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Keynote eileen burbidge partner passion capital
Passion Capital is a London-based early stage venture capital firm.
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History
The venture capital firm was launched in March 2011 as a private-public hybrid fund with an initial fund of $60 million, of which $40 million was from the United Kingdom government. The fund partners were Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero, who were described by VentureBeat as being among Europe's most prolific investors. They put out reports in 2012 (on their first year of operation) and 2013 (on their first two years of operation). The firm announced, at the end of May 2015, that they raised their second fund in the sum of $69 million (£45 million, of which £17.5million is provided by the United Kingdom government).
Companies
Passion Capital has invested in Ravelin (a machine learning fraud detection company for online businesses), Lulu (an app with information about men, including ratings by other women, for women interested in dating), Smarkets (a United Kingdom-based peer-to-peer betting exchange), Swipe (a cloud-based tool for creating and consuming slide deck-style presentations), Wedo (a London-based online furniture store), Coinfloor (a London-based Bitcoin trading exchange), Car Throttle (a London-based media platform for car enthusiasts), Mondo and many other companies.
Transparency initiatives
Passion Capital has pioneered a number of transparency initiatives with relation both to company operation and to investment. In June 2013, they announced that they would have a "plain English term sheet" eschewing the use of legal jargon, and put up their sample term sheet online. Passion Capital also publishes information annually on the status of its current and past investments, as well as its average salaries and other expenses. In October 2012, Passion Capital announced joint office hours in London with ten other venture capital firms including Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, and Eden Ventures.
Media coverage
Passion Capital has been covered extensively on TechCrunch. GigaOm described it as one of London's premier seed investors in an article where they published advice from the people running Passion Capital. An article by Jessica Furseth about fundraising in London included Passion Capital. VentureBeat included Passion Capital in an article on London's thriving startup ecosystem.