Members

Founder + Lightning is a pioneering Venture Studio and Fund, that invests in Founders to build and grow their businesses.

We invest in B2B companies that have the potential to use tech to radically increase their value. We use our decade-long skillset and resources to help them realise that potential, by co-building technology solutions.

Our headquarters are in London, but we have teams in India, Poland and all across the world. We are proud of our 130+ team, 6 investments and 30 portfolio companies that have a combined value of £150m+, multiple of which are now at Series A.

Too many tech companies in the UK fail, and frustratingly it’s often for the same reasons over and over. If we’re to live in the kind of society we all want to live in, we need more founders to succeed– that is what drives the Founder + Lightning model.

Growthdeck is a private investor network that provides direct, tax-efficient investment opportunities in exciting UK companies.

We offer both equity and debt options, focusing on fundraises between £500k and £3m, and give High Net Worth and Sophisticated investors in the UK and overseas the chance to invest from £5,000.

We have raised funding for fast-growing SMEs across a wide range of sectors, including hospitality and leisure, technology, biopharmaceuticals and telecoms.

Our core team have decades of combined experience in the private equity and venture capital arena as well as a variety of other investment sectors, and our in-depth due diligence process draws upon the best elements of this.

Our Chairman and Head of Investment, Kieron Launder, has worked across a number of leading institutions, including Rothschild & Co where he headed up the strategic investment advisory service.

The other members of our executive management team and board also have a strong track record, with several having founded other private investor businesses in the past before bringing all their expertise together to create Growthdeck.

Guinness Ventures is the sister company to Guinness Global Investors (both from the Guinness Asset Management stable) and was founded in 2010.

Trusted by investors to grow their capital, our award-winning investment management team are experts at sourcing opportunities in growth-stage companies and helping them unlock their significant potential

Being truly invested in the success of the businesses we back, our impact goes beyond the financial investment as we use our resources and network to provide the companies that we invest in with the help that they need to grow.

We look for exciting and interesting businesses that we believe have potential for growth across a wide range of sectors including technology, education, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, leisure and food & drink.

Since inception, Guinness Ventures has invested £300 million into more than 180 EIS qualifying companies including some of the fastest growing growth companies in the UK.

Haatch Ventures is made up of a team of hands-on value creators. They have been there. Built scaled companies of their own and sold them. They use that knowledge, experience and network to accelerate the growth of their portfolio businesses via a “Smart Money” approach, providing support to enable digital transformation. They back the pioneers of the digital revolution, one early stage start up at a time.

Over the last seven years the team has been investing, supporting and managing their own private and EIS fund portfolio of digital companies, hand selected through a world class deal pipeline and the current portfolio has average ROI of 5.60x based on the latest third party fund raising round for each company. The target return on exit is 10x.