Will Bennett (Seedcamp): $320M raise and backing founders to go global from day one

0:00Andreas Munk Holm:Welcome back to the podcast everyone. So Seatcamp has just raised$320 million and the pitch isn't just more of what have worked in the past. Today I've got Will Bennett who has to go and find the future on that thesis of atoms becoming more and more important in venture. Two things before we start, I have to say we are at EVC, a small LP in this fund as well as some past ones. So I'm not a neutral party here, but I am never because I love all the people we have on the podcast.

0:32Andreas Munk Holm:This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. So we're going to talk about the 300 million raised. Now there's a dedicated pot of money for the first time ever to double down on winners. I'm going to be very curious, Will, to hear from you. Why is now the moment to plant the flag in the leader stages?

0:53Will Bennett:Yeah, well thanks for having me, Andreas. It's good to have you on our team as not a neutral party. um first thing i should say is we are we are continuing to do a lot of the same like we are still a pre-seed fund trying to be the first player to meet entrepreneurs and to build conviction and i think it's what we've excelled at for like 20 years so that's absolutely staying the same look in terms of the fund so 320 and 220 is for the first check and follow-on and then 100 is for series b plus investments which will be in our portfolio but that money is very much us capital It'll be managed out of the US from our two teammates who are based there alongside a whole suite of new products that we're building around kind of taking our businesses transatlantic, helping go to marketing in the US, hiring in the US and so on.

1:40Will Bennett:So that's the idea behind the fund. A lot has stayed the same. I think we've always tried to bring US style, take our entrepreneurs to the US. And we just want to move past this kind of moment where European tech says, go over there without really building the infrastructure to kind of make it successful. So that's part of the idea behind the new fund.

2:00Andreas Munk Holm:Tell me, Will, we're going to dive into that transatlantic bridge later, but I just want to double click on that 100 million for Series B plus investments. Why do you think that now is the time to really do that out of a seed camp fund instead of, so to say, leaving it to the market?

2:16Will Bennett:Yeah, I mean, I think there's two sides to it. The first side is that we can continue to create CCAMP specific value at that moment onwards. Like we absolutely have the relationships to continue to create value. We have the team to do it. We have amazing people in-house working on talent and working on BizDev in the future and so on. And we want to continue to bring that to our founders. I think where once upon a time seed stage funds would say something along the lines of our job is to land you the best in class series A. we think that our job is to like be an amazing partner throughout the journey doesn't mean we stay on the board like we would never take a board seat in the first place but it means that we continue to kind of bring new things throughout the journey and our proposition evolves throughout so i think one thing we've always done amazingly is like when we do invest it's the full team and it might be the case going forwards that you know i can i can speak to the entrepreneur first but you know my five other teammates would lead on supporting because they're in the u.s and you know things evolve of the company's lifetime and that's part of thinking of the new fund that as that happens along the journey we can evolve our support and that comes in with a kind of extra injection capital at series b yeah so let now let me say a couple of things about your returns and

3:34Andreas Munk Holm:then i will say something about your lp deck being public because i think anyone who's in venture and trying to raise a fund themselves, be they more experienced or less, I would strongly advise anyone to go and search that deck out because it is a resource that truly shows what you should be focusing on. And I have seen so many emerging managers trying to raise funds on the back of a deck that looks like a startup deck. And as a startup, you want to basically be raising on your dreams and what you can do in the future, Whereas if you're an investor, you really want to be raising on what have I done in the past and what can I guarantee you that I would be able to continue doing.

4:16Andreas Munk Holm:And your deck does that so beautifully. Of course, you're also being very transparent about your returns, which I think everyone has to be, whether they're good or less good or less clear. It's a story and it's going to be dug out. You have to just be, you know, very decisive about how can I best describe my own story. Yours is great, 13x DPI on fund three, 5x on TVPI on fund four, which is obviously amazing. I want to ask you, you've raised on the back of these numbers on a cycle that used to be very SaaS and software driven. Now we're going into a time of venture going very much more into atoms and hardware and what some people would call more capital and tech development heavy plays.

5:02Andreas Munk Holm:Can you talk a bit about what that requires from you as a team and how your own thinking about where venture is headed is changing? Yeah.

5:11Will Bennett:So look, we've always actually been agnostic to the sectors that we invest in. Like we bring a prepared mind. We're reasonably smart, but not even nearly as smart as the people we work with on the other side. So we've never been out there building a thesis and kind of chasing down a startup, building in a certain area is the first thing. Of course, we're thinking about what are the most interesting markets over the next cycle, over the next decade, two decades. But we've never been out there kind of saying, hey, we just want this type of company. That said, for the last 15 years, the most exciting stuff has been software.

5:42Will Bennett:It's been very easy to invest in, kind of, as well. It is like, everyone can understand it. It works ones and zeros. It mostly works. And in 2026, it's like incredibly easy to make it work without any technical knowledge. So whether that makes software more or less exciting, I actually think the jury's still out. Clearly, public markets are changing their opinion every half hour about this. But we are still seeing amazing software businesses in our portfolio perform really, really well, especially those that are willing to rip the Band-Aid off and build AI capabilities in-house, whether it makes their team go faster or makes their product agentic or whatever it might be.

6:19Will Bennett:So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, yeah, you're also right. We're investing in capex-intensive industries. We've made a handful of investments in space technology, made a handful of investments in kind of core foundational AI models. Are we investing in like billion dollar exception rounds? Less so. We are focused on like angles where often spinning out from the best universities in Europe where we have an itch. So that might be neurosymbolic learning or, you know, time series models based on healthcare data is like a really exciting company we have in the portfolio that I sadly can't tell you about because it hasn't enhanced.

6:53Will Bennett:but there are a bunch of like super exciting kind of capex intensive industries that have a lot of software in them i think it's one thing people are forgetting like of course these things like you know are physical and they interact with the physical world a bit more but there's a lot of software that goes into them like when we talk about robots and drones and so on like half of it's software at least um so you know i think people are a little over their skis but at the same time, yeah, absolutely. There are new moats emerging that seem to kind of be more physical.

7:25Andreas Munk Holm:Yeah. And I think in the end, the craft of venture is still the same. And as you say, software is still an important part. And honestly, software is very differentiated from old industry. So it's important to say that it is not now that VCs need to figure out how to invest in old industry. It's that VCs have to figure out how to invest in this new era of industry, which is then very different. So, Will, you have a very hard task at hand because you're on a podcast representing Seedcamp and we could talk all day about Seedcamp. And in many ways, that's the most interesting story every time we talk about Seedcamp or to Seedcamp, because what you've done, of course, is something to replicate for everyone in the industry.

8:06Andreas Munk Holm:However, I just want to give you the chance to talk a bit about yourself. So tell me your journey. You've been with Hughes Energy, you've been with BCG. Those are very interesting stories to talk about.

8:18Will Bennett:Yeah, sure. So I left university after starting classics and didn't really have a clue on what I was going to do or what I might be good at. Tried consulting, wasn't good at it and enjoyed it. It teaches you to kind of sit up straight and professionalize. I then figured the startups might be a better fit for me. At the time, knew extremely little and emailed a bunch of people who who were high profile basically. One of which at the time was fused because they'd just raised what was then the UK's biggest first round. And yeah, managed to work there for, it was actually only a year. So like take zero credit for the amazing things they've done.

8:54Will Bennett:But it was an absolute epic journey. And I think the team are now kind of closing in on 600 million run rate, which was, yeah, that's four years since I left. So it's still like, no, three years since I left. So still an amazing like speed to scale. and yeah and for me personally that just epic exposure to charles and allen the way they did things and the venture world company building like you touch everything is one of those early hires whether it's hiring product operations we all did customer support all the time if you haven't consumer energy products like that thing breaks 24 7 and so we did customer support 24 7 which was all awesome and then yeah i ended up at seed camp i knew some of the team for a little while BCG and then I had kind of got to know them through the startup ecosystem.

9:38Will Bennett:And then when there was the chance, I also left on it, as you described, some of the amazing things that have come before at Seedcam, which I had no part of. Yeah, it absolutely made sense to kind of come on board as soon as I can.

9:51Andreas Munk Holm:We always talk about scar tissue from the operator world and that type of thing. can you just give your super blunt view on the importance of that as an investor and what is

10:05Will Bennett:giving you yeah i think the main thing is it builds like masses of empathy like you see what it takes to get a complex product into the world and to make it robust that's really useful especially today and i think there's a bit of a sense that it's just easy to build product that's still not true there's still a million integrations and so on um so it gives you loads of empathy for that the other side i think is worth mentioning is that the best investors that have done this job were not operators in many cases um and i think like everyone who's been in a startup fights their bias of like the thing that worked for them and you know i've seen it seen it in the job like people give the advice that kind of was super effective some number of years ago and i've definitely had myself do it that is like the downside of operating is like you probably have only seen one or two success stories whereas on the venture side hopefully you'll see like many many that go really well and not so well and both experiences are actually really useful and honestly operating staff it's more just like you have a first-hand sense of the toll it takes to build an amazing company but that's it well um so i could now say so you've raised a massive uh

11:18Andreas Munk Holm:fund much bigger than last time so on so forth I've done that many times with Carlos on the podcast and every time Carlos says well Andres if you look at valuations and how like venture inflation is really working we've stayed more or less the same at least since fund three it's just grown with the market that said tell me how you're thinking about the current market and how it's developing in terms of valuation, inflation and that type of thing, the cost to play is getting very, very high, especially in some of the harder sectors. And obviously, you're fishing in the same ponds as many of the other very best firms that are investing in Europe.

12:01Andreas Munk Holm:So for that reason, you often find yourself, of course, in a bit of a fight with all the other big firms, so to say.

12:09Will Bennett:those other firms are our friends for sure but yeah no of course you're it's you go head to head

12:15Andreas Munk Holm:um best friends fight a lot right exactly the bell curve has got longer we are still able to do

12:23Will Bennett:inception check writing when there is just amazing people and that's like we'll see camps amazing there is then this whole curve of like amazing glossy operators who command a high valuation, there's, you know, businesses that just should be capitalized with more money. So our fund is designed, we can partake in all those different kind of prototypes of a founding moment. I think our aim is to mostly lead and co-lead deals in this fund, but we're well aware that some of the best companies to come out of Europe in the next three years will need to raise a whole chunk of money straight off the bat.

12:56Will Bennett:And that is not because they are like more amazing than anyone else. It's just that for their business model, they should have more money and we're not about to undercapitalize like the continent's winners so that's a little bit the reason that in this fund we we will be able to do that so that's part of the reason for more money but yeah i mean a big part of it is also as you mentioned connor's describing there's been a hell of a lot of inflation and what software can do and what tech can do what i would say is if you look back on some of the c funds from you know 2005 to 2015 they got in at these valuations that when you look back it's like venture was a crazy job back then like as if you were able to invest in companies in that way and so if you look at some of those amazing funds like first round in usb and ourselves brilliant we did the entrepreneurs should the entrepreneurs have been able to have a high price at that first moment maybe like um any any asset class of investing can turn money into 20 times what you had at the start have got a good deal, right?

13:56Will Bennett:So I think there's a bit of like people, things leveling out and people getting smart. Will, how do you think about staying with the companies

14:05Andreas Munk Holm:from first stage to later stage and how that's developed? And how do you think about the importance of both having follow-on capital, which you clearly have now made the art, you know, grown the fund into and raised the dedicated fund to be able to do, but also putting together syndicates of stronger investors around you? How are you seeing that move and change in the market? We just discussed best friends fight, but at the same time, venture is a very collaborative sport.

14:33Will Bennett:Yeah, I'll answer the second bit first on the syndicates because it's like a massive part of the way we do things. I think CCAP got its start through a lot of communities. Our early ICs were the rest of the venture community in Richmond. So being connected to other funds, making sure we're paying it forward is massive. so the way we think about it is even when we lead we 100 create space for everyone we think that can add value to that journey so whether it's micro fund whether it's a bunch of angels whether it's a co-lead in the in the ecosystem or in the u.s we want to do that and syndicate the round to give the entrepreneur the best chance of success what rarely makes sense at this point in time is like we could come in and try to own 15 or something like this but why would the entrepreneur want a smaller network rather than a bigger network.

15:19Will Bennett:Like, obviously, you want a syndicate. And I think we see our role, especially in cases where we're committing first to a deal and bringing that together and helping entrepreneurs shape it.

15:30Andreas Munk Holm:Will, I'd love to ask you about the Seedcamp Nation. It's one of the really big value ads of yours. It's one of the things that we have seen firsthand, how well it works. Can you talk about the power of being now on Fund 8, 7? Seven. Seven. And I was thinking, V11, what does that add up to? That's hard for me. So tell me, the Seacamp Nation, what is it? How is it? How are you leveraging it? What are founders getting out of it? And, of course, how does it differentiate you from others?

16:02Will Bennett:Yeah, absolutely. I think we just have enormous benefit of having been doing this for two decades. And, you know, however you count the successes in the portfolio, there's a lot of them and the promise has always been that if you are the newest investment you kind of get access to that entire community and likewise when we invested in those companies back in the day they received it and there is this cycle of you know because we only ever do pre-seed we do think that the founders that we've backed should know each other and they have much better insights into the best way to do many many things than we ever would we often just access the conduit between them so that's six funds of people obviously some of the best conversations of people with people at the same stage as you some of them will be one stage ahead but some of them are just like pure mentorship and inspiration of folk who are several steps ahead or who have done a thing that you want to do in two years and it's top of mind because you need to plan it like you know getting some weird fintech regulation from the sec and someone else has like literally done it and it might be that there's only five companies in the world but luckily we we're invested in some of them.

17:07Will Bennett:So that's a good part of it and the way we think about it because we have all these companies on WhatsApp and different communities so whether it's by geography or by you know what you're focusing on right now how to build an AI and we manage that very very carefully and I think it's a big part of like how we think of like creating value every single day is making sure the right people get to know each other in Seekam Nation.

17:28Andreas Munk Holm:Yeah and of course as every year Christmas comes early because it feels like Christmas all over again with your extended family when the Seat Camp ATM happens. And it's happening today, the same day as, of course, you announced the fund. So now let me go to another question, which is about the transatlantic bridge that you're building and you're doubling down on with this fund. You have two people in the U.S. now. I'd love to hear how you're doing it. We've spoken a bit about why you think it's important but i think it's interesting to explore how you're executing on that as a firm that's

18:01Will Bennett:bridging to the u.s yeah so we've always kind of thought about thought of ourselves as kind of u.s capital and brought a u.s angle whether it's from speed or network or customer development at the end of the day you have to be there to really bring a world-class product on any of those things so what we've done is there are two of our colleagues in our base there and they will lead on helping our companies go to market helping hire talent and so on i think there's this kind of thing in europe where people can't quite decide whether there's like european excellence and sovereignty and all this but like you also need to go to the us and like is that a conflict and contradiction or not i think it's not a contradiction like to build a massive business you need to be in massive markets and we just wanted to move forwards and basically become one of the very very few funds to have like can say we're investing in entrepreneurs over here but we're going to unlock this market like the whole world market so that's kind of a thinking and yeah frankly it's been it's been fairly seamless um we've always all spent lots of time going back and forth to support companies over there many of whom will move faster and faster and faster i think you know three of the investments i've been involved in this year were based there by the time we wired the money right like they're european teams and they have like an extremely European angle, but they want to be near their customers and we want to help them with that.

19:23Will Bennett:So hopefully that kind of, yeah, clarifies a bit.

19:29Andreas Munk Holm:Well, 13x DPI on Fund 3, 5x, I believe, TVPI on Fund 5, what will be the categories that will

19:38Will Bennett:drive similar returns in fund seven if i knew that i guess no uh look uh it's going to be amazing entrepreneurs i can share a bit about the topics we've invested in the last 12 18 months i have no idea what we are going to find exciting in them hopefully one of them

19:56Andreas Munk Holm:what did you say i said hopefully it'll be one of them Share where you've been focusing the last 12 months. Yeah.

20:05Will Bennett:So we've invested in topics like eyewear. We think we've found the best company to build wearables. We've invested in several different types of models that I mentioned earlier. We've invested in space several times. We are invested heavily in different verticals where we think that, you know, So the TAM for services and work is extremely big and innovation is extremely low. So on your BCG 2x2, it's that top quadrant, whether that's logistics or manufacturing or insurance. And I think it would have all been exciting for us. Yeah, and that's like top of mind today. I wish I knew what we will figure out is exciting in six months.