How the hoodies beat the hard heads

Some big challenges for Praetura Ventures in running the biggest regional venture fund

Venture capital suddenly got very interesting last week.

The biggest secret amongst the finance and tech world was out. The contract to run the North West end of the second phase of the £660m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund had been awarded by the British Business Bank to the relative new kid on the block, Praetura Ventures.

Even the day before the announcement, Praetura’s David Foreman had his best deal-doing poker face on at the Rainmaker’s conference, where he appeared on a panel discussing the next generation of winning deals, but giving nothing away.

The next day, TheBusinessDesk.com reported the announcement that Praetura had “ousted” the incumbent fund manager, Maven, to run the fund.

Pretty quickly too Praetura released a characteristically slick and punchy video - fronted by Foreman in his trademark Praetura hoody - as the first part of their marketing effort promising to find the next big thing, “the next game changer”.

Since then, investors, advisers and businesses familiar with how both Maven and Praetura operate have contacted us with differing perspectives about the award.

There’s also a universal acknowledgement that Praetura have played a successful and very effective long game in securing the contract, something we observed last year when it was becoming obvious who the main contenders were.

The responses have ranged from what the challenges might be ahead for Praetura, with some expressing surprise that the scale of the task of writing £5m investment cheques has fallen to a new face in an unfamiliar investment world.

Frankly, their award has raised a few eyebrows, given how young a business it is, and how the decision to go with them is a break by the British Business Bank from the usual and reliable managers like Mercia and Maven to go with a fresh face. 

But we’ve also heard how there was evidence of “agitating” against re-awarding the contract to Maven, particularly from within the tech community.