Episode 1 is a venture fund set up to invest in early-stage technology companies based in the UK. The three partners behind the fund – Simon Murdoch, Damien Lane and Adrian Lloyd – are experienced entrepreneurs and investors, and have been through every stage of the start-up process, from inception to initial public offering. The firm invests between £250,000 and £2 million in UK based early-stage companies. Episode 1's first fund was launched in 2013 and totalled £37.5m.
Its objective is to give a better start to the next generation of British tech ventures than their predecessors. It was created with a mixture of public and private money, including backing from Alex Chesterman of
Zoopla
ZPG Ltd. is a British real estate company based in London, England, owned by Silver Lake Partners.
Its brands include the property website Zoopla, price comparison service Uswitch, finance comparison website Money.co.uk, personal finance content ...
Property Group. It is one of the UK Government's
Enterprise Capital Fund
Enterprise Capital Funds are financial schemes established by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in the United Kingdom to address a market weakness in the provision of equity finance to UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs ...
s – set up to support fund managers who invest in small, high-growth businesses. The £12.5 million of private investment was matched with £25 million of public money.
The government's Business Secretary
Vince Cable
Sir John Vincent Cable (born 9 May 1943) is a British politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 to 2019. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Twickenham from 1997 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019. He also served in the Cabinet a ...
endorsed the launch of the fund, saying it 'will target a serious gap in the equity market for high-growth small firms'.
The firm launched
second Enterprise Capital Fundtotalling £60m in November 2017. The focus of the second fund is also early stage UK based businesses.
The team at Episode 1 made early investments in a number of technology businesses including
Betfair
Betfair is a British Gambling, gambling company which operates the world's largest online betting exchange. Its product offering also includes sports betting, online casino, online poker, and online bingo. Founded in 2000, the business is split ...
(which is now listed on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
and has a market cap of over £1.3 billion),
LoveFilm
LoveFilm was a United Kingdom–based provider of DVD-by-mail and streaming video on demand in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany.
Acquired by Amazon.com in 2011, the service had reached 2 million subscribers. It claimed ...
(which was sold to
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
in 2011), Natural Motion (which was sold to
Zynga
Zynga Inc. () is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its missio ...
in 2014),
ScanSafe (which was sold to
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...
in 2009),
Shazam and Zoopla (which is also listed on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
).
Two of the three partners – Simon Murdoch and Damien Lane – previously worked at Octopus Investments.
Investments
Investments made by Episode 1 include the following software-driven businesses:
*
eMoov - an online estate agent
*
Carwow
Carwow is an online marketplace for buying and selling cars. It uses the reverse marketplace model to remove the need for customers to negotiate with dealers when buying or selling their cars. When buying a new car, users choose the car they woul ...
- a car buying platform
* User Replay - a customer experience management (CEM) software provider
References
{{Reflist
External links
Official Site
Investment companies of the United Kingdom