on how 2023 could pan out. They tend to close their EIS investments in Q1.

===> Her excitement around the launch of their new non SEIS fund, aiming to invest in all the amazing ESG tech, filling a huge funding whole in the UK between Pre-Seed and Series A. Founders form an orderly queue please !

===> 60% of investments have been made outside of London and their is more opportunity to accelerate this moving forward, by keeping in touch with the excellent hubs around the regions.

===> Investments are also international (Ireland) and with the new fund, could become more international.

===> Diversity and equality in Tech and how Jenson look to tackle this. 18% of their portfolio investments have been into female founders.

All in All – there’s much more and this episode is a cracker & in the spirit of giving  at Christmas – there is a long form and short form version of this excellent episode. Longer video below

Enjoy and Happy Christmas to the many watchers and listeners. Back in January with a cracking episode with Sebastian Peck, of Amsterdam based VC .. Kompas