Dama Sathianathan: Welcome the for podcast Bethnal Green Ventures. name Dama Sathianathan ⁓ partner at Bethnal Green Ventures, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Camilla, who is the managing partner at Eka Ventures Hi, Camilla.
Camilla: Hi, Dama Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here on this sunny Monday.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, indeed, exceptionally sunny for London as well, which is super, super exciting. ⁓ Thank you so much for joining us on such short notice as well, particularly because it comes over the back of ⁓ exciting announcement of Eka's second fund. So congratulations. ⁓
Camilla: Yes. Thank you. We're really excited. We couldn't be happier to have $107 million ready to invest in fantastic founders in the tech for goods space.
Dama Sathianathan: Amazing. Just briefly, before we dive deeper into sort of Eka's thesis as well, and I'm hoping I'm pronouncing the name of the fund correctly so we can possibly also go into the etymology of the word in and of itself. But ⁓ us a bit more about yourself, Camilla. What actually led you into venture capital to begin with?
Camilla: Definitely. Well, I wish I could say that it was something that when I was sort of born, I had this idea of going into venture capital, but that definitely was not the case. And I was extremely fortunate to be in San Francisco with the consulting firm I was working for at the time called Bain & Company in 2012. And we had all of these amazing companies that were startups at the time, like Dropbox and Uber, come into the office. And I was like, wow, there's this thing called like super scaled entrepreneurship. And then there's a whole industry that finances it and helps those companies grow. This is definitely where I want to sort spend the future of my career. And there was really sort of four reasons for that. was just around entrepreneurship. I'd always been drawn to entrepreneurship. I was the first person in my family to go to university, so it definitely wasn't sort of default. And I had started buying and selling show jumping ponies at school. And so I've always had this like desire to do something in that space. And the second thing was around like how I'd started to understand that finance and companies could really shape the future of the economy. Whilst I was at Bain, we did a lot of work around the Irish banking crisis. So we saw first
Dama Sathianathan: Cool.
Camilla: what happened when a sort of system went wrong. And then on the other hand, when we were in San Francisco, we were surrounded by these people who were talking about how they wanted to build the future of the world, the future of the economy, businesses that their children would enjoy sort of using in the future. And I was like, well, if I'm dedicating my life to anything, I'd love to dedicate it in that direction. And then really the final piece was around the people. I was like, wow, founders are just amazing. The rate of learning, the excellence, the obsession. was like, I just really would love to have the opportunity
Dama Sathianathan: Thank
Camilla: build a career where I was surrounded by people with that level of passion. ⁓ So that was, guess, sort of why. And then when I came back to the UK, was extremely fortunate to be introduced to MMC Ventures, where I started my venture career, and Jon Coker, my current business partner, and he about wanting to build the UK's leading venture firm. At the time, the industry was extremely nascent. I think especially Women VC., there was handful of maybe 10 of us. And so it was a very different landscape today. So I joined MMC, spent a a number of years there working in the direct to consumer backing companies like Gousto, Bloom & Wild a range of other companies and then joined a sort of growth firm called Burda Principal Investments. Also investing the consumer but series B to pre-IPO, very sort of experience, different style of and that's where I learned sort of community led models. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: So Burda was a big investor in Etsy, one of the biggest investors and shareholders in Vinted. And so really started to understand this philosophy of how community-led investing can drive these huge outcomes and incredible defensibility, which really brought me to setting up E-care with Jon and we closed our first fund in 2021, focused on the shared values thesis.
Dama Sathianathan: Amazing, yeah. And you can see the of storyline of how it emerged into becoming Eka today as well, which is super, super exciting. us a bit more about Eka's thesis then. I also, I feel the premise of actually seeing early stage investing ⁓ with long term view of systemic change or positive systemic change ⁓ makes personally really, hopeful. ⁓ ⁓ listeners today, what does that actually mean in practice? Yeah, tell us more about it.
Camilla: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think we've definitely tried to explain this previously in ways that are probably too sort of theoretical. I think really sort of simply, we think about sort of impact investing, we think about investing in businesses that are improving how people live their daily lives. so that sort of affordable and accessible products and services. So how do you have fair insurance? How do you have fair financial services? How do you get access to legal services and education? And what's the technology that exists today that can truly make that personalised accessible and accessible to everybody globally? So that's one mega theme. And we're like, there's just so much opportunity there. The second one is around health care. So when we look into the health care system, 10 % of global GDP, you know, that continues to rise every year, trillions of dollars to spend in that space. Most of that is currently treatment led. Majority of conditions could be prevented. we're like huge opportunity. Consumer technology is all around behaviour change, getting people to change their behaviour, to interact with technology. So we're like that could be used or applied to help people move from a treatment led system to a preventative system. Runna, one of our portfolio companies, is a really great example of that running training app.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: sort of focused on helping people to learn to run then people that were already running to get better and improve over time. That business sort of scaled really exponentially in a short period of time. And finally sustainability. When you look into what we're buying every day, the supply chains that sit behind that ⁓ are extremely clunky and extremely wasteful. And there's huge economic ⁓ and environmental from cleaning those up and improving efficiency across ⁓ each of major consumer supply chains. ⁓ Axle Energy, is an investment in our fund one portfolio we think is a really awesome example of that. So that's a business that connects into consumers assets. So if it's heat pumps or electric vehicles and it connects those consumer assets up into the grid and then when the grid needs energy, it sucks the energy up and when the grid needs doesn't has over capacity, it pushes it down and through doing so it helps to stabilize the grid, which helps that electric decarbonize and electrify the grid. And at the same time, it puts hundreds of pounds back into the consumer pockets by
Dama Sathianathan: Bye.
Camilla: sure they're always accessing the cheapest rates. And so that's a sort of for us a really great example of like a shared value business. And we're really excited about the power of those business models across those three sectors. And they're just huge, huge, huge opportunities, know, trillions of dollars in decarbonisation, trillions of dollars in healthcare, and trillions of dollars in inclusive financial services. So we think it's really exciting time to be investing in those three areas.
Dama Sathianathan: Well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're preaching to the choir here.
Camilla: Well, yes, and actually, I mean, it's a good point, though, because I think Bethnal Green Ventures and couple of other funds, when we first set up Eka we really looked out for inspiration. And I think it was only possible to really set up a fund like Eka because of the amazing work that funds Bethnal Green Ventures have done. ⁓ No, but it's ⁓ We were like, are doing this and it's working. It's really exciting. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Thank you. You're kind to... Yeah, mean, generally, I feel like the excitement that we've seen in the sort of impact investing space, maybe over the past five to seven years now, there's just so much more of a collaborative nature. So seeing even the reports that BSC has put out where Eka and BGV and many others were involved around sort of impact as a source of value is like hugely promising and yeah, it does make you feel hopeful about the state of the world. So yeah, thank you, Camilla. That was super kind. yeah, digging a bit deeper into sort of the three consumer led mega trends that you talked about. ⁓ Was there anything since Fund One, since the inception in 2021 essentially, has there been anything that really surprised you in terms of how fast these trends have evolved or is there anything that you've realised in coming across the spectrum of deals that you might see at your fund that really you were a like, that is a massive sort of step change that we want to dig deeper into.
Camilla: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I we were talking about it briefly before. It's been a crazy sort of five or six years. ⁓ You know, COVID, the war, like whole range of different things. I think probably the thing that surprised us is just... the acceleration of awareness, both on sort of healthcare COVID and people taking more responsibility for their own health ⁓ more recently on the sort of energy sort of crisis and the need for security and resiliency and how important energy is in our sort of daily lives. ⁓ I think there's been a lot of sort of positive tailwinds for our thesis and you can see that in the follow on rate in sort of portfolio companies. So ⁓ 70 of the investments we make, when we make them, there's no capital there. So we're the only term sheet. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Thank Cool.
Camilla: those companies in Fund One have gone on to raise really good follow on capital from of tier one commercial institutions, you know, index and Accel and the ratio of follow on capital is about one to eight for every pound that we've invested into. So I think really seeing that like other people and later stage funds have sort of woken up ⁓ to that opportunity exists. And then from a perspective, one of the like themes we're so excited about and it's really pulled forward is just what is actually possible, in healthcare. So I think when we start
Dama Sathianathan: Cool.
Camilla: investing in healthcare, a lot of what we were seeing in sort of diagnostics or assistance ⁓ but were always tapping into quite a limited spend and they were like improving healthcare, but they weren't really changing the system. ⁓ What seen in the last couple of years is that AI is getting to a maturity level and the are getting to an understanding level where you can start to treat patients using AI and that radically the economics and the within the healthcare system. We're investors in a business Flok Health.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: so Flok Health diagnoses and treats lower back pain care. It's fully regulated, so the same as if you were going to your GP, it's CQC regulated, software as a medical device regulated, but it has abundant capacity where it you will know as being trialled in Cambridge. Cambridge has a 12-week wait list for lower back pain care and they were able to treat all of the eligible patients. None of those came back into the system and they reduced the overall wait list by 55%. Those things were not possible three or four years ago, so extremely excited about. that trend and we think it's going to happen across all different spaces of healthcare.
Dama Sathianathan: And just the huge tangible like positive impact it actually has on people's life is ⁓ ⁓ you consider that it does lead to better adoption as well, which is really ⁓
Camilla: my God, it's amazing. And actually, if you take Flok as an example, I it's really incredible. So they sort of look at the different sort demographics and the engagement rates by different demographic, and then they compare it to the sort of mainstream system. ⁓ And what they is some of the hardest to access demographics that don't typically interact with the healthcare system ⁓ do interact with and have Flok and have really positive outcomes. ⁓ which it was, that was one of, think when we saw that data, it was one of the things we were most excited about.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. ⁓ yeah, it does speak volumes about like the sort of design thinking and the approaches ⁓ the founders that you're backing as well, is nice segue way into the next question I have for you. What do you actually look for in the founders that you're backing with Eka as well? What is, what are the three ⁓ main points really ⁓
Camilla: them.
Dama Sathianathan: stood out from the founders you've backed and from the founders you're seeking.
Camilla: Yeah, definitely. It's probably the thing we talk about the most internally. were really fortunate ⁓ in our career to work with some exceptional founders and the back of that have developed a process that we use to try to understand whether someone has that potential. So we it a leadership assessment process. It's a ⁓ founder interview, so 60 to 90 minutes, ⁓ one on with that founder that Jon, business partner, or I do. So we take it really seriously. Then do ⁓ something called Hogan, is a sort of psychometric testing that gives us a sense of strengths, weaknesses, motivations. And then we do extremely detailed referencing as well. And we like to take a minimum of three references, but up to eight per founder. And what we're really looking for in that is evidence of outlier achievement. And that can be across sort of any walk of life. But we like to see something where you have just massively out competed your peer group. And like a really good example of that is as a founder in our portfolio. called Murvah, who's the CEO and co-founder a last mile logistics business called Hived extremely difficult complicated business We backed her co-founder straight out of university and when we this founder assessment we found out that she had been captain of the under Man City women's football team. She'd done exceptionally well academically and she built an amazing influencer strategy for her family's sort of takeaway chain like at point in time where
Dama Sathianathan: Mmm. Bye.
Camilla: where influencer strategies weren't a huge thing. So we were like, wow, this is someone that's just incredible, leads a team, get loads of things going, pick up skills really fast. And so that really embodies what we think, how we think about that outlier achievement. ⁓ And then the second thing is an obsession with learning and development. Yeah, and that is huge for us. We've got tons of first-time founders. Most of our bigger outcomes have come from first-time founders, often no management experience, often no business experience. then a few years later, they're managing hundreds.
Dama Sathianathan: Right.
Camilla: or thousands of people, complex organizations. And so we're looking for people that just have this insane capacity to and develop and improve themselves and always be thinking about going forward on that. ⁓ And one that always stands out the most to me with that is a founder called Timo, who is CEO and co-founder of Gousto which is an online grocery business that Jon I backed in 2013. And he did an MBA whilst raising his series A. He was like to build this into a big business, know, leadership. going to be the most important thing. I'm dedicating time to that. He then joined a number of later stage boards, sort of late stage VC backboards and then some public boards as well. Because was like, need to understand like how I think about like, you know, 10 years later, 20 years later, ⁓ and became a leadership coach. ⁓ And type of like, that's the depth and level of obsession with learning and development that we're really sort of looking for in the that we back today.
Dama Sathianathan: That's so fascinating, actually seeing how much you can also uncover through the process that you might otherwise not actually come across, especially if there's no online footprint for some of these ⁓ discoveries as well, which is, yeah, just really fascinating.
Camilla: Yeah. We love that. It's our favorite part. And I think one of the things is distance traveled because, you know, I think we're sort of impact investors. I think one of the most interesting things sometimes in those founder interviews is the context, because if you've had a lot of privilege and then you've got a top first, that's really impressive. But if you come from an environment where you've had no support and maybe you're the first person to go to university and you're funding yourself through it in parallel ⁓ you get the top first, then your distance to get there ⁓ like It is really impressive and when we think about that sort of like outlier achievement in terms of like Out competing like where like your pace some of those individuals you see those signs more clearly like through those ⁓ assessment processes
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it also feels like it's a more equitable approach to the many ways that deals are actually sourced in the venture capital industry as well, which is really refreshing to hear. So yeah, thanks for sharing into how you do this. Perhaps sort of the founders listening in, at what sort of stage do you usually founders when they come Eka?
Camilla: Thank Yeah, it's a great question. Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier. So we invest at pre seed and seed. so we invest in pre seed, often where the founder has some sort of like it. previous experience that means we think they can get out of the gates faster. And then we invest at seed often when there's a model that we like to see like a little bit more execution into. we do go really, really, really early. So in II we've made three investments at at the point in time, we made those investments. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: I'm good. Yeah. Hopefully, it also speaks volumes around sort of portfolio diversification and how this how this fund play out, which is very, very to see. ⁓ I guess that sort ⁓ as if I had planned a nice segue into the next question is ⁓ if we sort take a future forward approach because ⁓ the sort of of the world is definitely murky at best, ⁓ very and often, guess ⁓ we feel a bit jaded when we think about the state of the world as well But if you were to take a sort of 10 future forward looking phase and wonder sort of how Eka's thesis plays out over the next decade, ⁓ what do you ⁓ How do you think it will shape the sort UK startup ecosystem? And ⁓ do you feel Eka will play a role in getting to that ⁓
Camilla: Yeah, it's a really good question, I guess. What we talk about, which maybe sounds a bit grandiose internally, is we talk about making impact mainstream by delivering outlier returns. And I think when we really think about that. The companies we're backing today, we hope to find the economy in 10 years time. ⁓ we look often at sort Sequoia and the impact they've had in the US. So 25 % of the S &P are Sequoia backed companies. We would really love it if sort of 25 % of the FTSE companies were Eka backed companies. And that when you wake up every day, you were using products and services that sort of provided by Eka backed companies across those of three main sort of areas. And then from sort of VC perspective, what we really hope that does
Dama Sathianathan: Mm. Mm.
Camilla: is that because it drives such exceptional returns, more capital flows back into the impact market and more mainstream investors move into the impact market. And in parallel, we continue to see exceptional founders wanting to build in that space because they know that they can attract the best talent, they know they can build these companies that do define the future of the economy, and they know they're going to be able to access the capital to do that. So we really think about it as a flywheel. We're extremely positive. We talk a lot about abundance. We talked about Flok health. this increase in capacity in healthcare, ⁓ think that's going to happen across nearly every industry. And we think it's funds like yours and like ours that which are going to sort of make that happen and really define what that economy in the future looks like.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully in 10 years time we're back here and seeing 25 % or more being the FTSE 500.
Camilla: Yeah, yeah, or more exactly. definitely be very happy with more as well. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: ⁓ exciting. I guess coming to the last question for this podcast ⁓ ⁓ focusing on sort of the founders listening to this episode as well. What is sort of a piece of advice you'd give to any founder ⁓ to build an impact driven startup and sort of really setting themselves up for success for the future?
Camilla: Yeah, 100%. I think it's a very basic one. Be ambitious. I think there's truly no limit to what is possible and how big an impact driven startup can be. And I think really as a founder, setting that ambition level high and being open about it and talking about it ⁓ not being ashamed of that is extremely important. I think in the UK, ⁓ we can, you know, ⁓ a bit embarrassed about having these huge ambitions. We love it when founders come to us and we're like blown away by that ambition level ⁓ and vision of what the future world ⁓ can like. And yeah, so that would be my one.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah. Be ambitious and which also applies to us. So, yay. ⁓ make that happen. Camilla. ⁓ thank you so, so much for joining us today. ⁓ been super, super interesting to dig deeper into ⁓ of the sort structural ⁓ you've seen over the years as well and particularly how it's led to Eka and ⁓ hopefully will come ⁓ the future, ⁓ on the FTSE 500 market. So you. Thank you so much.
Camilla: Yeah
Dama Sathianathan: joining us today on Tech for Good with BGV.
Camilla: No worries. Thank you very much for having me, Dama Really nice to see you. Exciting to be building together.
Dama Sathianathan: it does. And on to your dear listeners. If you have suggestions for guests or topics we should be covering on Tech for Good, please do get in touch. And if thinking of starting a Tech for Good venture and are looking for investment, ⁓ don't forget check out bethnalgreenventures.com and ekavc.com ⁓ to see we might be able to help. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for listening and goodbye.
Camilla: Hi, Dama Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here on this sunny Monday.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, indeed, exceptionally sunny for London as well, which is super, super exciting. ⁓ Thank you so much for joining us on such short notice as well, particularly because it comes over the back of ⁓ exciting announcement of Eka's second fund. So congratulations. ⁓
Camilla: Yes. Thank you. We're really excited. We couldn't be happier to have $107 million ready to invest in fantastic founders in the tech for goods space.
Dama Sathianathan: Amazing. Just briefly, before we dive deeper into sort of Eka's thesis as well, and I'm hoping I'm pronouncing the name of the fund correctly so we can possibly also go into the etymology of the word in and of itself. But ⁓ us a bit more about yourself, Camilla. What actually led you into venture capital to begin with?
Camilla: Definitely. Well, I wish I could say that it was something that when I was sort of born, I had this idea of going into venture capital, but that definitely was not the case. And I was extremely fortunate to be in San Francisco with the consulting firm I was working for at the time called Bain & Company in 2012. And we had all of these amazing companies that were startups at the time, like Dropbox and Uber, come into the office. And I was like, wow, there's this thing called like super scaled entrepreneurship. And then there's a whole industry that finances it and helps those companies grow. This is definitely where I want to sort spend the future of my career. And there was really sort of four reasons for that. was just around entrepreneurship. I'd always been drawn to entrepreneurship. I was the first person in my family to go to university, so it definitely wasn't sort of default. And I had started buying and selling show jumping ponies at school. And so I've always had this like desire to do something in that space. And the second thing was around like how I'd started to understand that finance and companies could really shape the future of the economy. Whilst I was at Bain, we did a lot of work around the Irish banking crisis. So we saw first
Dama Sathianathan: Cool.
Camilla: what happened when a sort of system went wrong. And then on the other hand, when we were in San Francisco, we were surrounded by these people who were talking about how they wanted to build the future of the world, the future of the economy, businesses that their children would enjoy sort of using in the future. And I was like, well, if I'm dedicating my life to anything, I'd love to dedicate it in that direction. And then really the final piece was around the people. I was like, wow, founders are just amazing. The rate of learning, the excellence, the obsession. was like, I just really would love to have the opportunity
Dama Sathianathan: Thank
Camilla: build a career where I was surrounded by people with that level of passion. ⁓ So that was, guess, sort of why. And then when I came back to the UK, was extremely fortunate to be introduced to MMC Ventures, where I started my venture career, and Jon Coker, my current business partner, and he about wanting to build the UK's leading venture firm. At the time, the industry was extremely nascent. I think especially Women VC., there was handful of maybe 10 of us. And so it was a very different landscape today. So I joined MMC, spent a a number of years there working in the direct to consumer backing companies like Gousto, Bloom & Wild a range of other companies and then joined a sort of growth firm called Burda Principal Investments. Also investing the consumer but series B to pre-IPO, very sort of experience, different style of and that's where I learned sort of community led models. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: So Burda was a big investor in Etsy, one of the biggest investors and shareholders in Vinted. And so really started to understand this philosophy of how community-led investing can drive these huge outcomes and incredible defensibility, which really brought me to setting up E-care with Jon and we closed our first fund in 2021, focused on the shared values thesis.
Dama Sathianathan: Amazing, yeah. And you can see the of storyline of how it emerged into becoming Eka today as well, which is super, super exciting. us a bit more about Eka's thesis then. I also, I feel the premise of actually seeing early stage investing ⁓ with long term view of systemic change or positive systemic change ⁓ makes personally really, hopeful. ⁓ ⁓ listeners today, what does that actually mean in practice? Yeah, tell us more about it.
Camilla: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think we've definitely tried to explain this previously in ways that are probably too sort of theoretical. I think really sort of simply, we think about sort of impact investing, we think about investing in businesses that are improving how people live their daily lives. so that sort of affordable and accessible products and services. So how do you have fair insurance? How do you have fair financial services? How do you get access to legal services and education? And what's the technology that exists today that can truly make that personalised accessible and accessible to everybody globally? So that's one mega theme. And we're like, there's just so much opportunity there. The second one is around health care. So when we look into the health care system, 10 % of global GDP, you know, that continues to rise every year, trillions of dollars to spend in that space. Most of that is currently treatment led. Majority of conditions could be prevented. we're like huge opportunity. Consumer technology is all around behaviour change, getting people to change their behaviour, to interact with technology. So we're like that could be used or applied to help people move from a treatment led system to a preventative system. Runna, one of our portfolio companies, is a really great example of that running training app.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: sort of focused on helping people to learn to run then people that were already running to get better and improve over time. That business sort of scaled really exponentially in a short period of time. And finally sustainability. When you look into what we're buying every day, the supply chains that sit behind that ⁓ are extremely clunky and extremely wasteful. And there's huge economic ⁓ and environmental from cleaning those up and improving efficiency across ⁓ each of major consumer supply chains. ⁓ Axle Energy, is an investment in our fund one portfolio we think is a really awesome example of that. So that's a business that connects into consumers assets. So if it's heat pumps or electric vehicles and it connects those consumer assets up into the grid and then when the grid needs energy, it sucks the energy up and when the grid needs doesn't has over capacity, it pushes it down and through doing so it helps to stabilize the grid, which helps that electric decarbonize and electrify the grid. And at the same time, it puts hundreds of pounds back into the consumer pockets by
Dama Sathianathan: Bye.
Camilla: sure they're always accessing the cheapest rates. And so that's a sort of for us a really great example of like a shared value business. And we're really excited about the power of those business models across those three sectors. And they're just huge, huge, huge opportunities, know, trillions of dollars in decarbonisation, trillions of dollars in healthcare, and trillions of dollars in inclusive financial services. So we think it's really exciting time to be investing in those three areas.
Dama Sathianathan: Well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're preaching to the choir here.
Camilla: Well, yes, and actually, I mean, it's a good point, though, because I think Bethnal Green Ventures and couple of other funds, when we first set up Eka we really looked out for inspiration. And I think it was only possible to really set up a fund like Eka because of the amazing work that funds Bethnal Green Ventures have done. ⁓ No, but it's ⁓ We were like, are doing this and it's working. It's really exciting. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Thank you. You're kind to... Yeah, mean, generally, I feel like the excitement that we've seen in the sort of impact investing space, maybe over the past five to seven years now, there's just so much more of a collaborative nature. So seeing even the reports that BSC has put out where Eka and BGV and many others were involved around sort of impact as a source of value is like hugely promising and yeah, it does make you feel hopeful about the state of the world. So yeah, thank you, Camilla. That was super kind. yeah, digging a bit deeper into sort of the three consumer led mega trends that you talked about. ⁓ Was there anything since Fund One, since the inception in 2021 essentially, has there been anything that really surprised you in terms of how fast these trends have evolved or is there anything that you've realised in coming across the spectrum of deals that you might see at your fund that really you were a like, that is a massive sort of step change that we want to dig deeper into.
Camilla: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I we were talking about it briefly before. It's been a crazy sort of five or six years. ⁓ You know, COVID, the war, like whole range of different things. I think probably the thing that surprised us is just... the acceleration of awareness, both on sort of healthcare COVID and people taking more responsibility for their own health ⁓ more recently on the sort of energy sort of crisis and the need for security and resiliency and how important energy is in our sort of daily lives. ⁓ I think there's been a lot of sort of positive tailwinds for our thesis and you can see that in the follow on rate in sort of portfolio companies. So ⁓ 70 of the investments we make, when we make them, there's no capital there. So we're the only term sheet. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: Thank Cool.
Camilla: those companies in Fund One have gone on to raise really good follow on capital from of tier one commercial institutions, you know, index and Accel and the ratio of follow on capital is about one to eight for every pound that we've invested into. So I think really seeing that like other people and later stage funds have sort of woken up ⁓ to that opportunity exists. And then from a perspective, one of the like themes we're so excited about and it's really pulled forward is just what is actually possible, in healthcare. So I think when we start
Dama Sathianathan: Cool.
Camilla: investing in healthcare, a lot of what we were seeing in sort of diagnostics or assistance ⁓ but were always tapping into quite a limited spend and they were like improving healthcare, but they weren't really changing the system. ⁓ What seen in the last couple of years is that AI is getting to a maturity level and the are getting to an understanding level where you can start to treat patients using AI and that radically the economics and the within the healthcare system. We're investors in a business Flok Health.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah.
Camilla: so Flok Health diagnoses and treats lower back pain care. It's fully regulated, so the same as if you were going to your GP, it's CQC regulated, software as a medical device regulated, but it has abundant capacity where it you will know as being trialled in Cambridge. Cambridge has a 12-week wait list for lower back pain care and they were able to treat all of the eligible patients. None of those came back into the system and they reduced the overall wait list by 55%. Those things were not possible three or four years ago, so extremely excited about. that trend and we think it's going to happen across all different spaces of healthcare.
Dama Sathianathan: And just the huge tangible like positive impact it actually has on people's life is ⁓ ⁓ you consider that it does lead to better adoption as well, which is really ⁓
Camilla: my God, it's amazing. And actually, if you take Flok as an example, I it's really incredible. So they sort of look at the different sort demographics and the engagement rates by different demographic, and then they compare it to the sort of mainstream system. ⁓ And what they is some of the hardest to access demographics that don't typically interact with the healthcare system ⁓ do interact with and have Flok and have really positive outcomes. ⁓ which it was, that was one of, think when we saw that data, it was one of the things we were most excited about.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. ⁓ yeah, it does speak volumes about like the sort of design thinking and the approaches ⁓ the founders that you're backing as well, is nice segue way into the next question I have for you. What do you actually look for in the founders that you're backing with Eka as well? What is, what are the three ⁓ main points really ⁓
Camilla: them.
Dama Sathianathan: stood out from the founders you've backed and from the founders you're seeking.
Camilla: Yeah, definitely. It's probably the thing we talk about the most internally. were really fortunate ⁓ in our career to work with some exceptional founders and the back of that have developed a process that we use to try to understand whether someone has that potential. So we it a leadership assessment process. It's a ⁓ founder interview, so 60 to 90 minutes, ⁓ one on with that founder that Jon, business partner, or I do. So we take it really seriously. Then do ⁓ something called Hogan, is a sort of psychometric testing that gives us a sense of strengths, weaknesses, motivations. And then we do extremely detailed referencing as well. And we like to take a minimum of three references, but up to eight per founder. And what we're really looking for in that is evidence of outlier achievement. And that can be across sort of any walk of life. But we like to see something where you have just massively out competed your peer group. And like a really good example of that is as a founder in our portfolio. called Murvah, who's the CEO and co-founder a last mile logistics business called Hived extremely difficult complicated business We backed her co-founder straight out of university and when we this founder assessment we found out that she had been captain of the under Man City women's football team. She'd done exceptionally well academically and she built an amazing influencer strategy for her family's sort of takeaway chain like at point in time where
Dama Sathianathan: Mmm. Bye.
Camilla: where influencer strategies weren't a huge thing. So we were like, wow, this is someone that's just incredible, leads a team, get loads of things going, pick up skills really fast. And so that really embodies what we think, how we think about that outlier achievement. ⁓ And then the second thing is an obsession with learning and development. Yeah, and that is huge for us. We've got tons of first-time founders. Most of our bigger outcomes have come from first-time founders, often no management experience, often no business experience. then a few years later, they're managing hundreds.
Dama Sathianathan: Right.
Camilla: or thousands of people, complex organizations. And so we're looking for people that just have this insane capacity to and develop and improve themselves and always be thinking about going forward on that. ⁓ And one that always stands out the most to me with that is a founder called Timo, who is CEO and co-founder of Gousto which is an online grocery business that Jon I backed in 2013. And he did an MBA whilst raising his series A. He was like to build this into a big business, know, leadership. going to be the most important thing. I'm dedicating time to that. He then joined a number of later stage boards, sort of late stage VC backboards and then some public boards as well. Because was like, need to understand like how I think about like, you know, 10 years later, 20 years later, ⁓ and became a leadership coach. ⁓ And type of like, that's the depth and level of obsession with learning and development that we're really sort of looking for in the that we back today.
Dama Sathianathan: That's so fascinating, actually seeing how much you can also uncover through the process that you might otherwise not actually come across, especially if there's no online footprint for some of these ⁓ discoveries as well, which is, yeah, just really fascinating.
Camilla: Yeah. We love that. It's our favorite part. And I think one of the things is distance traveled because, you know, I think we're sort of impact investors. I think one of the most interesting things sometimes in those founder interviews is the context, because if you've had a lot of privilege and then you've got a top first, that's really impressive. But if you come from an environment where you've had no support and maybe you're the first person to go to university and you're funding yourself through it in parallel ⁓ you get the top first, then your distance to get there ⁓ like It is really impressive and when we think about that sort of like outlier achievement in terms of like Out competing like where like your pace some of those individuals you see those signs more clearly like through those ⁓ assessment processes
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it also feels like it's a more equitable approach to the many ways that deals are actually sourced in the venture capital industry as well, which is really refreshing to hear. So yeah, thanks for sharing into how you do this. Perhaps sort of the founders listening in, at what sort of stage do you usually founders when they come Eka?
Camilla: Thank Yeah, it's a great question. Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier. So we invest at pre seed and seed. so we invest in pre seed, often where the founder has some sort of like it. previous experience that means we think they can get out of the gates faster. And then we invest at seed often when there's a model that we like to see like a little bit more execution into. we do go really, really, really early. So in II we've made three investments at at the point in time, we made those investments. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: I'm good. Yeah. Hopefully, it also speaks volumes around sort of portfolio diversification and how this how this fund play out, which is very, very to see. ⁓ I guess that sort ⁓ as if I had planned a nice segue into the next question is ⁓ if we sort take a future forward approach because ⁓ the sort of of the world is definitely murky at best, ⁓ very and often, guess ⁓ we feel a bit jaded when we think about the state of the world as well But if you were to take a sort of 10 future forward looking phase and wonder sort of how Eka's thesis plays out over the next decade, ⁓ what do you ⁓ How do you think it will shape the sort UK startup ecosystem? And ⁓ do you feel Eka will play a role in getting to that ⁓
Camilla: Yeah, it's a really good question, I guess. What we talk about, which maybe sounds a bit grandiose internally, is we talk about making impact mainstream by delivering outlier returns. And I think when we really think about that. The companies we're backing today, we hope to find the economy in 10 years time. ⁓ we look often at sort Sequoia and the impact they've had in the US. So 25 % of the S &P are Sequoia backed companies. We would really love it if sort of 25 % of the FTSE companies were Eka backed companies. And that when you wake up every day, you were using products and services that sort of provided by Eka backed companies across those of three main sort of areas. And then from sort of VC perspective, what we really hope that does
Dama Sathianathan: Mm. Mm.
Camilla: is that because it drives such exceptional returns, more capital flows back into the impact market and more mainstream investors move into the impact market. And in parallel, we continue to see exceptional founders wanting to build in that space because they know that they can attract the best talent, they know they can build these companies that do define the future of the economy, and they know they're going to be able to access the capital to do that. So we really think about it as a flywheel. We're extremely positive. We talk a lot about abundance. We talked about Flok health. this increase in capacity in healthcare, ⁓ think that's going to happen across nearly every industry. And we think it's funds like yours and like ours that which are going to sort of make that happen and really define what that economy in the future looks like.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully in 10 years time we're back here and seeing 25 % or more being the FTSE 500.
Camilla: Yeah, yeah, or more exactly. definitely be very happy with more as well. ⁓
Dama Sathianathan: ⁓ exciting. I guess coming to the last question for this podcast ⁓ ⁓ focusing on sort of the founders listening to this episode as well. What is sort of a piece of advice you'd give to any founder ⁓ to build an impact driven startup and sort of really setting themselves up for success for the future?
Camilla: Yeah, 100%. I think it's a very basic one. Be ambitious. I think there's truly no limit to what is possible and how big an impact driven startup can be. And I think really as a founder, setting that ambition level high and being open about it and talking about it ⁓ not being ashamed of that is extremely important. I think in the UK, ⁓ we can, you know, ⁓ a bit embarrassed about having these huge ambitions. We love it when founders come to us and we're like blown away by that ambition level ⁓ and vision of what the future world ⁓ can like. And yeah, so that would be my one.
Dama Sathianathan: Yeah, yeah. Be ambitious and which also applies to us. So, yay. ⁓ make that happen. Camilla. ⁓ thank you so, so much for joining us today. ⁓ been super, super interesting to dig deeper into ⁓ of the sort structural ⁓ you've seen over the years as well and particularly how it's led to Eka and ⁓ hopefully will come ⁓ the future, ⁓ on the FTSE 500 market. So you. Thank you so much.
Camilla: Yeah
Dama Sathianathan: joining us today on Tech for Good with BGV.
Camilla: No worries. Thank you very much for having me, Dama Really nice to see you. Exciting to be building together.
Dama Sathianathan: it does. And on to your dear listeners. If you have suggestions for guests or topics we should be covering on Tech for Good, please do get in touch. And if thinking of starting a Tech for Good venture and are looking for investment, ⁓ don't forget check out bethnalgreenventures.com and ekavc.com ⁓ to see we might be able to help. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for listening and goodbye.
