Look Up Ventures

“Spero” is Latin for hope. We help founders build a hopeful future. We’re a team of former startup founders, operators, and investors from landmark companies including eBay and Tesla. We invest in determined founders building mission-driven technology companies in three focus areas: wellbeing; sustainability; learning, work, and play. We prefer to lead or co-lead a $3-$10M round (late seed or Series A). Our typical check is $2-$4M, and we reserve capital for follow-on. We are conviction-based investors who play the long game. How We Work With YouWe have the conviction to lead and price your round. We participate in follow-on funding and help with subsequent fundraising. Our concentrated portfolio approach allows us to engage deeply with our founders. We’re supportive throughout the life of a company. Every one of our founders has full access to the entire Spero Ventures team. We know some ideas take time to catch on, so we offer patient capital. We are calm and steady partners in uncertain times. We help companies scale to serve billions of customers. We’ve done this as operators and founders, and as advisors and board members. We connect our companies to a network of founders, advisors, coaches, domain experts, and executive talent. We build community by bringing founders and leaders together through our CEO Summits, Product Leader Summits, founder breakfasts, workshops and thought-provoking events. We offer expert-led workshops that help founders with brand/storytelling, sales/go-to-market, consumer growth, and fundraising. Our focus Wellbeing Agency over physical and mental health People deserve to be in control of their own physical and mental health. For that, they need new kinds of information and access to care. What devices, apps, tools and services will help people live longer, healthier, more vibrant lives? How can genomics help us better understand our world and ourselves, and contribute to new solutions? Companies that answer these questions will make life worth living. Sustainability Protecting and preserving our planet Life is worth living on a healthy planet. But many of the largest systems we rely on - water, food, energy, transportation, product production and waste - were designed in a way that’s unsustainable and detrimental to our personal and planetary health. The economic, social, and health impacts of climate change and industrial pollution are growing too large to ignore: unprecedented droughts, fires and floods have disrupted millions of lives and result in billions of dollars of loss each year. How can we develop safer, more efficient systems? What can we do to improve power grids, recycling, environmental monitoring and disaster analytics? We invest in sustainability with conviction. Learning, Work, and Play Freedom in work and life Savoring relationships, art, joy, and laughter makes life worth living. Today, the way we do these things is changing. We can now learn, work, and play in hybrid ways that suit individual needs. This means self-directed learners need access to education and job preparation. Likewise, self-directed workforces need freedom, flexibility, and the ability to manage their goals. How can we provide better access to rewarding, satisfying work? What tools and support systems do people need to thrive? We invest in powerful visions for the future of learning, work, and play.

We are in the midst of the greatest period of innovation civilisation has ever seen. This century, technology will revolutionise our lives more powerfully and more rapidly than the industrial revolution did. This time we have an opportunity - and an obligation - to ensure technology is a force for good, that improves the lives of future generations without collateral damage. We’re optimistic this is possible, and we choose to focus on the possibilities of great teams setting out on meaningful missions, rather than obsessing about what might go wrong. The defining companies of our generation will be addressing fundamental issues in climate, energy, health, and equitable society. These are the companies we want to make possible. These are the founders we strive to serve. This is our reason for being. Our focusTechnologies: We look for frontier technologies across deep tech, life sciences, and software platforms that are unlocking unprecedented innovation. The convergence of diverse disciplines is where we see breakthroughs take place. Mission: We invest in solutions to the world's most pressing challenges across climate, energy, health and society. Sustainable initiatives such as carbon capture, energy transition, food & agriculture and new materials will pave the way for a cleaner future, as will fostering the circular economy and exploring space for alternative resources. New tools and models for drug discovery and precision medicine will benefit health and longevity, while AI-supported software tools, financial inclusion and upskilling will boost productivity, creating a more equitable future for all. Geography: We recognise that Interdisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs bring together diverse perspectives and expertise, leading to breakthrough ideas and solutions. The brightest minds often gravitate to these intersections and each other, and that can happen anywhere. We are always open to exploring new regions and building relationships with entrepreneurs and investors across the globe. Stage: We are primarily focused on investing in pre-seed and seed rounds, supporting startups at the early-stages of their development. We may also consider later-stage companies that are showing strong growth potential and are a good fit with our investment strategy.

We go beyond early growth stage capital. We commit to the tech companies we invest in, providing them with access to our unique network of industry experts, leadership team and partners in Asia and the Middle East. Together we build a collaborative advantage to overcome the global water issues we are facing today. Naturally, we create impact by design. We invest to transform the world’s clean water supply. Natural Ventures has an impact-driven approach to investment that is at the centre of addressing the interrelated challenges arising from climate change, world population growth and the transformation of the world’s water system. Natural Ventures is focused on accelerating the transformation to a sustainable and economic supply of clean water. Let’s reimagine water together. Water around the world is rapidly changing from an abundant resource to a scarce one. We believe the inevitably increasing pressure on our water resources offers enormous opportunities for companies who offer breakthrough technologies in a profitable and scalable way. We are a team of seasoned investors with an excellent track record, experienced water, food and energy experts, entrepreneurs and leadership developers who have purpose-built Natural to help solve some of the world’s most pressing water and environmental issues. Natural Ventures has a unique proposition to its portfolio companies, combining a deep network in major markets in Europe and North America with particular and unique strength in areas of the world where water is scarce or infrastructure and urbanisation means that demand exceeds supply by an ever-increasing margin. The partners of Natural Ventures have extensive experience of living and working in the Middle East and Asia, and maintain a broad network of partners for manufacturing, distribution and delivering compelling solutions to the regions. We are on a mission to support purpose-driven entrepreneurs across three investment pillars across the Water – Energy – Food Nexus

We are experienced venture capital investors who have been at the forefront of impact investing since 1999. We are passionate about generating extraordinary results, creating positive changes, and partnering with visionaries who combine these two. Our team has invested in over 70 ventures, bringing time-tested perspective and expertise to partnerships with entrepreneurs. We are ready and eager to build something special together.

We partner early with unstoppable entrepreneurs leveraging breakthrough science and technology to pursue progress at scale. Everything we do revolves around a single problem: What are the best ways to reconcile economic growth with human and planetary health? We invest in teams and solutions that address multi-decade problems that humanity has no choice but to solve. Our focusing questionsHow can we decouple improving living standards from resource depletion? How can we ensure food, energy and materials supply security when confronted by deglobalization, multipolarity and the distractions of the attention economy? How can we improve life on Earth and unlock future economic growth potential by leveraging next-generation computing and exploring outer space? How can the clean industrialization of biological processes reduce humanity’s impact on our planet? How we invest in unstoppable founders We look to problems and unmet needs first and then to which technologies and solutions have the potential to address those problems effectively. We don’t push any one type of technology or limit ourselves to one field. We look for founders and companies at the pre-seed and seed stages leveraging the three basic disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology) to engineer economically viable solutions. We look for teams that are uniquely suited to address the opportunity and its inherent challenges and for solutions that are radically better, technically viable, and defensible. Some of the areas we are keen to continue exploring include clean commodities, space technology, industrial decarbonization, electro- and green chemistry, next-generation computing, new materials & production methods. How we partner for the long-term Starlight is a Pre-Seed and Seed investor and ideally the first institutional check into your company. Having been in your shoes as founders and scientists ourselves, we will serve as an ally in the journey ahead. Here’s what you can expect from working with us: We will lead or co-lead your first institutional round. We reserve capital for follow-on investment in later rounds, and we have to ability to partner with our LPs to augment our participation in future opportunities. We will be personally invested in your success, as a large portion of our fund comes from our own team. We will put a particular focus on ensuring that your roadmap is focused on the key risks and milestones unique to addressing the most pressing problems. We will work with you to establish rock-solid governance and operational practices that hold up to the scrutiny of the world’s best institutional investors. We will help you line up and credibly engage the right future investors for your business and trajectory. Let’s partner and make change happen.

Our planet is facing a multitude of urgent challenges; from climate change, dwindling natural resources and rapid urbanisation, to a growing demand for accessible healthcare. These pressing issues call for innovative and sustainable solutions that only scientific advancements can provide. Deep Science as an Asset Class.We invest in scientific breakthroughs that together advance human capability and create financial returns. We’re looking for: Entirely new technologies developed from fundamental research IP-rich innovations with competitive defensibility Solutions to real problems in Life Sciences, Advanced Materials, TechBio, Photonics and Quantum Hardware, Robotics and Automation, AgChem/Tech and DeepTech We offer portfolio exposure to deep science investments supported by a best-in-class due diligence process conducted by experienced entrepreneurs, operators, investors and scientists Investing with Empirical Ventures. ACCESS: leading pre-seed and seed rounds by leveraging our market-leading due diligence and domain expertise, opening doors to the best deals and co-investors SELECTION: our robust, highly selective process identifies cutting-edge scientific advances from the UK R&D landscape with the most compelling commercial opportunities SCALE: Our track record presents unparalleled opportunities to scale our portfolio companies and attract the best follow-on investors and talent POSITION: Our approach increases the probability of reaching Series A, a key inflection point for pre-seed and seed investors.