Downing Capital Group

Where visionary founders meet strategic capital. Initio Capital combines venture building expertise with strategic capital access, empowering founders to build, launch, and scale with confidence. Building a Startup Shouldn't Be This Hard Most founders face the same painful challenges that drain time, money, and energy - keeping them from focusing on what really matters: building their product and serving customers. 💸 Giving Up Too Much Equity Traditional funding forces founders to give up 20-40% equity early, losing control of their vision and future decisions. ⏰ Wasting Time on Non-Core Tasks Founders spend 70% of their time on operations, legal setup, hiring, and admin instead of product development and customer acquisition. 🏝️ Building in Isolation Without proper guidance and network, founders make costly mistakes that could be avoided with the right mentorship and community support. Everything You Need to Scale Without Giving Up Control Initio Capital provides continuous support, non-dilutive capital, and a proven operator network - all designed to help you build, launch, and scale faster while maintaining ownership. Non-Dilutive Capital First Access grants, revenue-based financing, and 0% interest credit lines before considering equity - preserving your ownership and control. Done-For-You Operations Our team handles automation, sales, hiring, finance, and product development - so you can focus on strategy and growth. Elite Founder Network Join a curated community of serious founders, proven operators, and 6,000+ investors - all committed to your success.

Beta Boom is led by two general partners, Kimmy and Sergio Paluch. Yes, they share a last name because they are married and have been partners in life and business for over twenty years. They are both passionate about making the world a better place through technological innovation and giving overlooked founders a fair shot at fulfilling their visions. Kimmy and Sergio have two boys, Rafael and Adrian, who were Beta Boomers from the beginning, hanging out with founders in Beta Boom’s office over the summer of 2018. Rafael wants to work for Beta Boom one day and Adrian wants to be a professional footballer (soccer player). We'll work alongside you from day one. A lot of VCs say that they’ll be there for you, but few are as involved as us and most give generic startup advice. Depending on what you need, we support you on getting things done across product development, sales, marketing, and fundraising. We meet you where you are. Not literally, but figuratively. We work with you and your team to figure out where our support can be most impactful. If your team is strong on engineering and marketing, but need help with sales, that’s what we’ll help with. If your team is great at sales but needs help with engineering and marketing, that’s what we’ll focus on. If all you need is fundraising support, that’s all we’ll do. Focus on the "how" not "what." We don’t like telling founders what to do or spouting useless startup advice. You know your business and customers better than we ever will, and you should make decisions for your company. Plus, you don’t need dark overlords. What we try to help with is the “how.” How do you set up your CRM for fundraising? How do you test marketing channels? How do you generate sales leads? How do you reach out to investors or get introductions? Collaboration sessions rather than lectures. We do collaboration sessions to work through challenges or get stuff done. We don’t lecture you. For example, in a collaboration session we might work on your positioning, review usability testing plans, improve your investor tracker, edit your cold sales emails, etc. When we say we work alongside you, we mean it. Vetted experts at your fingertips. Beta Boom has an extended network of vetted experts that we’ve worked with or our portfolio companies have worked with and loved. We do this so you don’t have to waste time searching for effective support, and can get things done while you build your permanent team. Here are examples of the kinds of experts that you’ll have access to, among others: Growth marketers that can help with setting up and running Google, Instagram, and Facebook ads; Lead generation experts that can get you qualified sales leads via email campaigns; Sales coaches that can help you set up your CRM and walk you through sales conversations; A near-shore engineering firm that specializes in APIs and securely handling large data sets.

In the start-up ecosystem, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Our mission is to correct that imbalance and level the playing field for founders in unusual places. We get involved: Whether it’s recruiting top talent, finding new investors or introducing potential customers, we directly assist founders with their most important priorities. We provide a platform: When you face a problem, it is the best to get the advice of someone who has been there. Over the years, we were fortunate to have met several of these people who managed to overcome serious hurdles We invest from experience: Our team are proven founders and operators in their own right, who bring that experience to the companies we back. We share the success: By distributing part of the overall fund profit, we ensure that when one of our companies succeeds, all of them benefit.

Axion Ventures is launching a new venture capital fund aimed at strategically investing in a very selective portfolio of high-growth, early-stage companies. Where We Come From Rooted in Babson College’s renowned entrepreneurial principles, our investment approach focuses on identifying, building, and scaling high-potential platforms through strategic acquisitions and operational excellence. We conduct rigorous market analysis to identify scalable platform opportunities with untapped potential, guided by the entrepreneurial mindset cultivated at Babson College. By deploying strategic capital into complementary startups and providing incubation support, we foster innovation and drive value creation. Through integration and Babson College-inspired growth strategies, we build cohesive platform ecosystems, optimizing operational synergies and scalability. Additional acquisitions enable vertical integration, strengthening competitive advantages and ensuring sustainable growth. Our structured exit strategies deliver superior returns, embodying Babson’s principles of innovation, leadership, and strategic foresight.

firstminute capital is a $320m sector-agnostic seed fund backed by 120 unicorn founders, including over 20 founders of $10bn+ businesses. Our General Partner Brent Hoberman is a double unicon founder. Yet, we are more than a fund. We’re an ecosystem of entrepreneurs from all over the world who, facilitated by firstminute capital’s team, come together to help one another, turn vision into reality and create the future. Our community is our edge. It is the source of the transformational support we offer to our partners who are warmly welcomed inside. An invitation into the firstminute capital community is secured by those with a special kind of spirit, not just a solid spreadsheet. A rare breed driven by a powerful characteristic we call, ‘Magnetic Ambition.’ Those with it often don’t recognise it in themselves, yet they are propelled forward by it, every day. We see it in their ability to capture hearts and minds with their vision, their belief and their commitment. When we find a founder with Magnetic Ambition, we open the door to the firstminute capital community and we give them everything they need. At your service What can founders expect from working with us? First of all, our 9-person investment team will fight for founders. Between us, members of the team have backed 10 unicorn startups at seed; we have IPO-ed companies; we have started companies; we have fundraised ourselves and we have failed and picked ourselves up again. So we are all here to help with advice, strategy brainstorming, product workshops, introductions to customers, raising a Series A or just being there for you in the tough times as well as the good times. If we can't help, we'll know someone in our extensive network who can and we'll make that intro. On top of the investment team, founders also get the whole "platform" team, which is another 11 people dedicated to helping founders scale their business and help with areas such as hiring and marketing. Our goal is to be the most helpful seed fund in Europe. We love to help founders build. Network effects At firstminute, we see ourselves as collaboration catalysts. We act to unlock the value our the community and bring our own expertise to bear when the time is right. Thanks to our 120 unicorn backers as well as a network of top CEO supporting us, firstminute has an extensive global reach. We like to bring on our investors - some of the top angels in the world - into our deals and as advisers to supercharge companies. firstminute's co-founder is Brent Hoberman, who after founding and exiting two unicorn startups himself created a network of companies under the 'Founders' umbrella. These include a world-class event series called Founders Forum as well as a consultancy, a recruitment firm, a charitable arm and Europe's largest incubator-accelerator. This whole ecosystem is part of our network, which helps with everything from sales introduction to finding top talent. We also have a large investor network to help with that Series A fundraise and beyond, having done deals with our friend at funds such as Tiger Global, Sequoia, Benchmark, a16z, Coatue and Atomico. Being part of our community, with our events and parties with some of the biggest names in tech and business, means you will be working with the best. We do an annual retreat for founders as well as regular drinks and dinners. Every year we hold our flagship summit in London which brings together firstminute investors, portfolio founders, partners from the top US and European multi-stage funds, and friends who are all bright lights in the tech community. Read more about that here.

Neo is a diverse mentorship community and VC fund that aims to identify America’s most promising CS students and help them become tomorrow’s tech leaders. With almost $240M AUM across two funds, we back ambitious teams with strong technical leadership. Our “communal” VC fund is raised primarily from more than 150 individual investors including iconic CEOs, CTOs, and founders of legendary companies. We invest based on people, not industry sector.