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A venture firm founded by British podcaster Harry Stebbings, 28, has raised a new $400 million fund for early-stage startups, placing it among Europe’s top technology investors.
The latest backers of 20VC, the London-based fund run by Stebbings, include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner, and dozens of tech founders and investors.
He fundraising comes thanks to the popularity of his technology podcast, The twenty minute VC, which recently featured OpenAI boss Sam Altman, Shein president Donald Tang, and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
“We leverage the media to be the best investor,” Stebbings said.
20VC’s latest investment comes as a report from HSBC Innovation Banking and market tracker Dealroom projects that UK-based venture capitalists are “on track” to increase more than $12 billion in new funding by the end of this year, even surpassing the $11.5 billion record from the 2021 boom. Index Ventures, Atomico, Accel and Balderton Capital have raised new funds this year. However, the numbers are still dwarfed by the sums raised by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
20VC is part of a new generation of European companies, including Plural and Blossom Capital, which takes on the region’s most established investors as the tech industry adapts to a more complex funding environment after the pandemic-era boom.
Stebbings said: “$400 million right now is a difficult amount to raise.” His podcast, which receives tens of millions of downloads each month, was “a great magnet for top founders,” he said.
Guests on the show can review the interviews before they air, Stebbings said. “I think people do their best work when they feel comfortable.” He routinely employs his social media production team to produce custom clips pitching his fund to founders, to help him land deals.
However, a successful podcast alone “wasn’t enough” to create the “real differentiation” needed to raise such a large fund, Stebbings said.
Since raising its latest fund of $140 million in 2021, 20VC has expanded to include three “sub-funds” run by former startup executives and managers, focused on sales, growth and product development, to help secure deals and advise portfolio companies.
New capital continues to flow into tech funds despite a generally slow pace of deals among private tech companies around the world, especially later-stage startups outside the increasingly frothy artificial intelligence market.
Meanwhile, this year there have been few large-scale acquisitions or stock market listings that allow venture capitalists to make their investments and return funds to their own backers.
“Determining sustainable value in this group of AI companies is really difficult,” Stebbings said. “I have never seen companies grow revenue as fast as these AI companies do. . . The bigger question is: is this high sugar revenue or is it sustainable and long-lasting value?
20VC has backed AI coding startup Poolside, along with social media profile page builder Linktree and game developer triple point.
Stebbings acknowledges being caught up in the excesses of the most recent tech boom, when he invested in startups, including virtual events. hopin startupwhich was valued at up to $7.8 billion in 2021, but sold most of its assets for tens of millions of dollars last year, as well as once-hot social media apps Clubhouse and BeReal.
Stebbings said he had learned that investing in consumer technology was “very difficult” because users could be very fickle. The “brightest companies” in 20VC’s portfolio were “very boring,” he said.