Avin Rabheru MBE

2009: The financial crisis had crushed fundraising. Barely any new capital went into venture funds. Yet the vintages from those years went on to deliver some of the strongest returns in history. Fast forward to today (2024/2025): Venture capital fundraising is at its lowest point in more than a decade. What does that mean? - ⁠Less money will be available to startups over the next years - The bar for raising capital goes up again: quality matters - ⁠Entry valuations will reset to saner levels --> Funds raised now are likely to outperform, just as history shows The paradox of venture: the best time to commit capital is exactly when most people hesitate. Investors (Limited Partners) should lean in now, not when the next boom makes it easy.

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Firstly, this isn't a post about Europe vs US. They're different beasts at different stages of development… However, as a European VC, it's critical to be connected to the US VC market. If you are, on average, you'll get bigger markups for your portfolio by taking advantage of the UK/US arbitrage among other things. Two examples of this are Lawhive and StackOne from our portfolio. Both have founders who've moved to the US and both have raised from GV (Google Ventures) with deep US ties of course. Same with companies like Mimica (Khosla Ventures), Carwow (Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel) and many more. You need to be able to pick the phone up to tier 1 US VCs and get them to meet your portfolio. So when Adam Shuaib, PhD, Millan Suri and I went to SF a few weeks back, we tried to cover as much ground as we could, meeting about 40 of the tier 1 US funds like Founders Fund, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz…. It takes time to build this network but the rewards are great. As you can see, we also went surfing.

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Turns Out… My Fund LP Portfolio Beat My Direct Portfolio 😅 Maybe I’m not a bad investor — maybe FoFs aren’t the fallacy we think they are. I’ve been reading several great pieces lately and reflecting on a touchy subject: venture funds of funds (FoFs). Hamilton Lane has hammered this home for years: venture isn’t really an “asset class” — it’s an access class 🚪. • 📊 VC has the widest dispersion in private markets. • ⏳ That dispersion hasn’t narrowed, even as VC scaled — the power law still rules. • 📉 Drawdowns cut deeper here than anywhere else. Translation: pick the right managers and you look like a genius; miss them and you look… well, like me on some of my direct deals 🙃. That’s why the Pattern Ventures benchmarking caught my eye: across 2005–2019 vintages, FoFs (yes, even with “double fees”) actually: ✨ Beat direct VC in the median quartile in 14/15 vintages (+0.68x TVPI). ✨ Outperformed the bottom quartile every single time (+0.89x) — and never fell below 1x. ✨ Smoothed returns, with dispersion nearly halved (0.58x vs. 1.21x). Confession time: even in my own portfolio, my LP fund investments have outperformed my direct ones. Not sure if that makes me a bad direct investor 😅 … or just a better FoF LP. Either way, it taught me something about where my real portfolio chops lie. In hedge funds, double fees kill. In venture, access math beats fee math. So the real question for LPs isn’t: “Do we avoid FoFs?” It’s: Do we build selection capability — or buy it? Because in venture, average is the most dangerous place to hide.🚫 🔖 David Dug Skylar Anurag John Samir #VentureCapital #PrivateMarkets #FundofFunds #LPInsights #VCInvesting #PowerLaw #Dispersion #InstitutionalInvesting Asilica | Redshift Capital | Allocate

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What happened in mental health this week? ⏺️ Ash by Slingshot AI launched their AI-powered therapy service Ash, and closed an extension of their Series A funding round, bringing their total raise to $93M. ⏺️ AbsoluteCare raised $135M to fund their market expansion. The company provides integrated care, including physical, behavioural and social care and has a strong emphasis on value-based payment models. ⏺️ Kooth Digital Health released their half-year trading and operational update, including progress on their California contract, which appears set to meet registration targets. ⏺️ Coinbase Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam raised $100M for a BCI neurotech startup called Nudge. ⏺️ Talkspace partnered with Tia Health to integrate mental health care services into primary care for women, expanding Talkspace's specialised women's health services. ⏺️ Elon Musk's Grok launched two new AI 'companions', including a sexualized anime bot that is available for users as young as 12. Just what we needed… ⏺️ Headstream Innovation announced their 2025 Accelerator cohort of early-stage founders building tech to support young people's mental well-being. I know a few of the businesses in this cohort and think they have a lot of potential. I will be following this cohort closely. ⏺️ In the UK, NICE recommended Limbic and Wysa's Digital Referral Assistant as digital 'front door' technologies for NHS Talking Therapies assessments for anxiety and depression. ⏺️ Clerkenwell Health, the site for the UK's first sponsored LSD trial, announced that they screened the first participant for MindMed's Phase 3 study of MM120. ⏺️ Ember Mental Health announced their 2025-26 cohort, selecting 15 community-based mental health initiatives which they will support. The program received over 1,800 applications, which is wild, and frankly, I love seeing support being provided to community initiatives like these. ⏺️ Winslow Strong announced The Consciousness Foundation, a public charity aimed at advancing scientific understanding of consciousness and fostering consciousness development, including awakening, healing, and inner development. This is very relevant to our recent post on Spirit Tech - the space seems to be gaining some momentum. ⏺️ Penda Health's real-world study found that their LLM clinical copilot reduced diagnostic errors by 16% and treatment errors by 13% across 39,849 live patient visits at 15 clinics. Whilst this was focused on primary care, it points to the kind of impact that may exist when these kinds of LLMs are applied to mental health. __ 📩 Like this? I send it as a weekly email (including links and even sometimes irrelevant personal stories about my life) to thousands of mental health operators. Sign up for free here > https://lnkd.in/g9xgMW4r 👉 Follow me Steve Duke, for more insights on the #mentalhealth industry.

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