Notion Capital

Notion Capital
Private
Industry Private equity
Founded 2008
Headquarters London, England
Products Venture capital
Website www.notioncapital.com

Notion Capital is a venture capital investment firm based in London, England and founded in 2008 by brothers Ben and Jos White, with business partners Stephen Chandler, Chris Tottman and Ian Milbourn.

History

Ben and Jos White revealed plans to create the fund in October 2008, using around £20 million of the £100 million they made that month, from the sale of MessageLabs to Symantec.[1][2] The brothers, with partners, had earlier built and sold the technology companies RBR Networks, eventually Cisco's largest distributor in Europe, and then Internet service provider Star Internet.[3] The three companies reached revenues of over US$100m a year.[2] The other founding partners in the fund, Stephen Chandler, Ian Milbourn and Chris Tottman, were all former executives from those companies; Chandler being MessageLabs' financial director[1] as well as being an investment corporate financier at UBS;[2] and Milbourn vice-president of corporate finance there.[2] Tottman held positions at both MessageLabs and Star.[2]

Ben White explained:[1]

In the UK there're lots of good ideas and original thinking but not enough skills or funding. We don't believe there is a sizeable tech venture capital specialist in the UK. When we started, UK venture capital didn't think big, so we went to the US.

Jos White has said that the fund was inspired by MessageLabs' difficulty in obtaining investment.[2]

The initial fund was created in the Autumn (northern hemisphere) of 2008.[4]

Notion Capital were awarded "Equity gap fund of the year" in the Investor Allstars 2013 at the Natural History Museum in London.[5]

Constituent companies

Notion Capital is composed of several legal entities:

Activities

Notion Capital has raised two venture funds. Fund I in 2009 led to investments of almost $50 million[8] and Fund II in 2012 raised around $100m.[9][10] with an ongoing target of $150m.[10][11] Notion only invests in software as a service (SaaS) companies,[4] with a preference for B2B and enterprise, cloud-based, fast-growth technology companies, mostly in Europe, but also Israel and South Africa.[9] The firm invests primarily at the Series A stage with an initial investment size of $1–3m. The firm also has a seed investment program that invests in earlier stage start-ups typically as part of a syndicate, in round sizes below $1m. It is also an investor in Seedcamp, the Early stage mentoring and investment programme for European startups, founded by Index Ventures partner Saul Klein.[12]

Its second fund received support from the European Union through the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP);[13] from the United Kingdom government, under its Enterprise Capital Fund (ECF) program;[9] and from the European Investment Fund (EIF).[8] This was the first time the ECF and EIF had been involved in supporting the same fund.[10]

In 2013, Chandler, along with former Hewlett-Packard divisional chief technology officer Graham York, announced the launch of SeedCloud, a European accelerator targeting Cloud computing startups in such areas as big data and machine learning.[14]

Portfolio

Notion's portfolio includes:[15]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Stafford, Philip (2013-10-26). "UK tech start-ups get a new message". Financial Times. Retrieved 23 November 2013. (subscription required)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Doidge, Fleur (2008-10-28). "MessageLabs brothers get £100m Notion". CRN. Retrieved 23 November 2013. (subscription required)
  3. ↑ Stafford, Philip (9 October 2008). "MessageLabs sold to Symantec for ₤397m". Financial Times.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Rooney, Ben (2011-03-04). "MessageLabs Founder Bets on Cloud Computing - Tech Europe - WSJ". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 23 November 2013. - note, source erroneously says 2009; other sources refer
  5. ↑ Kiss, Jemima (2013-09-26). "Investor Allstars 2013: the winners list". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Notion Capital Partners LLP". Companies House. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Notion Capital Partners 2 LLP". Companies House. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Notion Capital Reaches First Close for Fund 2". Reuters. 2012-04-17. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Rooney, Ben (2012-04-17). "Notion Closes $100 Million B2B Venture Fund". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Butcher, Mike (2012-04-16). "Euro SaaS Startups Rejoice – Notion Capital Closes $100M For Its Second Fund". TechCrunch. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  11. ↑ Prodhan, Georgna. "Notion Capital raising $150 mln technology fund". Reuters. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  12. ↑ "Seedcamp Investments LLP". PSEPS.
  13. ↑ "The future is in the Cloud". Notion Capital. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  14. ↑ Butcher, Mike (6 March 2013). "New London Incubator SeedCloud Puts £500,000 Into Sentience Technology, Aims At Big Data Startups". TechCrunch.
  15. ↑ "Portfolio". Notion Capital. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  16. ↑ Wauters, Robin (16 April 2013). "Social collaboration software company BCSocial raises $1.1m from Notion Capital". The Next Web.
  17. ↑ Leach, Anna (11 April 2013). "Duedil Lands $5 Million Funding for Business Data Service". Wall Street Journal.
  18. ↑ Hesse, Jason (2010-05-07). "Investing in the cloud". Real Business. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  19. ↑ Taylor, Colleen (11 October 2012). "E-Commerce Delivery Startup Shutl Lands Another $3.2M In Run-Up To U.S. Launch". TechCrunch.
  20. ↑ Bradshaw, Tim (16 May 2011). "Tradeshift in $7m fundraising". Financial Times.
  21. ↑ Johnson, Bobbie (2012-04-17). "How Notion will spend $100m on Euro cloud startups". GigaOM. Retrieved 23 November 2013.

External links