Written evidence submitted by Praetura Ventures (IGR0102)

The innovation ecosystem still struggles with two major challenges: access to early-stage funding and investor readiness.

With regards to funding, many innovators simply aren’t funded due to their stage, risk or lack of clear commercial roadmap.

SEIS, EIS, VCT and other tax incentives are the cornerstone of the early-stage finance ecosystem and help derisk opportunities for investors. Public funds, such as NPIFII, are also essential to help close this gap and have taken on a vital role in the market.

With a fairly immature network of angel investors, the North of England still sees many businesses ‘fail to start’ or be given a chance to build something meaningful with enough financial runway.

To compete on a global scale, we must look to find new ways of investing more at the early-stage, with a willingness to withstand some failure in order to achieve a ‘internationally ambitious’ level of innovation and growth. We find innovations simply scale quicker in other markets with greater risk appetite, such as the USA.

Innovate UK, UKRI and other grant organisations also act as a life blood for early-stage businesses. Unfortunately, due to the number of grants available, many fall at the first hurdle by simply not understanding what’s on offer.

Secondly, there is a point around investor readiness and scaling education. The dissemination of ‘scale up’ skills is still poor and limited to a very select few.

The start-up programmes that do exist struggle with longevity. They lack the ability to commit time, resource and patient capital to compound their positive effect. The quality of support also varies greatly, which means poor advice circulates round businesses when they are at a vulnerable early stage.

Whilst several organisations run a few exceptional programmes, many operators either lack the skills or the regional network to deliver the training required to achieve their mission of ‘accelerating’ innovation.

Linked to the point around funding and investor readiness, the universities are huge assets to the North, but many operate in silos and in very different ways. This can create a lack of cohesion and makes the path to ‘spinning out’ difficult to understand. A lack of commercial capability is still a major barrier to our knowledge economy realising the full potential of its innovations. However, several universities in the North are working hard to change this.

At Praetura, we are actively investing and coaching early-stage founders through their journey, whilst also building a platform to help map the innovation ecosystem and educate founders. We’d welcome further government involvement in our plans. We already work with a number of government department who share our mission to ‘level up’ the North. Their support has been instrumental in our operations.

Praetura invest in the best businesses across preseed to series C in the North of England. As a proudly northern investor, we are one of the fastest growing VCs in the country and, beyond our team, we feel this is a testament to the region’s entrepreneurial capability. We are deeply invested in the prospects in this region and will do all we can to help it succeed.

Whilst some issues may differ by region, most of the North of England share similar challenges.

Who are Praetura Ventures?

Praetura Ventures is an award-winning focused VC, born-and-bred in the North of England. Praised for its early backing of northern success stories such as Peak, Modern Milkman and Culture Shift, the Manchester-based VC has now become known for its ‘more than money’ approach to supporting early-stage founders post investment. Praetura’s portfolio companies benefit from active mentorship from the company’s operational partners, who are industry-heavyweights that have led businesses such as AO, ANS, Apple, Beerhawk, Dr Martens, OSTC, PA Consulting and MPP Global. Their team deliver EIS and VCT funds, alongside NPIFII North West Equity Fund for the British Business Bank and the GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura for GMCA, Cheshire & Warrington LEP and Bruntwood SciTech. In 2023, Praetura also launched a cohort investment programme called PraeSeed to help early-stage start-ups in the North. As one of the fastest growing venture capital businesses in the region, they have a portfolio of over 50 companies with £300m assets under management.

14 February 2025