While many VCs increasingly favour companies with £1m or more in annual revenue as a marker of product-market fit, this threshold can overlook compelling opportunities in earlier stage businesses. For some tech companies, especially those developing differentiated intellectual property (IP), the drive toward early commercialisation can be both distracting and inefficient, particularly when revenue traction lags market potential. In these cases, value creation may lie not in chasing sales, but in embedding the technology within the workflows of global partners or industry leaders. Doing so can elevate the company’s strategic relevance and position it as an attractive acquisition target.
Maven has a suite of funds that can support companies at different stages of their lifecycle, with our regional funds and EIS funds capable of investing in earlier stage companies. In one example from our portfolio, we refocused the business from revenue generation and towards market validation across the product suite, creating a stronger foundation for visibility, strategic engagement, and ultimately a competitive sale process.
Syndicating with other venture firms offers a strategic way to create value by combining capital, expertise, and networks to support larger funding rounds and accelerate growth. It also enables shared risk, deeper due diligence, and broader sector insight. As the smaller business equity market trends toward fewer but larger deals (evident in 2024’s lower deal volumes but higher values), syndication is becoming increasingly important. In a more selective funding environment, strong collaboration with trusted co-investors is key to accessing capital and driving resilient, high-conviction outcomes for both investors and portfolio companies.
Maven has actively embraced the trend toward syndication and participation in larger funding rounds. Earlier this year, we followed on in Laverock Therapeutics’ Seed Extension round, investing alongside a select group of new and existing investors. Laverock is advancing a novel cell and gene therapy platform capable of programmable, tunable, and highly specific gene silencing, enabling safer, more targeted therapies. In a tough fundraising environment for early stage biotech, Laverock distinguished itself through strong human cell data, a highly experienced team, and continued support from specialist investor Lilly Ventures, securing additional runway to generate critical in vivo data for future institutional rounds.
In a more selective funding environment, one of the most compelling venture opportunities lies not in new deals, but in doubling down on the best performing companies already in the portfolio. These businesses have proven teams, validated products, demonstrated resilience, and are already a known quantity, making them lower risk, high upside candidates for follow-on investment. Backing winners allows investors to consolidate conviction, support momentum at critical inflection points, and optimise fund returns through increased exposure to breakout outcomes. In today’s market, disciplined capital allocation increasingly means leaning into what is already working.
In 2024, Maven completed a successful exit from MirrorWeb, a compliance and preservation software provider, through a sale to US-based growth equity firm MainSail Partners. Maven first invested in 2018 via a regional fund, supporting MirrorWeb at a time when it was an early stage company with modest revenues and a concentrated customer base, but a compelling compliance-focused solution and credible growth strategy. With continued follow-on investment, including from the Maven VCTs, the company scaled significantly. Maven ultimately invested £6.2 million across multiple rounds, supporting MirrorWeb’s journey from early stage growth to international exit, which delivered returns of 4.0x for the VCTs and 5.1x for NPIF Maven Equity Finance, underscoring the value of backing high-potential businesses already within the portfolio.
AI startups captured 27% of all UK VC investment in 2024, a record high, with London-based firms alone raising $3.5 billion, accounting for nearly a third of the city’s total VC activity. But the most compelling opportunity is not always in backing AI-native companies. Increasingly, we are seeing strong investment cases in businesses where AI is not the product, but a powerful internal enabler. These companies are using AI across functions such as automating report writing, accelerating coding, and streamlining operations to drive significant efficiency gains. This operational leverage frees up capital to invest in human talent where it matters most: creativity, strategy, and true innovation.
In venture investing, "picks and shovels" businesses - those that provide the critical tools, infrastructure, or platforms enabling broader industry trends - often represent a more resilient and scalable opportunity. Rather than betting on who will win in a crowded end market, these companies benefit from sector-wide adoption. Whether it is developer tools in AI, data infrastructure in biotech, or hardware-software systems supporting industrial automation, these businesses are often capital efficient, sticky, and positioned for recurring revenue. Backing the enablers, rather than the headline winners, can offer durable upside with lower execution risk.
Pure-play SaaS is no longer the only model attracting investor interest. While historical focus centred on rapid ARR growth, today’s funding environment places greater weight on metrics like net revenue retention, payback periods, and customer lifetime value. High churn, especially among mid-market and SME customers, has become a concern, prompting SaaS companies to rethink value delivery. Previously, revenue from implementation or onboarding services was often discounted by investors; now, it is increasingly viewed as a strategic asset. Effective onboarding and enablement are critical to ensuring adoption, driving engagement, and reducing churn. In competitive B2B categories, retention has become the new growth engine, and implementation is emerging as a key enabler of long-term success.
In early 2025, Maven completed an investment in Blackdot Solutions, an online investigations platform that transforms open-source data into actionable intelligence to combat economic, serious, and organised crime. While Blackdot’s core customer base, comprising banks and government agencies, faces budgetary pressures, the platform’s technical integration and strong user adoption provide resilience. Licence volumes may flex in leaner periods, but full churn is unlikely. Upselling through expanded user groups, new use cases, and additional teams remains a key growth driver. More broadly, we are also seeing increasing venture opportunity in tech companies with integrated software and hardware offerings, where the hardware element often strengthens customer stickiness and reduces churn.
I have collaborated with the Royal Society of Chemistry and their Changemaker programme on several occasions this year, so I am taking the liberty of adding a bonus opportunity.
With increasing regulatory pressure and growing demand for greener alternatives, companies innovating to improve efficiency while reducing environmental impact are gaining significant momentum. These companies help lower carbon emissions and hazardous waste, while delivering cost savings and operational improvements to their customers. Investors in this space benefit from strong market drivers such as evolving ESG regulations, corporate sustainability commitments, and rising consumer demand for green solutions across manufacturing, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals. One particularly promising area is sustainability-focused companies optimising chemical processes and reducing reliance on toxic solvents, offering both meaningful environmental benefits and the potential for attractive financial returns.