Ada Ventures — Three years in

Francesca (Check) Warner
5 min readDec 12, 2022

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The Ada Ventures team in front of The Analytical Engine at The Science Museum on Ada Lovelace Day 2022

Ada Ventures launched on the 12th of December 2019 so today is our three year anniversary.

The launch of Ada Ventures and announcement of our £38m Fund I at Techcrunch Disrupt in Berlin on a freezing day culminated four years of working together, two years of planning and 18 months of fundraising. Despite the cold, fear of the story being leaked and our nerves at how the fund and strategy would be received, Matt and I had huge smiles on our faces, embodying one of Ada Ventures core values: joy.

Today — just three years later, we are at nearly £90m under management at Ada Ventures, with a second fund raised, the smiles are still as broad as ever and we feel incredibly fortunate to be able to wake up every day, serve our investors and founders and do a job that we love.

So what have we done this year?

Investments

  • We have reviewed 1,563 investment ops between Jan-November (an increase of 20% Y-o-Y so far), bringing our total investments analysed to 3,863.
  • Of these, 84% shared information about the gender and ethnicity of their founding teams. We are proud of the fact that over 50% were teams with at least one female or non-binary founder. 31% of teams were all-white, the remaining 69% of teams had at least one team member with mixed/multiple ethnicities or who was Black, African, Caribbean, Black British, Asian or Asian British. In 2023 we plan to broaden the data we collect and transparently share more about this aspect of our process in order to advance the whole ecosystem.
  • We have invested in six new companies this year. Four new companies from Fund I (Financial inclusion platform ESTHER, VR training leader MOONHUB, the search engine for flexible companies Flexa, process orchestration specialists Process Metronome) and two more new investments which will soon close from Fund II.
  • We have maintained a strong score on Landscape of 4.6 stars from founders we have and haven’t invested in. We’re constantly looking to improve this and welcome feedback.

Fundraising

US Strategy

  • We ran three portfolio trips to the East and West Coast of the US. We worked with these companies and others to help them raise money, access customers and talent in the US with our SF based US Representative Bola Adegbulu.

Open Venture — teaching and learning

As part of our continued commitment to Open Venture we:

We grew the Ada Ventures Team

  • We hired Diarra Smith as Head of Portfolio & Brand at Ada Ventures. In just six months Diarra has already added so much to Ada Ventures and we can’t remember how we managed without him.
  • We worked with Patricia El Jichi as an On Purpose Associate. Patricia has been fantastic — smart, passionate, hardworking and fun to be around.
  • Giulia and Chintu joined us as Future VC interns over the summer, supporting investment research, investor relations, sourcing and portfolio support.

Last but not least, despite the challenging macro conditions, companies in the Fund I portfolio have been making a massive impact in their fields.

The Ada Team (R-L Check, Patricia, Diarra, Xun, Matt)

We also had our first Ada Ventures team baby, born after the company was formed, in baby Pip on the 7th December 2021. More to come about that journey in a separate post!

Looking forward

We are hugely looking forward to 2023.

  • We are actively seeking to invest in more impactful companies addressing the needs of underserved groups across climate, healthcare & ageing and economic empowerment. Please pitch us if you think your company could be a fit!
  • We’ll be stepping up the quality and depth of impact work we do with the founders we work with.
  • We are going to be reopening scout applications and welcoming 20 new operator angels into the Ada Angels programme.
  • We’ll be welcoming two new hires to the team at Ada Ventures.
  • We are refining our US strategy for portfolio companies and look forward to sharing more in 2023.

Thanks for following our journey and all your support.

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Francesca (Check) Warner
Francesca (Check) Warner

Written by Francesca (Check) Warner

Partner, Ada Ventures. Investing in breakthrough ideas for the hardest problems we face. Co-founder & CEO of Diversity VC. www.adaventures.com

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