2018- The Best of Times

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we..."- Charles Dickens -Tale of Two Cities.

Despite all the uncertainty caused by "you know what" and the now evident facts on the ground that "you know what" is having a negative impact on London/ UK based tech startups ability to raise seed money, acquire talent and acquire early adopting customers, 2018 turned out to be an amazing year for Capital Enterprise. Here are some highlights:

• Our EU co-financed CASTS programme helped over 300 tech startups accelerate their growth, raise over ￡60m of investment and create over 400 jobs in a 12 month period. At the heart of the programme ( that we deliver in partnership with City University, UCL and Newable) is the financial and practical support we are able to offer tech startup accelerators. It is seemingly popular now to question the impact of accelerators but I wager, that ￡ for ￡, CASTS, creates more jobs and wealth than any other similar scale public funded programme and thereby demonstrates how impactful the accelerator model is and how vital it is to the UK startup ecosystem. A big shout out to all the following accelerators that used CASTS to support next generation of great tech startups- Techstars, Entrepreneur First, Seedcamp, Rebel Bio, Startup Bootcamp, Ignite, Accelerator Network, Spacecamp, Emerge, Deep Science Ventures, Collider, Health Science, Rain Gods and The Bakery. We find out in February ( "you know what" permitting), whether CASTS will be extended to 2021, otherwise it ends next June. Fingers crossed.
• We completed the full first year of our EU co-financed CAP -AI programme that (working alongside our amazing partners the Digital Catapult and Barts Health Trust) will support over 120 AI first startups to access talent, compute power, data resources and expertise needed for them to build world class AI first businesses. This year, through the CAP-AI programme, Capital Enterprise was able to subsidise the employment byAI first startups of 20+ PhD level researchers. This will enable these UK AI first startups to build out cutting edge AI/ Machine learning technology. Our growing expertise in supporting AI/ML startups enabled us to join a winning consortium led by the Greater London Authority (including LSE and Cognition X) that has been commissioned by BEIS/ Innovate UK to run Random Controlled Trial to test different approaches to encouraging mainstream SME's to adopt the latest AI/ML powered technology.
• We continued to run Idea London and were happy to welcome EDF Energy as a new partner to work with UCL and Cisco in making Idea London one of the most innovative and interesting incubator spaces in the UK.
• We helped launch Conception X which although I am biased ( I am one of the founding directors) I believe, under the awesome leadership of Riam Kanso, Conception X will be seen as one best initiatives in years to enable and incentivise Engineer PhD's to commercialise their own research. Watch out for Rakho.ai and Astroscreen- two graduates of Conception X first cohort.
• We had another great year at London Co-Investment Fund ( LCIF) investing in 15+ new startups such as Wagestream, Humanising Autonomy, Mevitae and Lifebit and doing more follow on investments than ever before as the likes of Curve, Airsorted, Live Better With, Cognism and Autologyx raised series A's rounds. London Co-investment Funds commitment period for making initial investments ends this March. Between now and then we hope to invest ( alongside our co-investment partners) in at least another 10 startups. March is also when we find out if the present Mayor of London will decide to invest more money in the fund so we can continue to invest in great seed stage startups that attract private sector investment ( to date over ￡300m has been invested in startups that were initially backed by LCIF ) and create jobs ( over 1700 jobs have been created so far). Fingers Crossed.
• We had our first full year of AI Seed and we are immensely proud that in 2018 we invested in 20+ amazing AI First startups. I will resist the urge to name them all but I will say that we are, after Entrepreneur First, we are the most active investor in AI First startups in Europe. Also if you check out the data you will see that Capital Enterprise is a partner and backer of the top 5 investors in Europe. All of AI Seed portfolio companies are at a very early stage on their journey to success but already over 25% of the portfolio have gone on to raise follow on rounds and we expect more to do so in the new year. Despite " you know what" and the unprecedented level of uncertainty it is creating for UK focused investors, AI Seed is now out looking to raise its 2019-20 SEIS/EIS fund from High Net Worths. Fingers crossed.
• We launched our new One tech programme, sponsored to the tune of $1m from JP Morgan, which has been designed to implement a wide range of practical measures to address the barriers that prevent ambitious female founded tech startups and ambitious ethnic minority tech startup founders raising venture capital in London. Our aim is to double the numbers, specifically of female founders ( where the available data shows only 7% of VC investments go into female co-founded teams) that raise venture capital in London over the next two years. New sponsors and an expansion of the programme will be announced in the new year.
• We launched Cap-Talent a programme to encourage and enable our community of tech startups to access top quality student talent. We find paid internship opportunities in some of Londons best VC backed startups for students and graduates from primarily computer science departments of our member universities. We piloted the project in the summer of 2018 and were grateful to receive sponsorship from City Corporation of London to expand the programme in 2019.
• We completed a report on Affordable Workspace for the GLA and are hopeful that some of our recommendations including business rate relief for open office startup space and an accreditation scheme for workspace providers that can demonstrate a social and economic impact beyond their own building will come in the New Year.
• Just before the Christmas break we were informed that we have been selected to deliver the Mayor of London funded Digital Talent programme which aims to inspire, educate, and enable 18-24 year olds to find and build for themselves career opportunities in London's tech startup sector. The focus will be on young people from London's ethnic minority communities.

So if we put aside "you know what" for a moment, arguably the big theme of 2018, was the London tech scene finally waking up to the need to address the diversity and inclusion issue. It was the big push for Capital Enterprise, led by Alison Partridge and Emma Obanye, that resulted in us to develop and raise funding for initiatives that will put Capital Enterprise at the forefront of making Europe's most dynamic, innovative and wealth/ job creating sector - the London Tech startup eco-system- more inclusive and more representative.Thanks for our partners YSYS, Diversity VC, Tech Nation, Accelerator Academy and Loughborough University for making this happen.

So in all 2018 was an amazing year for Capital Enterprise. Thanks to the amazing hard working team at Capital Enterprise and all our members and partners. Fingers crossed for 2019. Thanks to "you know what" we may all need it.

( If you want to find out more about any of these programmes do get in touch via www.capitalenterprise.org )