The Venture Codex

Participated · Debt Financing · Aug 2025

Smart provides cloud-native retirement savings and investments technology, with its flagship Keystone platform designed to help employers, governments and financial institutions deliver digital, bespoke and cost-efficient retirement savings and income solutions. The company also owns and operates one of the UK’s big-four auto-enrolment master trusts, serving more than 1.5 million savers and over 90,000 employers with more than £10 billion in assets on its master trust. Across its Keystone platform Smart serves more than 1.5 million savers entrusting over €11.5 billion in assets and operates in the UK, US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Founded in 2014 by Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, Smart is recognised as one of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers and is backed by investors including Legal & General Investment Management and J.P. Morgan. Management says the business is profitable and intends to use new financing to support growth, continue developing product solutions and take advantage of rapid consolidation in the UK market. Smart Pension operates a cloud-native retirement technology platform used by employers, large financial institutions, and governments to deliver workplace pensions and retirement services. The platform has been rolled out with Bank of Ireland’s New Ireland Assurance, Zurich, and the Dubai International Financial Centre. Smart reported assets on its platform grew by more than 160% in 2020 to almost €1.98bn and it has close to a million savers on the platform. The company says it has straight-line visibility to well over five million savers within the next 24 months. Smart plans to expand its offering across the UK, the US, Australia, the Middle East and additional territories including the Netherlands, and intends to deploy capital for M&A to bring members and assets onto its technology. The founders position Smart as a proven global retirement operating system addressing a $55trn global retirement market. Founded in 2014 by CEO Andrew Evans and MD Will Wynne, Smart Pension is a MAF-accredited online auto-enrolment provider based in London. Its core product is a technology-led pension solution designed to improve the experience of hundreds of thousands of small and micro businesses required to comply with new pension legislation. Advisers and employers can use the platform for free with no upfront or ongoing charges. The company completed a £15m Series B that brought total funding to date to £25m and values the business at more than £65m. Smart Pension plans to use the new funds to continue expanding operations and to export its pension technology overseas. Smart Pension is a London-based, MAF-accredited digital pension platform co-founded in 2014 and launched in May 2015. It enables small and micro companies to sign up employees to a workplace pension scheme required by law. The core product is an online auto-enrolment solution that streamlines scheme setup and access to pension funds for small employers. The company entered a strategic partnership with Legal & General Investment Management to broaden its offering for small schemes, giving customers access to a range of LGIM DC pension funds tailored to the Smart Pension solution. The deal includes a minority investment by LGIM and a board appointment, indicating a strategic commercial relationship. The article does not disclose financial metrics or the investment amount. Smart Pension offers a technology platform that helps UK businesses manage auto-enrolment pensions. Its adviser platform enables accountants, bookkeepers, payroll bureaus, payroll software providers, HR teams and independent advisers to manage portfolios of clients through auto-enrolment. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Andrew Evans, with Will Wynne as MD and Peter Walker as COO. Smart Pension intends to use the new funding to continue growing operations. The company has raised £5m in total to date. Board changes accompanying the round include Duncan Howorth joining the board and Anthony Joliffe joining as chairman.

Led · Equity · Jul 2023

Secret Escapes operates as an online travel and experiences company offering discounted travel and experiences. The company completed an equity raise and refinancing to refinish debt and support the next phase of growth. Chrysalis Investments invested £6.5m as part of a wider £31.7m fundraising exercise. Management said the equity raise and refinancing were fully supported by existing shareholders and lenders, and that the business has refinanced existing debt facilities. Financially, Secret Escapes reported EBITDA of £5.4m for the 12 months to December 31, 2021 and trading reached almost 80% of 2019 levels between June and October 2021. The business recorded a loss of more than £30m in its 2020 financial year amid the Covid-19 crisis. Secret Escapes operates a portfolio of travel brands, including Slevomat, Zl’avomat.sk, Travelist, TravelBird, and Empathy Marketing’s Pigsback, selling discounted travel offers to users who sign up for free memberships. Its core product is time-limited flash-deal discounted travel offers, and in 2019 the group recorded a take rate of about 18 percent. In 2019 the group generated approximately $160 million in revenue on gross bookings of about $882 million and reported adjusted EBITDA of roughly $14 million. The pandemic severely impacted the business in 2020, producing adjusted revenue of approximately $77 million and a net loss of about $65 million. An approximately $74 million Series E equity fundraising in May 2020 from all existing shareholders enabled the company to keep customer-support centers fully operational and to implement changes such as a rebooking functionality. By 2021 the company reported a partial rebound—trading reached nearly 80 percent of 2019 levels, it generated overall positive cash flow for 2021, and as of December 31, 2021 it held $102 million in cash, liabilities of $97 million, and $85 million in debt facilities. Secret Escapes is a London, UK-based members-only online luxury travel marketplace founded in 2009 and launched in 2011, led by CEO Alex Saint. The platform offers discounts and deals on hand-picked luxury hotels and holidays. The company reports 50 million members and approximately 850 employees across eight offices, with more than 250 employees in London. Secret Escapes says it is profitable. It raised £52m in funding and has raised £104m to date. The company intends to use the capital to integrate the Slevomat Group, which it acquired late last year, and to pursue projects including in-house hotel and dynamic flight packaging across established geographies. Secret Escapes operates a membership-based platform that offers deals on luxury travel packages and hotels. The London-based company currently operates in Europe, the US, and Asia. CEO Alex Saint said the new funding will help the company "achieve its vision to inspire the world to escape and to become the number one travel deals website in the world." The business has made three acquisitions to date: Slevomat, MyCityVenue, and JustBook. It plans to use the new capital to pursue further growth through additional travel-tech acquisitions. The company has now raised more than £100 million in total. Secret Escapes is a UK-based luxury online travel company that operates a members-only travel club. The service offers discounted rates on hand‑picked hotels and holidays in the UK. The company is led by CEO Alex Saint. In July 2015 Secret Escapes raised $60m in a Series C round. The financing was led by Google Ventures and Octopus Investments, with participation from Index Ventures and Atlas Venture. The company said it intends to use the funds to expand in Asia.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2022

Deep Instinct is the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity, offering a natively architected, prevention-first threat prevention platform. The company says its platform stops >99% of threats before other solutions see them, reducing detection noise and false alert storms. Deep Instinct positions its product to improve SOC team productivity and lower total cost of ownership for customers. The firm intends to use investor support to accelerate growth and drive adoption of a prevention-first model across enterprises. It currently protects customers across North America, Europe, and APAC; enterprise customers tripled in 2022 and it has strategic wins with numerous Global 2000 companies. The article does not disclose revenue or other financial metrics. Deep Instinct offers a prevention-first cybersecurity platform that applies deep learning to stop ransomware and other malware across hybrid environments. Its Deep Instinct Prevention Platform is designed to add multilayered protection to existing security stacks. The company says it will use the new funding to further penetrate the market. Deep Instinct raised $62.5M in the reported financing. As part of the announcement, Lane Bess—who has more than 35 years of experience in cybersecurity and was formerly CEO of Palo Alto Networks and COO of Zscaler—took over as CEO effective immediately. Co-founder Guy Caspi moved from CEO to Board Chair and became Chief Product Officer. Deep Instinct offers an end-to-end deep learning framework and platform designed to predict, prevent, and analyze cyberattacks across endpoints and networks. Its platform is positioned to protect organizations at multiple touchpoints and has expanded enterprise adoption rapidly. The company reports protecting customers across North America, Europe, and APAC, with enterprise customers tripling in the prior year and strategic Global 2000 wins in Q1 2021. Led by CEO Guy Caspi and Chairman Lane Bess, Deep Instinct intends to use the new funds to accelerate its growth plans for 2021 and beyond. The company has raised a total of $200M to date following this round. Deep Instinct applies deep neural network algorithms to cybersecurity, using end-to-end deep learning to identify and stop known and unknown malware, including zero-days and advanced persistent threats. Its system ingests raw data from servers, mobile devices and endpoints and is largely autonomous, with automated processes handled by its "deep learning brain." The company sells primarily to enterprise customers, both directly and via partners such as HP, which bundle or resell its solutions. Deep Instinct emphasizes cross-OS protection and claims higher detection and lower false positives than traditional machine-learning approaches that rely on human feature extraction. Management says the product can prevent first-seen, unknown attacks and is already used to counter rising spyware, ransomware and file-less attacks. The longer-term plan is to build a consumer-facing version of the product. The company is profitable, and highlights strategic relationships with large tech partners. Deep Instinct is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that applies deep learning to cybersecurity. Led by CEO and co-founder Guy Caspi, the company offers a deep learning platform that detects malicious behavior across multiple vectors and provides adaptive defenses for endpoints, servers, and mobile devices. The company raised $32M in a Series B financing led by CNTP, with participation from strategic investors including Nvidia, Coatue Management, and existing investors. It plans to use the funds to accelerate deployments in the U.S. and global markets. Mohsen Moazami, founding MD of CNTP and a former Cisco executive, was added to Deep Instinct’s board of directors in connection with the round.

Participated · Series D · Apr 2022

Starling Bank is a London-based challenger bank founded in 2014 that provides consumer and business banking as a fintech. The company has accrued more than 2 million users and about 350,000 business accounts. It counts investors such as Goldman Sachs and Fidelity among its backers. Starling has been planning an initial public offering in London later this year or in early 2023. The bank recently doubled its valuation to £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) following a Series D extension and raised an additional £130 million. Management says the new cash will be used to fund growth through acquisitions and to build a war chest for potential targets. The funding was filed at Companies House and later confirmed by Starling. Starling Bank is a U.K.-based mobile banking platform founded in 2014 by Anne Boden that offers personal, joint, children’s euro and dollar current accounts, business accounts, lending products, and Banking-as-a-Service to third parties. The bank powers its own services on a proprietary technology platform and offers customers access to third‑party financial services through the Starling Marketplace. Starling reports more than two million current accounts, including 350,000 business accounts, and a deposit base that has grown from roughly £1 billion to over £6 billion in just over a year. The company is the fastest-growing bank for SMEs in Europe and holds a 6% share of the UK SME banking market. Starling is on course to report its first full year in profit by the end of its next financial year-end and describes its growth as now profitable. Management plans to use new funding to support continued rapid growth, expand lending in the UK, pursue European expansion, and consider anticipated M&A. Starling Bank is a London-based digital challenger bank that offers personal, business, joint, euro and dollar current accounts, lending products, a Banking-as-a-Service platform, and an in-app marketplace for third-party financial services. Founded in 2014 by Anne Boden, the company powers its own banking services on a proprietary technology platform and provides B2B banking and payments through that platform. Since launching in 2017 it has opened more than two million accounts, including over 300,000 small business accounts, with a new customer joining every 39 seconds. Operationally the bank has recorded four consecutive months of operating profit, generated £12M in revenue in January 2021, and reports net income now exceeding £1.5M per month; deposits top £5.4B and gross lending exceeds £2B. The newly raised capital will be invested to support targeted expansion of UK lending, to launch Starling in Europe, and for anticipated merger & acquisition activity. Starling is fully licensed and regulated, headquartered in London with offices in Southampton, Cardiff and Dublin, and all accounts are protected up to £85,000 by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Starling Bank is a U.K. challenger bank that provides personal and business banking accounts and services. The bank has 1.4 million accounts, including 155,000 business accounts, holds more than £2.4 billion in deposits after its deposit base doubled in six months, and reports almost £500 million of SME lending on its balance sheet. Since launching SME accounts in March 2018 and securing £100 million in state aid via the Capability and Innovation Fund (CIF), business banking has become a strategic focus. Starling claims a 2.6% share of the U.K. SME banking market. Starling says it will use the new funding to continue investing in growth and to provide support to small business customers affected by the coronavirus; it has collaborated with the U.K. government on schemes such as the £300 million under the government-backed CBILS and via its own CBIL and Bounce Back Loan Schemes. Since its 2014 launch the bank has raised a total of £363 million and was founded by Anne Boden. Starling Bank is a U.K.-based challenger bank founded by banking veteran Anne Boden. It offers a mobile banking app that launched in May 2017. Customers have opened 1.25 million consumer and business accounts since the app's launch. The company recently raised another £60 million from existing investors. The investors named in the article are Merian Global Investors and Harry McPike’s JTC. The article does not disclose the specific financial instrument used in the round.

Led · Series C · Dec 2021

Sorted provides a Delivery Experience Platform that centralises delivery orchestration, post-purchase communication and returns management for retailers and couriers. The company aims to bridge the gap between post-purchase and returns, improving customer promises, delivery choices and post-purchase messaging. Sorted serves enterprise customers including Asda, ASOS, Farfetch and Lush and has begun targeting SMBs while preparing to expand into the US market. In January the company reported a 243% growth via its SaaS platform year-over-year; in 2020 it saw nearly 100% growth in shipment volume versus 2019 and grew its global retail brand portfolio by over 50%. Sorted completed the acquisition of automated-returns specialist Clicksit to add next‑gen returns capabilities to its platform. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Manchester; Carmen Carey was recently appointed CEO. Sorted builds delivery-experience SaaS that powers dynamic checkouts, delivery management and tracking for retailers and carriers. Its platform is live in 17 countries and is used by brands including ASOS, French Connection, Mountain Warehouse, Mulberry, Missguided and Lush. Sorted reported shipment volume growth of 100% in 2020 versus 2019 and a 243% increase through its SaaS platform in January 2021 versus January 2020; it also grew its retail portfolio by over 50% during 2020. The company added 28 hires in 2020 and plans to add another ~30 roles across sales, marketing and tech as it expands internationally. Product and commercial plans include further product development, supporting retailer digital transformation, strategic brand acquisitions, and global expansion. Sorted Group provides a SaaS delivery management platform that enables physical and digital retailers to manage delivery and returns, increase conversion rates, reduce abandoned baskets and boost customer loyalty. Led by founder and CEO David Grimes, the company has developed three products: SortedHERO (an API to display real-time delivery options at checkout), SortedPRO (a carrier and shipping management platform) and SortedREACT (an AI-driven post-purchase tracking platform). The software is live in 12 countries, including the US, France and Germany, and customers include ASOS, Lush, N Brown, Wincanton and Clipper Logistics. Founded in 2010 and based in Manchester, UK, Sorted has raised more than £35m to date. It raised £15m in a Series B led by Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Limited with participation from Praetura Ventures and NVM Private Equity. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate technology development, pursue international expansion and increase employee headcount.