Interplay

Our approach keeps founders at the heart of everything we do. We areConviction-led: We value independent decision-making and lead all our investments. Long-term partners: We stay fully committed to founders' vision, no matter how long it takes. Sector specialists: We each focus on specific sectors to build a deep, informed point of view that fuels our investment strategy and portfolio support. Transparent: We keep founders in the loop and prioritize honest communication, making us partners they never have to second-guess. Engaged: We believe in staying actively involved through meaningful board participation and functional support. Our journey started like many other startups – in a Bengaluru basement 2016 When we set out to raise our first fund, the Indian VC landscape was shaky at best. Investors were cautious, several foreign VC majors had left the ecosystem, and successful exits were hard to come by. Amidst skepticism about the Indian market, we defiantly believed that the "golden decade" of Indian technology was upon us. We saw an opportunity for VC 2.0 in India – one that was stage-focused, expertise-driven, and committed to prioritizing real growth alongside valuations. Undeterred by a tough fundraising climate, we knocked on 1,200 doors to raise Stellaris’ first fund. These early struggles shaped Stellaris’ culture, allowing us to fully resonate with the fundraising challenges faced by early-stage entrepreneurs. 2017 We launched our first fund of $90 million. From the outset, we established a principle of having specialists on our team, enabling us to tap into deep sector knowledge, spot promising opportunities, and provide tailored support to the companies we backed. Out of our 19 investments in our first fund, 9 surpassed a valuation of $100 million, with several others on track to achieve this milestone. 2021 We closed our second fund of $225M and backed 25 companies, many of which are poised to become the leaders of tomorrow. We also had our first significant exit in the portfolio when 6Sense, a US SaaS company, acquired Slintel, in which Stellaris was the first institutional investor. 2023 Our portfolio company, Mamaearth, which we backed at the Series A stage in 2018, successfully completed its IPO. 2024 We launched our third fund of $300M and are now managing over $600M in assets. We're ready to support the next wave of innovative businesses with the same grit and determination that brought us here.

It’s also the natural next step in over a decade of collaboration between its co-founders, Jessica Verrilli and April Underwood. What We Do We invest in early stage companies, typically from pre-seed through Series A. From idea through product-market fit and beyond, we back founders who bring an insight about a market, an audience, or problem space and a drive to fully realize their vision on the largest possible scale. We support those founders with our own hard earned experience and access to an exceptional network of leaders and builders across the industry. Our History Jess and April first met at Twitter, where they played key roles scaling the business from early-stage startup (Jess was employee #34 and April joined at #150) to public company and beyond. April built and led product and partnerships teams, and Jess built the corporate development function, acquiring 30 companies and meeting with early-stage founders every day. After her time at Twitter, April joined Slack at 150 employees to lead product and platform as its first Chief Product Officer through 10X growth in employees, revenue, and customers. Jessica joined Google Ventures (GV) as a General Partner where she invested across stages for over 4 years. You can read more about each of their backgrounds here. Along the way, in 2015, Jess and April along with four Twitter colleagues co-founded #ANGELS, an angel investing collective which has gone on to serve as a model for other alumni syndicates from companies around the world. Between the two of them, Jess and April backed 75 companies, and through #ANGELS built a distinguished community of operators and founders through dozens of events, a podcast, and a network of relationships across the venture capital landscape. In 2023, Jess and April teamed up to build Adverb Ventures, a new venture capital firm backing early stage startups with hyper-growth ambitions. Adverb invests in exceptional founders who seek to redefine existing categories or create new ones. Jess and April closed the inaugural Fund 1 in the first half of the year and are both full time actively investing and building Adverb. What's in a Name? Through our many years working for and with founders building breakout companies, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not just what you’re building that matters but also how you choose to build it. There are a lot of ways to build great businesses, and strategic choices to make at every step along the way. Ultimately, the adverbs matter as much as the verbs. And of course, that adage is true for investors too. Our job is to pick the right founders and opportunities and to tilt the odds of success in their favor. Our mission is to be the investor who helps our founders navigate the most crucial moments of building their business, showing up both substantively and empathetically.

NEXEA is a Startup Investment company that specialises in supporting and funding technology companies that have the potential to be the next technology giants. NEXEA also has services for investors and corporates that want to invest or work with future technology giants. Mission Our mission is to match the best Startups with the best investors and corporates to grow future technology giants. NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own or have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. We believe that they are the best people to mentor and guide the next generation of business owners. Our Purpose At NEXEA We believe in helping Tech Startups succeed so that, together, we can change the world with technology. We help Startups succeed by finding, supporting and funding them. The Founding Principles of NEXEA At the inception of NEXEA, we’ve laid a few founding principles that are carried on to this day; We aim to increase the Startup success rate from 1 in 10 towards 2 in 10 and beyond by supporting as many Startup Founders as we can, and as often as we can. We do not tell Startups what to do – we support and advise Startups. We advise them via experienced Founders (mentors) who have already found success. We do not chase after money – we focus on building up Startup fundamentals the right way. By focussing on fundamentals, the rest will follow. NEXEA’S Core Activities HOW WE ACTIVELY GROW BUSINESSES TOGETHER, STEADY AND QUICK SEA STARTUP FUND: We look for Early to Growth Startups to invest in across Southeast Asia. Our Startup Fund matches great Startups to our great support ecosystem. ACCELERATOR: We look for Idea Stage Startups to Accelerate. Strengthened with our 3 Value Creation Engines VENTURE BUILDER: We work with Founders to help them build strong, sustainable businesses. Strengthened with our 3 Value Creation Engines ANGEL INVESTOR NETWORK: We help Angel Investors invest wisely via a structured investment system designed to control risk and help grow Startups. IT DEVELOPMENT OUTSOURCE / TECHNOLOGY PARTNER: We help Startups without Tech founders to build up well designed and scalable systems and to build their Tech team.

Being first-cheque investors, we understand the importance of being flexible, founder-first partners at the earliest of stages. We invest up to £750k initially and can shape or join your rounds of up to £2m, also reserving a portion of our fund to support you to Series A and beyond. ~£400k: Average initial cheques of £400k, invested only at the pre-seed stage (up to £750k). Up to 15%: Target ownership upon entry - we can lead, co-lead or follow in rounds of up to £2m. 4 step: Transparent and open investment process, ensuring you always know where you are in our process. OUR PROCESS You should always know exactly where you are in our process. The diagram below outlines the steps and process to reaching Investment Committee (IC) stage. Introduction: An initial meeting to discuss the opportunity and get to know you. We ask founders to send us material such as pitch decks beforehand Deeper Dive: Our Junior investment team tends to join this second phase to give visibility to members who may work on the investments. Partner Call: At this stage we bring in a Partner with relevant experience and will dive deeper into the business, team and market. Investment Committee: A 15 min presentation followed by 30mins Q&A in front of the full investment team. We make a decision same day. Our “criteria” for investing What do we look for when selecting an investment? Investments we want to make go beyond a checklist of “box ticking” on our non-negotiable requirements (e.g., that we trust the founders). We do as much as possible to mitigate our own biases when investing. For us, a startup / founding team needs the potential to be more than merely great, it needs a shot at the extraordinary. The good news is that to do that, we only look for at least one reason to believe, at earliest of stages, that it can be an outlier... Our reasons to believe a startup could be one of the greatest companies ever Need at least one of the below compared to other great startups at the same stage Founder(s) and teamEver do something singular? Record of unusual achievement Best-in-the-world domain experience or punch-way-above-your-weight-class first hires Depth of commitment to the problem ("would do this for a decade, and keep going even if funding never appeared"), especially in learning the domain Would you work for the team? Product and marketA wow of a product experience and/or extreme early growth and engagement numbers (for products adopted by individuals) Customers don't need to be sold, want to pay full-price immediately -> evangelists (for products adopted by companies) Exclusive path to customers -- distribution as a competitive advantage Timing -- that One Moment is clearly now Business and economicsSurprisingly profitable unit economics Deal termsNone. (Good deal terms are never a reason to invest in and of themselves.) Important indicators Can bias us for or against investing Founder(s) and teamCombination of human / inhuman, presence of cognitive distortions of founders Spends only when necessary, miserly with capital until the returns are clear Reaction to intense pressure or strong criticism? Differentiated value proposition for talent (e.g., only place to work on a problem, unique founder who is a reason to join the team) Diverse founding team If business shows early signs of success, can founders go the distance? Talking with founders gives us goosebumps Product and marketSomeone else already tried -- good sign! Clear initial target market, surprisingly narrow Clear single metric to focus on now (often engagement or satisfaction) Ignoring the business fashions of the moment Ability to create a #1 service in its market (e.g., network effects, customer lock-in) Could be most important product to its users We have a unique ability to help Clear sense, if applicable, of any direct competitors and why the company has superior offering for its market Business and economicsClear sense of why to raise capital (i.e., where to deploy) Clear sense of why to raise venture capital (we often discourage founders from taking venture at all) Deal termsFounders own enough of the company Fair ratio between risk and reward? Pro rata rights Information rights, especially to financials Other investors can help the company succeed In success, our eagerness to invest many multiples of our original investment Non-negotiable requirements Need all of the below Founder(s) and teamTrustworthy (e.g., will tell us when things are even a little broken) Can raise more money or get business to profitability Capable of building a diverse team and an inclusive culture Background check conducted, any issues discussed Have a UK presence or material Impact in the UK Product and market"Makes business work better," without being in financial services We have judgment to identify a winner in the relevant market (i.e., a fit with one of our stated investment areas) -- and enough confidence in our judgment that, when things go sideways (as they inevitably do in startups) we'll remain devoted investors Unlikely to compete directly with our other portfolio companies (and verified, if in doubt, by the founder(s) in question) Business and economicsPlausible to have sustainable unit economics in the future Deal termsStandard investor protections (i.e., liquidity preference at 1x - blocking right over investments that would get repaid before we do) Risk-return work for our fund size (Our check size between £200k - £600k typically equates to anything between 8-12%)

Andy Boyd and Matt Blind founded Bramalea Partners to take advantage of a capital supply demand imbalance in the “middle rounds” between venture and growth to find great opportunities to invest in tech-enabled businesses. We ran all of the private investments in venture and growth at Fidelity for about 15 years and started Bramalea Partners in 2020. We are looking for large, growing, well-established industries that are ripe for disruption via technology. In all cases, product market fit will have already been established and we are providing expansion capital to help scale and grow a business that has a very large total addressable market that is easy to understand.

We’re investing up to $50 million across startups that are building the next generation of AI-powered apps and tools. Supporting the next generation of tech entrepreneurs Not too long ago, Dropbox was an early-stage startup with a simple idea: make it easier for people to access files and collaborate from anywhere. That idea grew into a service used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. As a founder-led company, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities of early-stage development. And we’re here to help startups around the world reshape modern work with innovative AI experiences. Accelerating innovation through AI funding Dropbox Ventures is more than just a funding program - it’s a strategic partnership. We’ll work closely with our portfolio companies, providing mentorship and potential exposure to over 700 million registered Dropbox users who can benefit from their product. What we’re looking for:The biggest ideas: That can transform how we work The best new tech: Unique, AI-powered apps and experiences The most talented teams: With a track record of success and innovation