Notion Capital

Notion Capital is a venture capital investment firm based in London, England and founded in 2008 by brothers Ben and Jos White, with business partners Stephen Chandler, Chris Tottman and Ian Milbourn.

History

Ben and Jos White revealed plans to create the fund in October 2008, using around £20 million of the £100 million they made that month, from the sale of MessageLabs to Symantec. The brothers, with partners, had earlier built and sold the technology companies RBR Networks, eventually Cisco's largest distributor in Europe, and then Internet service provider Star Internet. The three companies reached revenues of over US$100m a year. The other founding partners in the fund, Stephen Chandler, Ian Milbourn and Chris Tottman, were all former executives from those companies; Chandler being MessageLabs' financial director as well as being an investment corporate financier at UBS; and Milbourn vice-president of corporate finance there. Tottman held positions at both MessageLabs and Star.

Ben White explained:

Jos White has said that the fund was inspired by MessageLabs' difficulty in obtaining investment.

The initial fund was created in the Autumn (northern hemisphere) of 2008.

Notion Capital were awarded "Equity gap fund of the year" in the Investor Allstars 2013 at the Natural History Museum in London.

Constituent companies

Notion Capital is composed of several legal entities:

• Notion Capital Limited, a Limited Company
• Notion Capital Advisors LLP, a Limited liability partnership
• Notion Capital Partners LLP, a Limited liability partnership incorporated on 22 April 2009,; a registered company, number OC345115.
• Notion Capital Partners 2 LLP, a Limited liability partnership incorporated on 25 May 2011,; authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN number: 565008; a registered company, number OC364955.

Activities

Notion Capital has raised two venture funds. Fund I in 2009 led to investments of almost $50 million and Fund II in 2012 raised around $100m. with an ongoing target of $150m. Notion only invests in software as a service (SaaS) companies, with a preference for B2B and enterprise, cloud-based, fast-growth technology companies, mostly in Europe, but also Israel and South Africa. The firm invests primarily at the Series A stage with an initial investment size of $1–3m. The firm also has a seed investment program that invests in earlier stage start-ups typically as part of a syndicate, in round sizes below $1m. It is also an investor in Seedcamp, the Early stage mentoring and investment programme for European startups, founded by Index Ventures partner Saul Klein.

Its second fund received support from the European Union through the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP); from the United Kingdom government, under its Enterprise Capital Fund (ECF) program; and from the European Investment Fund (EIF). This was the first time the ECF and EIF had been involved in supporting the same fund.

In 2013, Chandler, along with former Hewlett-Packard divisional chief technology officer Graham York, announced the launch of SeedCloud, a European accelerator targeting Cloud computing startups in such areas as big data and machine learning.

Portfolio

Notion's portfolio includes:

• Adbrain
• BCSocial
• Brightpearl
• Concentra
• Duedil
• Idio
• eSellerPro
• NewVoiceMedia
• MoveGuides
• Rockabox
• SelfNet
• Shopa
• Shutl
• Tradeshift
• Vizolution
• Zattikka