The Journal, August 2014
Newcastle’s Northstar Ventures has been featured on a list of the top 10 most active venture capitalists in the UK.
The firm, which manages the £25m Finance for Business North East Accelerator Fund and the £15m Finance for Business Proof of Concept Fund, was included alongside some major national and international players in the report by CB Insights, which looked at which VCs had been most active within the last five years.
Northstar director Ian Richards said: “When we saw the published report by CB Insights, we were pleased to see that Northstar Ventures was included as one of the most active tech investors in the country – it is positive news for the North East and shows what a great place this is to start a business, and that there is finance available for ambitious companies.”
Northstar now has a portfolio of over 100 technology companies, including mobile surveying and asset management software firm, Kykloud, intranet software provider Orchid Software, and Zerolight, which provides real-time 3D virtualisation solutions for markets such as car sales.
Tristan Watson from Newcastle-based business accelerator programme Ignite said of the recognition for Northstar: “This is really exciting news for the startup community in the North East and highlights how much we have developed as a tech cluster.
“We’ve found Northstar to be a very startup friendly VC who has taken the time to reach out into the community and support companies at all stages of growth, and the team has been a great asset when mentoring the companies that are involved within the Ignite programme.”