Company attributes
Venture Capital Firm attributes
Other attributes
Hoxton Ventures is a European venture capital firm, based in London. It was launched by American partners Hussein Kanji and Rob Kniaz in December 2013 after previously working at Accel (venture capital firm) and Fidelity Ventures (now Eight Roads Ventures) respectively. Hoxton also has a venture partner Dylan Collins with a particular focus on gaming and Irish investments from his former career at Demonware; he is now CEO at Superawesome, a kids technology company.
The partnership is especially focused on connectivity to Silicon Valley and the partners are among the few European venture capitalists who are also computer scientists.
The fund has regularly been cited as a notable investment firm in the UK from sources such as London & Partners, the government-backed London technology advisory form. It has also been recognized for having three investments become valued over $1b as "unicorns", an unusually high number for a European venture firm. The partnership is often cited on compilations of top European VCs such as Business Insider's top investor lists in 2019 and 2019.
Hoxton Ventures prefers to invest in early stage technology companies. Hoxton Ventures typically invests between $500,000 and $5M and follows its capital through the life of the investment. The firm has worked with tech companies including Google, Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Twitter.
Hoxton Ventures was founded on Nov 26, 2013, by Hussein Kanji and Rob Kniaz.
Hoxton Ventures has made 33 investments. Six of these were lead investments. On June 26, 2018, they invested $50M in TourRadar. Hoxton Ventures has had seven exits: mMavrx, IMMUNIO, and Campanja are some of its notable exists. The firm has raised a total of $40M in a single venture fund. This fund was announced on Apr 29, 2014.
The company focuses on startups inventing new market categories or transforming large, existing industries. The firm invests in internet, mobile and software startups, most often as the first institutional investor in the company following angel investors. Typically these investments focus early on the American market and derive a large portion of their revenue from that market ahead of others.
Hoxton Ventures has raised two venture funds to date. Fund I was a $40m fund begun in 2013 and a Fund II was formed in 2019.
Hoxton focuses on startups inventing new market categories or transforming large industries, including software as a service (SaaS) companies, business-to-business (B2B), enterprise, cloud-based, consumer (B2C) and other fast-growing software-led technology companies. The firm invests primarily in Europe. The firm invests primarily at the Series A stage with checks ranging from $1 to $5m.
The fund is backed by institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals, including several early Google engineers and executives. It was also among the funds named as having European Investment Fund support withdrawn due to Brexit concerns by the EU.
Hoxton has invested in over 19 companies as of July 2019. Most noteworthy, the firm is one of the few VC funds to invest in the first round of three "unicorn" investments, Deliveroo (valued at £1.5bn in 2017), Darktrace (the Cambridge-based cybersecurity firm valued at $1.5bn in 2018), and Babylon Health.
Other investments include Adazza, Algomi, Behavox, Optimoroute, Raptor Supplies, SuperAwesome, TourRadar, and Yieldify.
Exited investments include:
bd4Travel (acquired by DNATA)Campanja (acquired by 24/7 Media)Immunio (acquired by Trend Micro)Mavrx (acquired by Taranis) Portfolio companies have received follow on investment from larger funds such as Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Summit Partners, Insight, KKR, GV, Shasta Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Softbank, and Citibank.
In particular, the partners of the firm regularly provide commentary on television and radio on technology in Europe and on Brexit and its effect on the European startup community. Interviews include slots on broadcasts of BBC News and Radio 4, the Financial Times and The Economist. The firm's activity in Ireland was cited in the Sunday Business Post with Collins.
Kniaz appears regularly on BBC television and radio on various programs discussing the day's technology news and Kanji is also seen on CNBC similarly.
