Being selective
Octopus Ventures review thousands of businesses a year. As you’d expect, there’s a steep and sharp filter. The team will meet with a few hundred of these businesses and invest in just 20 to 30 of them.
Over the past decade, Octopus Ventures has become a well-recognised brand among founders and entrepreneurs. When start-ups are looking for investment, the team often make the short-list of who they want to meet with. The team also find deals from a network of angel investors, seed firms, academics, and industry contacts.
This results in a strong pipeline of investment opportunities, which is an integral part of successful venture investing.
Best in class support for portfolio companies
Europe and the UK are getting more competitive. Often companies have multiple offers. Investment teams need to differentiate their proposition.
To secure deals for in-demand companies and drive returns for end investors, Octopus Ventures developed a suite of services. That includes a dedicated talent team that helps companies hire great people. Either filling critical roles or helping to put robust recruitment and interview processes in place.
All told, Octopus Ventures has a team of over 65 people, with more than 390 years combined of relevant experience.
How clients can access early-stage investments this tax year
Octopus Ventures, the team who manage Octopus Titan VCT, are also the team behind two exciting investment opportunities for clients this tax year.
The brand-new Octopus Future Generations VCT will invest in businesses with high growth potential across three sustainability themes.
At the time of writing, it’s open for investment with a fundraise capacity of £20 million and expected to close in the run up to tax year-end.
Octopus also launched a limited-time and limited-capacity EIS offering, the Octopus Ventures Knowledge Intensive EIS Fund.
This investment is an extension of our evergreen Octopus Ventures EIS service and will allow clients to carry back income tax relief to the 2020/21 tax year.
Investing in EIS-qualifying companies can be a powerful way to target high growth, provided an investor is comfortable with the risk.
That’s because investors can claim income tax relief on the value of their investment, pay no tax on growth, and claim loss relief should an individual company perform poorly.
The fund has a capacity of £25 million and will close on 5 April 2022 or likely sooner when capacity is reached.
Please bear in mind these risks
It’s important to understand that the value of an EIS or VCT investment, and any income from it, can fall as well as rise. Investors may not get back the full amount they invest.
The shares of early-stage companies and VCT shares are by their nature high risk, their share price may be volatile and they may be hard to sell.
Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and tax rules could change in the future. Tax relief depends on portfolio companies and VCTs maintaining their qualifying status.
