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Everyone more or less agrees that 2023 will be effectively written off in VC-land, as the feeding frenzy of the past few years has exhausted everyone, valuations have flattened or crashed, and the exit markets More or less closed.
It appears that VCs are using this period to get their house in order for the next cycle. We’ve already seen General Catalyst using this down-time to build out a seed arm in Europe; Another Euro VC spends ‘quality time’ with his LP to raise another fund; And former viewers use it to jump on the AI hype cycle.
Why not use it to expand your partnership, right?
To that end, Hoxton Ventures has now managed to lure former Khosla Ventures partner Brian Gartner to join as a partner.
Gartner previously worked on venture growth-stage investments in VC, but is now at Hoxton and will refresh his memories of early-stage investing.
In an interview, he admitted that it was also a career move based on his personal life: “I have a very international family. My wife is actually British, so [moving] This was always in the plan…but we weren’t thinking about it this early. When I was introduced to Hussain through one of the Hoxton portfolio companies, I immediately noticed the transparent nature and mutual respect between the partnership. The complete lack of ego in the room, which you know, frankly, is a breath of fresh air. “And I feel like Hoxton is about to reach an inflection point and I’m thrilled to be a part of that story.”
Of his time at Khosla, he told me: “There’s a dichotomy between firms that really work deeply with their portfolio companies and those that don’t… It’s not really about board meetings. It’s about the calls you make, the meetings leading up to the board meeting. And I’ve always really enjoyed it. I’ve got a bunch of stories in my track record that weren’t obviously wins and then became 9, 10, 11x returns just because of really rolling up the sleeves and plugging in and that’s what keeps me excited about this industry. Is. And that’s what I saw in Hoxton.”
Hoxton’s early-stage credentials in Europe include a 60-strong portfolio that includes a number of successful companies including Darkres, Deliveroo, Preply, Spacelift and Tourradar, as well as new investments such as Avantia, Lumi and XYZ Reality.
Hussain Kanji, partner at Hoxton Ventures, said in a statement: “Brian is an experienced investor, having seen companies go from their initial formation to exits and IPOs. His late-stage skill set will bring us a new force to the table.
He said on a call: “We are deliberately thinking about expanding and building partnerships. We started with Seedcamp, Connect Ventures and a bunch of other people starting to invest in Europe, and I think we’ve really moved into a nice ’boutique mode’. But I think we’re trying to make another change now.”
He adds that Hoxton is progressive: “We have evolved as a firm and as an organization, it has been the same journey as Index Ventures started from a small shop in the 90s to the powerhouse it is today. And if you’re going to do that, you have to hire really great people. So Brian is part of that. “And we’ll probably try to do that one or two more times.”
In March 2022, Hoxton Ventures closed a new $215 million fund, Hoxton III.
Gartner has 16 years of experience in venture capital. He was Vice President at Insight Venture Partners, where he invested in companies that included AdColony, which was acquired by Opera for $350 million, Alteryx (IPO’d), Fenergo (acquired by Astorg) and Bridgepoint for $600 million. was acquired), Pluralsight (acquired by Vista for $3.5B), Smartsheet (IPO’d), and Udemy (IPO’d).
After Insight Venture Partners, he joined Apax, where he invested in Visionline, which was acquired by CDPQ for ~$450M. He also served as a partner at Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners. He was previously a partner at Khosla Ventures for two years.
Hoxton’s investments include Finesse, Giraffe360, Inflow, Really Clever, Peptone, Universal Quantum and XYZ Reality.
