“We can expect our international partners to commit between $10m-30m into South Yorkshire startups within the next three-to-five years.”
That’s what Venture.Community founder, Peter Hopton, said at the launch of its inaugural co-fund.
Venture.Community is a co-operative society of entrepreneurs, aiming to build and accelerate start-ups.
“The foundational funding of startups is critical if they wish to be competitive at an international level when they start to raise funds to scale,” Hopton continued.
“This is also critical in South Yorkshire, where we have great engineers and technology but insufficient access to entrepreneurial education and early-stage investment.
“Our membership includes experienced entrepreneurs that co-operate to help founders build promising companies as well as enable access to networks for finance and customers. There are fast becoming excellent networks in South Yorkshire for Angels and there’s a lot underway to convene long-established industries, too, not least in manufacturing, aerospace and defence.”
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The announcement was made during the launch of its Investor Hub within The Advanced Manufacturing Park in South Yorkshire. The fund will be open to companies being accelerated within the community for transactions at Pre-Seed and Seed stages.
The community said that it provides “ethical acceleration leading to investment, securing the best terms and full market access via a ‘network effect’ for founders and investors.”
This open approach to investment, it stated, enabled the companies it works with to avoid over-dependence on single venture capital houses.
Hopton, who is the founder of data cooling firm, Icetope and VeryPC added:
“For 2024, over £12m in investment can be traced back to our demo days and open entrepreneurial education events. There’s also strong interest elsewhere in both new co-funds and new ‘Venture.Communities’ in other regions.”
