Investors

Pre-seed investor Playfair is announcing its largest fund yet with $70 million to deploy across the UK and Europe. 

It takes Playfair’s total amount raised to $140m.

Over the past 10 years, Playfair says it has pioneered an impactful model that puts founders first, enabling them to support visionary entrepreneurs as investors and advisors.

Instead of making 30+ investments a year as is often the usual in early-stage funding, Playfair makes a maximum of six to eight investments a year in the most promising founders who it says are building the defining companies of tomorrow.

Investments to date include Omnipresent (tech-enabled HR), Protex AI (workplace safety tech), Orca AI (AI to make shipping safer) and Recycleye (advanced computer vision to improve recycling).

In 2022 Playfair’s portfolio raised $570m in follow-on funding including from DCVC, First Minute, IQ Capital, Kinnevik, Molten, Notion, Stage 2 Capital and Tencent.

As a generalist fund, its team has experience investing across areas including B2B SaaS, applied AI, healthtech and marketplaces, with an average cheque size of £750,000, and backing 100% of their portfolio into a subsequent round. 

Playfair believes that visionary founders come from any location, background or source. The fund receives 3,000+ applications a year through its open pitch form, with the team reviewing each one. 

It says that despite an industry average of only 19% of pre-seed funded companies graduating to Series A, 75% of its fund 2 investments have reached this key milestone. 

If you believe in an idea, have the guts to take action

“Playfair is the pre-seed fund that goes against convention and delivers results – we make a select few investments every year and  focus our time on helping founders to turn their early-stage ideas into global companies,” said Chris Smith, managing partner. 

“I’m incredibly proud of everything the team has achieved so far as we look ahead to our 10th anniversary later this year. We’re delighted to be continuing our mission with our third fund, the largest yet for Playfair, which will enable us to double down on our thesis.” 

Henrik Wetter Sanchez, partner at Playfair, added: “At Playfair we see a vision of venture the way it really should be. We believe in execution over ideas, we believe in treating founders as equals, we believe in epitomising the best versions of ourselves, always. 

“We also believe in living these values internally and my career to date at Playfair encapsulates this: giving our team of investors the freedom and trust to fulfil their potential, ultimately becoming go-to mentors to the founders who entrust us with their journey. 

“I couldn’t be more excited about what this next Playfair generation can achieve in the decades to come.”

‘We saved people’s livelihoods – just by doing the right thing’