LandlordInvest chief heralds new £50m pre-seed investment fund
LandlordInvest boss Filip Karadaghi has heralded a new, state-backed £50m fund that aims to help plug the gap in pre-seed investment in the UK.
The British Business Bank has put £30m into the new fund, alongside £20m from 25 private investors.
The fund will be managed by Concept Ventures, which was previously called RLC Ventures and has invested in more than 100 founders since launching in 2016, including LandlordInvest.
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Karadaghi, who co-founded the peer-to-peer property lending platform in 2014, welcomed the news of the new fund.
“Delighted to see that our first external backer, who believed in us when we were no more than a 40-page long business plan, has raised the UK’s largest pre-seed fund of £50m with participation from the British Business Bank,” he said in a LinkedIn post.
“[Concept Ventures founder] Reece Chowdhry and his team have been incredibly supportive in our journey when many were not, leading us to experience a 100 per cent annual growth in revenues in the last two years and being one of the UK’s most profitable property platforms (Return on capital employed of around 20 per cent when most are still loss-making despite of equity investments 10-15x of ours).
“If you or anyone that you know have a great idea and looking for pre-seed funding, reach out to the friendly and experienced team at Concept Ventures. Great things happen when great people get together.”
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Chowdry is an adviser to LandlordInvest.
He had reportedly been in talks with the British Business Bank since 2018 about launching the new fund, which he said addresses a growing gap in the market.
“A lot of angels say they will invest if there is a VC leading the round,” he told The Times. “So we are stepping up, putting a larger cheque in, and the angel investors will invest alongside us.”
LandlordInvest has attracted a number of equity investors in recent years. In 2017, it raised an undisclosed sum from Alan Gabbay, director of property investment firm O&H Properties, to invest in technology on the platform.
Gabbay is also listed as an adviser to LandlordInvest on the company’s website.
Other financial backers including LNK Capital and angel investor Lee Josephs.