Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) launches a brand new evergreen venture platform to supercharge the UK’s digital technology businesses. Funded by British Business Bank, Legal & General, and Woodford Investment Management
Today marks the launch of Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV), a new venture platform that will fund all stages of the digital technology business lifecycle, from entry to exit.
The platform is being funded by ADV’s three institutional investment partners — the British Business Bank, Legal & General (L&G) and Woodford Investment Management — and plans to deploy an initial £150m in investment to help British businesses to startup, scaleup and succeed, supercharging growth across all UK regions.
ADV’s reach and expertise will extend to digital technology hubs across the UK including Belfast, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford and Sheffield.
ADV will inject evergreen patient capital at early stage (via microfunds, accelerators and incubators), growth stage (Series A), and late stage (Series B, C and beyond). It will also deploy funding and expertise to accelerate the scaling of its portfolio companies. ADV’s long-term aim is to invest upwards of £200m every year into UK-based startups and scaleups via its evergreen platform.
Lee Strafford, CEO of ADV, said: “We have established ADV to help more of our emerging startups and scaleups to ‘scalebig’. There are world class innovators in every corner of the UK. We intend to seek out the best investment opportunities at scale and ensure these companies, irrelevant of size and location, have the support they need to supercharge growth.”
Keith Morgan, CEO of British Business Bank, said: “This new venture platform, supported by our Enterprise Capital Funds programme, will help innovative digital technology businesses to startup and scaleup rapidly and successfully throughout all stages of their development. We are pleased to be a part of this exciting new venture, and look forward to seeing businesses across the UK benefiting from the much needed long-term funding it will provide.”
The ADV team is made up of industry experts and proven entrepreneurs with extensive experience of scaling businesses across all stages and across the globe. The team includes:
- Lee Strafford, CEO – founder of Plusnet and Dotforge.
- Keith Teare, Chair – founder of Easynet, RealNames, Archimedes Labs and co-founder of TechCrunch.
- Mike Dimelow, VP Investment – formerly VP of Strategic Business Development at ARM Ltd.
- David Carr, VP Finance and Operations – co-founder of Dotforge and CitiLogik, formerly SVP Access for AOL UK.
- Frank DiGiammarino, VP Ecosystem Development – formerly Director in the World Wide Public Sector Team at Amazon Web Services, and Deputy Director of the US Recovery Implementation Office which reported to US Vice President Biden.
- David Fogel, Investment Lead – formerly Deputy Director and Head of Acceleration at Wayra UK.
In last week’s Autumn Statement, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond remarked that economic growth in the UK has been concentrated in London and the South East for too long. The ADV funding model will support the Government’s attempts to rebalance this by spreading investment capital right across the country and powering a new generation of ‘scalebig’ businesses that will drive UK competitiveness in a post-Brexit landscape.