2021 in a few numbers…

Even from the vantage point of early February, it feels as if 2022 is going to be a year where we consolidate a lot of what happened over the last two years. It’s hard not to see 2021 as a landmark year for society at large — it certainly was one for innovation, our industry, this ecosystem, the founders we partner with, and our team.

2021 required us all to find new ways of working and accelerated adoption of digital technology so profoundly that in years to come we’ll consider it pivotal in sowing the seeds of the next decade.

At LocalGlobe and Latitude, we made great progress with our key long term focus areas of investing in our team and infrastructure. At the same time, we were able to demonstrate that our core geography, which we call New Palo Alto, is capable not only of delivering world-class returns and leading the way when it comes to ethical innovation, but of having a positive impact on all stakeholders — or as we put it, being a good neighbour.

We’d like to share a few numbers that demonstrate what we experienced in 2021 and set the stage for our plans for 2022 and the decade beyond.

— 1192 unique visitors & 454 companies at Phoenix Court: we believe that where you are says a lot about who you are. It was great to see so many people in 2021 wanting to spend time at Phoenix Court, despite on and off restrictions. People wanted to work, connect and get away from their screens. If you haven’t visited, we’d love to see you and introduce you to our historic neighbourhood in Somers Town, near Kings Cross in the heart of London

— 346 tonnes of carbon removed by Supercritical: being a good environmental neighbour can be applied in many ways including buying locally and creating green spaces. However, you can’t play a role in getting to NetZero by just reducing carbon, we need to actually remove carbon to get there. So in 2021 we worked with Michelle You, our former Venture Partner, and her team at Supercritical to remove not just our 2021 carbon emissions but all our emissions since we formally launched LocalGlobe in 2015. If you’d like to do the same for your business, learn more about carbon removal here

— 282 external guests at LocalGlobe and 95 at Latitude weekly dealflows — in the spirit of trust, openness and partnership, we have been inviting external guests to our weekly pipeline meetings since we started in 2015. We find it incredibly helpful in terms of introducing more people to our team, our process and obviously getting amazing insights and feedback from outside perspectives. We’ve been able to include angels, co-investors, students, LPs, corporates. If you’d like to come along and experience it, please feel free to get in touch

— 154 digital keys for Phoenix Court members: while Phoenix Court is home to our 28 strong team on investors, operators, venture partners and special advisors that manage LocalGlobe, Latitude, Basecamp and our foundation, Phoenix Court Works, we currently also have 126 other members from our portfolio, local community, Fellows Network and beyond who regularly use our space for meetings, recording podcasts, working or just hanging out

— $150m LP demand for co-investment: over the last 5 years, we have noticed that more and more of the LPs we are fortunate to be in partnership with have been keen on investing directly into our most promising companies. To support this, we have structured a dedicated co-investment vehicle and in 2021 alone, it supported over $150m in demand from LPs looking to invest at the breakout and scale-up stages

— 121 new diverse investors graduated from the Newton program: we started Newton with our partners at London Business School to make investing more accessible and change the make-up of the next generation of investors. In 2021, we ran our first two digital programs for 121 Newton Fellows, where over 50% were female and over 50% from under-represented backgrounds. If you’re interested in becoming an investor or developing your investing skills take a look at this year’s digital and on-campus programs

— 50 unicorns (22) and futurecorns (28) across our funds: last year was definitely a good year for the founders we’ve been lucky enough to partner with over the years, with 7 new unicorns including At-Bay, Hailo, Motorway, Travelperk and Zego and 8 new futurecorns including AccurRx, Copper, Rossum and Yapily created across LocalGlobe and Latitude funds

— 48 Basecamp fund investments — having walked the path ourselves, we’ve been angel investing in emerging managers for over a decade, but over the last two years we’ve created an active community of over 50 funds in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, India, Israel and of course the US, to provide access to best practice, smart LPs and peer-support

— 32 deals held over from Q4: the last 12 months were probably one of (if not the highest) watermarks for activity that we’ve experienced in the last 25 years. Every metric in the venture industry substantiates that and we started our first team meeting of 2022 reviewing 32 deals in legals — either initial (13) and follow-on investments (16) or an exit (3) process. Many of these deals will close in Q1 and we expect Q2 and Q3 to be slower — but we said the same thing last year :)

— 30 new black women founders supported by the Launchpad Programme — we’ve been fortunate to work in 2021 with Nicole and the amazing team at Black Girl Fest to bring out the first edition of a 9-week learning programme in partnership with General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs. Designed to support Black women founders to succeed in entrepreneurship, we can’t wait for the second edition in 2022.

— 15 amazing partner organisations: when we started our firm in 2015, we decided to allocate 10% of all profits in our management company and 2% of carry in every fund to a foundation which we call Phoenix Court Works. In 2021, we began to more actively partner with some amazing organisations to support health & wellbeing, education & inclusion and climate & the environment both in our local neighbourhood of Somers Town, as well as across New Palo Alto. Stay tuned for much more in 2022 and beyond.

— $10bn in follow-on capital: while we try to be great partners in many different ways, we know from decades of experience that support in raising smart and aligned follow-on capital is critical to founders and their leadership teams, regardless of their stage of development. In the last 12 months, the combined LocalGlobe and Latitude portfolios raised over $10bn of follow-on capital from great funds across the world, from seed to IPO.

— 8 IPOs: talking of IPOs, we were lucky in 2021 to experience 6 in New York and 2 in London; 2 came via SPACs and 1 through a Direct listing. While some investors have started in 2022 with less enthusiasm about high growth tech stocks, we agree with Graham, Buffett and Bezos that the stock market is a weighing machine, not a voting machine and see IPOs as a milestone in company building, not a chance to run for the exit. We’ve also been inspired by Bessembinder’s work in 2018 (via Baillie Gifford) which shows the value that great public companies create over the long-term for the whole economy.

— 7th Black Out Tuesday: racism must not be tolerated and the fight against it mustn’t be overlooked. Following the murder of George Floyd on 25, May 2020, every three months, we have held a Black Out Tuesday where we assess our progress across our organisation in relation to these issues and take sounding from the wider community for further action. Our next session will be held on March 1st — join us.

— 6 new Partners across our business: we are in the business of backing people and supporting them to reach their full potential. This is how we invest, but it’s also how we are supporting the development of our own people for the long term. In 2021 we were delighted to see 6 new Partners promoted across the business — and we already have a new Partner in 2022. We believe in investing in our team and will be hiring more great people this year and next across the board.

— 1 clear purpose: to be a good long term neighbour to Somers Town, within Camden, and more broadly to the incredible ecosystem developing within a 4 hour train from our office near Kings Cross and Euston. We call this area New Palo Alto — not just because it rivals the innovation capabilities of the Bay Area and Beijing but because we believe this will be the area where a new (and necessary) ethical model for innovation will be born and developed creating more equitable outcomes for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.