Before getting in touch, please read our more detailed post on what we look for in the Founders we back. We’ve highlighted some of the key points below.

Founder/market fit: you have a rare - if not unique - depth of insight into a problem. It might be through education, expertise, or experience, but you understand it intimately in a way that gives you a killer competitive advantage.

Venture-level ambition: venture capital is only meant to fuel certain kinds of entrepreneurial journeys. Ones with massive market opportunities and truly disruptive technologies. It sounds hyperbolic, but the reality is success in venture is only measured in billions, not millions. See Reason #3 in our article for more details.

Early in the journey: you don’t need a product, revenue, or a perfect pitch deck to get in touch: you may still be digging into the details or even employed elsewhere, quietly ideating on the side. As long as you fit the other requirements, it’s never too early to reach out. 

The Kindred team takes ~600 first meetings a year, typically conversations to get to know you rather than a formal pitch. Around 100 teams get to the second stage of our process, which is to meet 1-3 other Kindred partners. Our final stage (apart from due diligence that runs in parallel), which is unique to Kindred, is to have a Working Session between our team and the startup’s team, spending 60-90 mins discussing some aspect of the business that the founders would like input on. It’s an opportunity for all of us to see how well we work together, and whether we believe we are the best partnership, where the sum is worth more than the individual parts.  In terms of timeline, the fastest we’ve run that end to end process is 72 hours!  We like to say we work ‘on entrepreneur speed’ as we know the most valuable thing founders have is their time.

We tend to lead or co-lead and focus solely on pre-seed or seed, writing cheques around $250k-$3m in only about 25-30 companies per fund. 

This high conviction, high concentration investing strategy is why you won’t see us on lists of ‘most active early stage investors’.

It’s because we don’t believe in investing in you as an option ticket for a future round, or as one of many ‘bets’ in a wider portfolio. Our strategy is to invest more money and time in fewer teams, so we can genuinely dedicate ourselves to enabling them. 

That said, we do make a limited number of follow-on investments in those portfolio companies that consistently show the greatest potential, and allocate a significant portion of the fund for this purpose.

We focus on B2B and - though we did in the past - now won’t do anything consumer-facing. We avoid sectors like edtech, gaming, retail/ecommerce, entertainment, travel and leisure. 

Instead, our focus is on what we call ‘infrastructure companies’. 

This is not a sector, but rather a type of business: the ‘picks and shovels’ or tools and services that power industries - e.g. API, orchestration, and data layers that have sustainable differentiation. 

We have invested in SaaS infrastructure such as M3ter and Paddle; Techbio infrastructure like LabGenius and Cradle Bio; Fintech infrastructure like Fung Money, Flagstone, and Pave; Workflow automation infrastructure like RobCo and Dexory; and ‘Future of Work’ infrastructure like Vault, Hofy, and Natter.

That said, extraordinary founders inspire exceptions: where the founders are truly phenomenal, building something unique, and able to persuade us to deviate from our infrastructure preference. However, it is extremely uncommon.

We started out with a UK-focus, but have since expanded into wider Europe and Israel. 

How do we invest?

What are our criteria?

What does our process look like?

What do our investments look like?

What sectors do we invest in?

Where do we invest?