Houghton Street Ventures

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Founders, investors, operators, partners; our shared passion – you.

We are Houghton Street Ventures. Together, our sum is greater than our parts. We’ve been supporting LSE entrepreneurs for as long as we can remember, it only made sense to start investing in them as well. We are the conduit to everything the LSE has to offer and thrive on bringing everything we have to maximise the chances of success for our companies. We have been in the trenches and see ourselves as true partners to your vision.

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Our Team

Adam French

Partner

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Hannah Leach

Partner

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David Houghton

Principal

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Our Advisory Network

Veronika Kapustina

Founder, Houghton Street Ventures

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Stephan Chambers

Director, Marshall Institute

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Laura
Stebbings

CEO, EQL:HER

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Frederick Blackford

GP, Future Positive Capital

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Shaoib Makani

Founder, Motive

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Laura Grimmelmann

Ex-Zapp, Ex-Accel

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Nic Kopp

Ex-US CEO, N26
Founder, Rillet

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Joe Cross

Ex-Global Head of Marketing, Wise

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Christian Hoya

Ex-CMO, Mister Spex
Founder, Wine in Black

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Adam French

Prior to joining Houghton Street Ventures, Adam was a co-founder of fintech unicorn Scalable Capital. Scalable is currently valued at $1.4bn, employs over 300 people, has raised over £200m in venture capital funding, and manages investments for over 500,000 clients. Additionally, he is a Non-Executive Director at the UK Fintech industry body Innovate Finance and he graduated from the London School of Economics & Political Science in 2007.

Hannah Leach

Prior to joining Houghton Street Ventures, Hannah has worked in and around the venture and entrepreneurship ecosystems her whole professional career. Experience forged through building accelerator programs, building teams within scale-ups and starting a company or two (including VentureESG) herself has led to her current role at the firm as well as an advisor board member at LSE Generate, the LSE’s entrepreneurship centre.

David Houghton

Despite not attending LSE, his name is on the door. Prior to joining Houghton Street, David led the Investment team at Climate-KIC, the European Union’s climate-change venture fund. Before this, David worked at Seedrs, the UK’s most active early-stage investor and the Chamber of Commerce working on public policy and international trade. David graduated with a degree in Pharmacology & Physiology from the University of Manchester in 2016.