Concept Ventures closes £88M fund as Europe's largest pre-seed VC

investing for those that take it seriously. They got multi-asset investing, industryleading yields, and they're trusted by millions. We have our first guest of the show, Reese Chowry from Concept Ventures. Welcome to the show, Ree. How are you doing? Good, good. How are you guys? Big fan of the show. Thanks.

Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for hopping on the show. Give us the news. Break it down for us. What's happening today in your world? So, uh, today, well, actually, yesterday, we launched, um, our latest fund. It's $88 million. Yes, you can ring the gong.

We have we have a a bell in our office and we put it in many years ago and people people would always ring it as well. So, I thought that's I love I love the analogy. So, let's go bigger. Let's get you a Liberty Bell.

I don't I just from the way you describe the bell, I can tell it's not taller than you and it's got to be huge. I want a massive Well, 88 million. You have the management fe fees to have a bell guy that just stands there ready to Think two and 20 you get 2% for the fee. You don't get 2%. You get 2% over 10 years. 20%.

You might you could spend $2 million on a bell tomorrow. And I think you should. That's it. That's the first order that's going on Amazon. So give us give us the pitch for the fun. Give us the strategy. A bit of a contrarian take. You're hunting for value in Europe. Yeah, we that's uh we are hunting for value.

So first of obviously we're based in Europe. We're based in London. So you know contrarian to many guests you may be having.

extremely awesome that you've got some European founders on and Carl and Victor I saw that again two contrarians there as well and so we we really focus on that earlier stage of investing the concept stage or that preede stage there's not many preede funds in Europe and you know we've got the largest as of as of yesterday and you know we're focused exclusively on investing at in the people themselves so we go very very deep in in you know everything about people from like their childhood to the how they met their co-founder and you know what they spike in and you know do they have like are they like a chess champion and we you know we break it down into kind of four kind of archetypes which most unicorn founders um specialize in.

So we have no sectors basically.

So either you're a first first- time founder that maybe worked at big tech, you had a first- time founder that you've you know been out of Unicorn like you know we've got a company that's spun out of synthesia a company called Anam which is backed by rep point or you're a second time founder or a PhD spin out and so like within the team we all kind of specialize in one group of people and that like really gives us an insight and traits having like worked with I don't know second time founders.

Yeah. Are they learning all their lessons before? So we we often take these very contrarian bets in really rogue sectors from high frequency trading to robotics to commodities marketplaces and let's give it up for high frequency trading. Question question for you. How does having less competition at preede?

Obviously every stage is hyper competitive now at least in in the US. Basically every preede allocator that we know is moving up the stack in in in the US. At least that's what I can tell. It feels like I'm hearing that from so many American preede investors who are like, "Well, people are moving down the stack, too.

" 15 years ago, it was super uncompetitive. I was the only one I do. Explain what a preede firm was. Now I'm doing series BS. Well, well, it's also even if you're still doing preede, you oftentimes have you, you know, preede lead.

If you really want to lead a preede round, which maybe call it a 500k check, you often have to make a decision in 24 hours. Like you need to move quick.

you need to move often times faster than you might be comfortable and so having a little less competition at that stage I I don't know does that change your process at all do are you do you have more time to get to know founders or you still feeling um you know that that urgency yeah look I think um I think in in in in Europe we're traditionally maybe a little bit more conservative than the US and you know we love you know trai when I when we started concept everyone was like you're crazy literally you're crazy for doing this because you know you really needed a you know market or a product or you know and in Europe you know traditionally we all come from outside we're we're not insiders to VC at all like we haven't come from those top names we all the team are not not from that background and I think that gives us a real edge in kind of like evaluating but also taking that risk and I think what we see if there's no product or markets typically to go after the underwriting process is actually a lot quicker because you're literally evaluating people.

So typically our process takes like we call it like five hour energy because it's like you know 5 hours of founders time and you know we go through our process and we're looking for very specific traits and things in those individuals and we when we get that we we're happy to lead. We lead 90% of our rounds.

We don't care what other people do. You know we don't care about FOMO. You know it's a very kind of set deal. typically were investing a million dollars at kind of the the start and you know we don't need everybody else to kind of make that decision and I think you know generally Europe needs needs more of that.

I mean you had Matty on the show you know obviously that was that was our first investment out of the last fund. Oh let's go. That's amazing. What a banger. Jordy, you got to Yeah. Just just every if you're getting a fund off the ground just back one founder like 10 more pre at least you know you know one time a fund.

you'll probably be pretty in a pretty good spot. Where's your what's your LP base look like for the new fund? Are we are we uh uh like you know what what what's the mix? European they lean more Italian supercar owners or British supercar owners?

No, we're only allowed to talk about golf now given given the last uh you know obviously Europe's won something so we got to focus on that. Um but no but no to answer your question we've actually got um most of the institutions we on boarded in this fund I think 80% of them are US actually.

Okay interesting let's go keep it in the face thank you for thank you for working for our allocation secret American secret American over there doing work for us. Uh okay question lightning round question please like please I want I want to hear about sourcing.

You have uh you have three places where you can go to source the next great preede founder. You can go to a Cambridge student union meetup, meet young new grads. You could go to uh a pub outside of Deep Mind after they just failed the training run. You can try and poach someone from there.

Or you can go to Monaco during F1. Which one are you picking and why? I' I'm taking the Deep Mind Deep Mind every day. Hang out at the bar. Get the disgruntled Deep Mind. Oh, the training run just failed. I want to start a company. I got to get out of this bureaucracy. Yeah, I think I think I take take that.

And in the last one, we I think we invested in uh three three ex palunteer people. So, we love a good four deployed engineer.

Uh and so I think that's uh something you know we we we think that talent generally gravitates to places that have amazing cultures and we spend a lot of time looking in the cultures of those companies particularly in Europe.

And I think you've had this one wave of you know the UI pass the Spotify you were at the Kleiner IPO obviously and that was kind of like one wave which has happened and like you know gone public and now you're having this new waves you got Carl and Victor on the show you've you know you obviously got Matty and there's others like you know Granola in London and I think these are like people are just going bigger right they're just thinking bigger because they're learning more from these kind of repeat successes and that's coming from all parts of the ecosystem if you're working in a company out of a company, you're seeing these success stories and I think I think there's a lot more to come personally but having you know boots in the ground and that partnership with our American LPs I find that you know typically America the American firms eventually get in right like every IPO every exit you'll see you know you win in the you win in the end at the start they're not always comfortable making that bet so I think that's where we can play a role of like kind of making that conviction early and you know going forward fantastic I'm super bullish on Congratulations in the fund.

If I was an American multi-stage VC, I would I'd be trying to Yeah. take down a good piece of the fund and uh yeah, I'm super super excited. The uh companies you back. Thanks so much for hopping on the show. Thanks. Thanks for having us, Scott. Congrats. Bye. Cheers. I want to pull up this post by Sherwood.

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