Following hard on the heels of the Home Office's announcement relating to Entrepreneur visas, this week's budget had a distinctly enterprise supportive flavour.
I had very much hoped this would be the case and certainly the signals coming out of the Department for Business in the shape of Mark Prisk - who attended Seedcamp's SeedSummit for a full hour and half - the PM in his Tech City announcement and No10's enterprise task force including treasury officials, gave one hope.
Today we’re excited to announce that Index is opening its fourth office and that Danny and Mike will be going to the Bay Area to get it going.
For us this feels like a big move. But truth be told, although Index was born in Europe and has been based in Geneva, London and Jersey, we’ve always dedicated ourselves to backing the best entrepreneurs and helping them build the best companies on both sides of the Atlantic and this means our hearts have always been both here and in the US.
It seems that it remains fashionable to knock the London startup community - especially if you’re a former resident. There is no question that London (and Europe) has a long way to go. But we really believe London has a lot to offer as world-class design & marketing, access to global markets and significant capital become more and more of a competitive advantage for ambitious companies.
There is a tiny bit of PR wisdom to which I have tried to adhere most of my working life: "refrain from talking publicly about what you are going to do, talk about what you have done".
When we made the Index Seed announcement, it was clearly necessary to indicate what we were going to do. This was so that entrepreneurs and fellow travellers had some sense of our plans and could propose working together.
I’m delighted to announce that after long discussions and a lot of hard work on the part of Philips, our co-investors Union Square Ventures and Simon Levene and most specifically Peter Weijmarshausen and his team at Shapeways, that we have finalised our investment in the company. The New York Times coverage is here and Shapeways commentary here. What I thought might be interesting is to give some context on the company and why we are so excited about it.
We’re very excited to announce a great investment out of our Index Seed Fund. Groupspaces is a company founded by a couple of Oxford grads who have had an entrepreneurial twinkle in their eye from when they were back in school. We met them at a conference, had a coffee, we loved their idea, and a few months later here we are….
Zippin' up my boots
goin' back to my roots
- Richie Havens (choose your poison disco or acoustic)
At Index, seed investing is part of our DNA. Since 1995, we've made over 40 seed deals, with over 30 in the last 5 years including Moo, DimDim, Moshi Monsters, Boku, Songkick, Weatherbill and Viagogo. We are really energized by seed investing, because it gives us a chance to work with entrepreneurs at the earliest stages and really help them shape their businesses.