We’ve invested in NetFabric to develop a next-gen network observability platform, tackling the multi-million dollar downtime issue for the world’s largest companies How it started We first came across NetFabric in April 2024, when we received a referral from Thomas Meir at Lightbird (thanks Thomas!). Beni, Tobi and Marlene are the ideal team to solve this massive problem, so when we later learned that the round was being led by Founderful (fka Wingman), Chris reached out to them to see if we could co-lead alongside them. The downtime problem ‘Downtime cost’ is the profit a company lo ..read more

TL;DR We’ve invested in Recurse ML to provide code maintenance in a single command How it started Jack Jackson and Armins Stepanjans, met at Entrepreneur First in London as part of the April to September 2023 cohort. A couple of months later, they landed on the idea for Recurse ML and have been building ever since. Entrepreneur First reached out to Joe on the wider Playfair team to put Recurse ML on our radar. The remarkable traction Jack and Armin’s solution has seen in just a few months, and the scale of the problem they are solving, made it clear that this was an opportunity ..read more

I’m 18 months into my career in VC and my biggest takeaway is that I’ve outlived the median time between fundraising rounds for startups raising capital. Seems like a silly thing to have top of mind, but this is a perfect reflection of how quickly things move in the industry. 18 months is more than enough time to have seen countless fundraises, company successes and failures, and even the rise of a significant hype trend (the AI/LLM boom in my case). It’s also enough time to generate quite a few opinions and observations about the space and how it works. Let me share my personal top ..read more

We’ve invested in StackOne to make API integration for SaaS vendors faster, easier, and more secure. It’s a pleasure to invest once again alongside our friends at Episode 1, Portfolio Ventures and an impressive list of industry-leading angels. StackOne co-founders: Guillaume & RomainHow it started Hector from Episode 1, first put StackOne and its founders Romain Sestier and Guillaume Lebedel on our radar — thanks, Hector! After meeting the team and understanding the pain they are solving, it became clear we needed to partner with Romain and Guillaume for the next stage of th ..read more

Edition 11 of Female Founder Office Hours (FFOH) launches today as past attendees breakthrough £1.4bn in funding Edition 11 of Europe-wide Female Founder Office Hours is a key milestone for Europe’s largest diversity-led founder initiative This event will bring together over 300 female founders and 170 VCs from some of the world’s leading funds The latest funding data shows that over £1.4bn has been raised by companies that have attended one of the previous editions Since October 2019, Playfair’s office hours has delivered over 9,000 mentoring sessions for women founders across ..read more

We’re hiring! NB. This is an edited and updated version of the original blog post that Joe Thornton wrote in 2022 for our analyst hiring process that year. The core thesis behind our hiring process has not changed. However, we have slightly amended the steps of the process and wanted to clearly reflect those changes. Please excuse any strange phrasing that has come from editing an article originally written by Joe but edited by multiple people on the same team since! Playfair’s Hiring Process Explained Shortly after joining Playfair seven years ago, I wrote a blog post directed at startup ..read more

1 year at Playfair It has now been a little over a year since I decided to take the plunge and move countries to join Playfair. As I reflected on the journey so far and all the insights I’ve gathered during the past year I thought I’d share some of my key lessons learned and tips. I have always been a person with strong convictions and ideas about what I wanted to do in the future. Growing up, most kids dreamed about being an astronaut or police man but I was set on being a zoo-keeper. I was the kid who knew the names of all the animals and to whom the most prized Christmas gift was ..read more

TL;DR It’s been a tough year. Nothing has been easy. It’s taken a lot more effort to maintain momentum. Yet against the backdrop of a difficult funding environment and macro malaise, our founders have achieved numerous successful rounds and strong business performance. I am both proud of and grateful for their hard work, dedication and perseverance. #1 Closing a new fund We announced our third, $70m fund at the end of March together with a new brand identity that better reflects the way we think venture should be done — playing fair by founders. This was the culmination of many months of ..read more

In the third part of our ‘mistakes series’, I take a look into the most common avoidable mistakes founders make with sales. These were learned over more than a decade of being a Sales Director who sucked at first and then working with dozens of startup founders to refine their sales/GTM strategies. Sales is an emotive topic. Whilst some love the cut and thrust of sales, the thrill of making target, and the trappings that go with success, others find it an alien world that is equally mysterious and intimidating. Regardless of how you feel about it, sales is an essential part of building a ..read more

In this guest post — the second in our ‘mistakes series’ — Holly Brautigam from Passionfruit takes a deep dive into the 6 marketing mistakes made by pre-seed startups and shares tips to avoid common pitfalls. When working for a pre-seed startup, time is precious and money is tight. Don’t waste it by falling into these common marketing traps. Clear marketing goals are missing At Passionfruit, we speak to pre-seed startups every day and one of the biggest mistakes we see is companies not clearly defining their marketing goals. Without explicit marketing goals, it’s much harder to figure ..read more