Fund managers

Vala is an investment advisory business founded by a team of serial, multi-exited entrepreneurs that over a 30+ year period has invested in more than 70 companies and generated an aggregate track record of 3.5x with an average hold period of 4.5 years.

Vala’s mission is to back, build and embolden start-ups that can have an impact in their markets and on society, supporting them on their sustainability journey at the same time.  It believes that companies that focus on operating and trading more sustainably will be more robust and valuable that those that don’t.

Vala aims to put capital to work where it’s needed most: mentoring founders, optimising products, creating go-to market strategies, and bringing together outstanding teams. A key part of the philosophy is the desire for the portfolio companies to become more sustainable, no matter what their sector.

Vala has two principle EIS strategies, focussed on venture building and impact, building diversified portfolios of 8-12 companies. It targets a fund-level return of 2.5x (excluding the tax benefits), over a 6-8 year period.

The SidebySide EIS Venture Fund invests in fast-growing technology-enabled businesses with £1-10 million in revenue. These more established companies will usually be at least several years old and typically have over 30 employees. We look for companies where there is evidence of a strong customer acceptance of the product and service offered, and where we believe we can add substantively to the knowledge and experience of the management team as the company grows.

o2h Ventures, a specialist biotech fund manager based in the heart of the thriving biotech community in Cambridge, UK. We invest in early-stage biotech companies involved in novel drug discovery, enabling service tools, and AI/ML technologies. Currently, we have two tax-efficient human health funds open for investment: the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

To date, through our funds, we have invested over $10 million in 35+ early-stage biotech companies, empowering impactful research addressing unmet medical needs in areas such as cancer, depression, diseases of the ear and eye, psoriasis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, anti-ageing, and infectious diseases. For more details, please see – www.o2hventures.com

Symvan Capital is a multi-award winning technology venture capital fund manager with an established record of growth-oriented investing. We manage SEIS and EIS funds with two open for investment.

We invest in scaleable and disruptive businesses — companies that seek to impact and change established models and in particular, that have developed the technology to take costs out of business processes.

We look for companies with unique propositions and the potential to deliver ten times your investment within reasonable time frames.

Our focus is to find founders with strong teams who have the vision, drive and flexibility to deliver results.

We don’t just fund them: we mentor and support through to exit. Our investments are supported by Symvan’s investment directors who have more than fifty years combined experience in tech investment banking (ECM, corporate finance, M&A and AIM listing work).

Investee companies can also count on the technical expertise of our world-class advisory team in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

We pride ourselves on our selection process which involves a six-stage due diligence process; and also for our “Lifecycle Approach” where our SEIS funds are the incubators from which the best performing companies can then progress to receive further funding from our EIS fund.

And finally, our fee structure is one of the simplest and most transparent in an industry not known for it: the only fee we charge investors is a 20% performance fee on successful exits.