Funding

Our funding is different from many other investors. Getting to know us will help you work out if we are the right partner for you.

arrow-down

Source of capital

The money we invest comes from Nesta’s endowment which has a value of around £450 million. This makes us a little different from many investors because of two main things:

  • Our ultimate goal in making an investment is to change the world for good as set out in our charitable objects and interpreted in our Mission impact strategy.
  • There are no fixed time limits on our investments. This means that we can hold an investment for as long as it meets the needs of the company and our performance expectations. We actively promote the power of patient capital and long-term investment strategies to help build a stronger society and economy.

In some of our programs we work with partners who invest alongside us. This enables us to provide deeper support to the enterprises we back than we could alone.

Investment timeframes

Because our funding comes from a permanent endowment there are no fixed time limits on our investments. We recognise that it takes a long time to build a great business, particularly one that is developing innovative products or exploiting new technologies. We have continued to support some of the most successful enterprises we have backed for well over 10 years and will continue to hold our investments as long as our position as an investor is helpful to the enterprise and our performance expectations are being met.

Financial capacity

We can invest typically between £500k and £1 million in a single round up to a cumulative total of £4 million in any single enterprise.

Investment stage

We typically invest in Seed to Series A rounds. For a first investment we expect early evidence of product-market fit, usually by revenue generation, although sometimes we use other indicators, particularly when looking at novel products.

We want to be a meaningful investor in any round and our investment capacity limits mean that whilst we will often make follow on investments beyond Series B to avoid dilution, we typically hand over the lead investor role when enterprises are raising larger rounds.

Our style

Nesta Impact Investments is a hands-on investor.  We believe that to be successful, early-stage enterprises need much more than money from their investors, so we try to bring additional skills and resources to support the enterprises we back. We invest in founders who share this view and who will engage with us to work out how we can support them most effectively.  

We are able to draw on the research and domain expertise that exist in the wider Nesta organisation as well as the experience of our investment team in providing constructive support for growing businesses.   

We prefer to act as a lead or co-lead on an investment round, generally involved in setting terms.  We usually take a board position to ensure that we can provide active, timely and relevant support to enterprises we invest in. 

Use of capital

Nesta is the UK’s innovation agency for social good.  This means that we invest in early stage enterprises that are developing or scaling new approaches to meeting a user need.  Our capital can be used for product design and development, hiring for growth, marketing and sales development or funding working capital as long as this relates to an innovative product or service.

© 2023 Nesta. Nesta is a registered charity in England and Wales 1144091 and Scotland SC042833. Our main address is 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS.
You can drop us a line at askinvestments@nesta.org.uk.
All our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, unless it says otherwise. We hope you find it useful.