Praetura Ventures | underpinning tech in the North

Launched over 10 years ago, Praetura Ventures has helped underpin the North’s thriving tech scene, providing vital funding to dozens of small and medium sized enterprises. The firm now has ambitions to grow its funding footprint across the whole of the UK.  

We spoke to Ben Davies, Marketing Director at Praetura Ventures, about the firm’s different approach to supporting businesses and the advantages of being based in the north of England.

What does your company do? 

Praetura Ventures is part of the Praetura Group, a group of six different businesses based in the North of England which offer both equity and lending to small and medium sized enterprises. We’ve got £550m of assets under management. 

Praetura Ventures has been investing in early stage tech businesses since 2011. Since 2019, we've been investing in businesses using the tax efficient Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) over which time we've raised a total of £140m. We invest anything from £50,000 all the way up to £3m. 

There's a big equity gap in the north of England. That means that there's a lot of great businesses that aren't getting funded. So two thirds of our portfolio is based in the north of England. So far we've grown the portfolios of over 34 businesses.  

We see it as a partnership ultimately. So, once we've invested, we provide active support for our portfolio companies afterwards. We've appointed industry heavyweights called our operational partners who act like active mentors for our portfolio companies. They support them in scaling or with any problems that they may have. We also have things like a portfolio toolkit which helps them with discounts off business services and with access to recommended suppliers. We also help them as well with monthly masterclasses or with things like PR. It's very much a hands-on approach. 

To date we’ve backed some of the biggest breakout success stories in the north of England's tech scene such as Bankifi, Culture Shift, XR Games, Peak, and Modern Milkman. I think generally investors and founders like us because we talk like human beings and we're very much trying to demystify the world of venture capital.

Tell us about your UK and global operations. 

Praetura Ventures is based in Manchester City Centre and we are 28 people. The group consists of six businesses with 150 people across a total of four offices.

With the EIS scheme and some of their most recent announcements, the UK government is clearly pushing for the UK to be more entrepreneurial. The government is supportive of the fact that early stage cheques are the lifeblood of building the huge businesses of tomorrow

What are the main benefits to being based in the UK? 

With the EIS scheme and some of their most recent announcements, the UK government is clearly pushing for the UK to be more entrepreneurial. They got rid of something called the ‘sunset clause’ which was going to end the EIS scheme. The government is supportive of the fact that early stage cheques are the lifeblood of building the huge businesses of tomorrow. From our point of view, the EIS scheme is a powerful tool for investors because it takes away some of that worry about investing in venture capital. 

Over 34,000 companies have now used the scheme to raise money. 

What’s interesting is that things like EIS are keeping entrepreneurs within our system. We're now seeing 2nd, 3^rd and 4th time founders who’ve exited multiple companies and invested that capital back into the system. This is really important because you're getting multiples of economic growth and employment benefits. 

We've got some amazing tech talent here around Manchester. We've got countless universities churning out some really incredible people and Manchester has got some of the best sticking power of any university in the UK at the moment, as in graduates who move there and stay on. We retain people because the city has always had a bit of an edge to it and is rich in sports, music and heritage. London, the start-up capital of Europe, is one of our biggest assets as it’s just a two hour train ride away. 

I think Manchester has really put itself on the map in the last couple of decades in terms of the creative, tech and science industries and in the tech industry you can feel the momentum behind the place. Manchester is also incredibly well connected. The airport is really close to the city centre and it's a proper international airport so you can get to a wide variety of places.

Another unsung hero of the north is how well the public and private sectors work together around the same goals. There are many support services available to businesses such as the Growth Company in Manchester and the Liverpool and Cheshire & Warrington LEPs. They're entrepreneurial minded entities. The tourism board do a great job too and they work in tandem with a lot of private sector businesses because they recognise the power of these big success stories.

We've got some amazing tech talent here around Manchester. We've got countless universities churning out some really incredible people and Manchester has got some of the best sticking power of any university in the UK at the moment

Tell us about your company's growth ambitions

Ultimately, we want to close the equity gap. We want to raise more money and support more northern businesses. We want to grow our team and we want to be an ecosystem builder. It's about working in collaboration with the people who are here and the people who we work with elsewhere to keep growing. 

We plan to scale quite substantially in the next five years and move more into the mass market, both from an investor and a founder point of view.