Campus Capital expands their unique Venture Capital model

by Startacus Admin

As newly launched venture capital firm Campus Capital signs up their second University partnership, this time with the University of Manchester, we took a look at Campus Capital and their unique Venture Capital model.

Campus Capital is a VC firm that builds early stage, high growth investment funds in partnership with some of the UK's leading universities. These funds will be based on campus and part-run by active students with the guidance and supervision of a Campus Capital board.

A network of UK wide University partnerships are key to the Campus Capital model. Campus Capital believe that University institutions outside of Oxbridge and London have been long overlooked by the startup community as a resource. Campus Capital aims to change that and enable entrepreneurs from across the UK to access a localised source of ‘smart’ capital.

Campus Capital will operate in a similar way to any VC firm, but with a major difference. They will work with partner Universities to provide experiential learning programmes for aspiring students to get practical hands-on venture capital experience while at University. On-campus Student VC Groups will form a proportion of the management team with startups pitching to them for investment from the Fund.

In Campus Capital’s structure, Student VC Group members will make early-stage decisions on the eligibility and investment-readiness of startups they have met with, and present those who are eligible to Campus Capital’s founding partners. This will give the Student VCs the experience of making early stage investment decisions, but protects them from any risk, which sits with Campus Capital.

Campus Capital will be the first UK Venture Capital Firm to open up this process to student groups for the purpose of action-based learning. This model is unique here, but inspired by successful on-campus funds in the US. These funds range from fully student managed early stage funds like Rough Draft or Dorm Room Fund, through to later stage part managed funds similar to the Wolverine Venture Fund.

The partnership with the University of Manchester will see Campus Capital invest from £50k to £200k in early-stage companies both on and off campus across the Manchester city region and follows Campus Capital’s partnership with the University of Sheffield that was announced at the end of 2016. The firm was founded by entrepreneurs Samantha Deakin Hill and Michael Howe and offers a support network of accomplished individuals providing support and guidance to Campus Capital, the student VCs and our portfolio companies.

You can find out more about Campus Capital here.

Struggling to understand what venture capital is and means - feel free to read our previous article on startup investment terms explained that should help a little. 

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Published on: 12th February 2017