Get to Know Seb Wallace, Manager of Triple Point Venture Fund (VCT)

# YouTube Video Description: Triple Point Venture Fund – Investing in B2B Startups

Welcome to the official YouTube channel of Wealth Club. In this video, we sit down with Seb Wallace, an expert from Triple Point Venture Fund, a share class of Triple Point VCT 2011. The Triple Point Venture Fund is a B2B-focused share class that aims to support seed to Series A stage companies in B2B services and software.

In this interview, Seb Wallace shares insights into the Triple Point Venture Fund and its investment strategy. He discusses the types of companies the VCT invests in, the importance of a strong management team, and provides examples of recent investments made by Triple Point.

Timestamps for key points discussed:
0:56 – What does Triple Point Venture Fund aim to do for investors?
1:25 – What type of companies does the VCT invest in?
2:34 – What is important in a management team?
3:15 – Investing in Trumpet – B2B sales software
3:52 – Investing in Scan.com – medical imaging platform
4:29 – Investing in Ably – API middleware provider
4:49 – Investing in Quit Genius – digital therapeutics company
5:01 – Investing in Veremark (now also backed by Stage Two)
5:16 – What does Triple Point offer companies besides funding?
6:09 – How’s the economic environment affecting these companies?
7:22 – Has the portfolio been revalued to reflect the changes in the market?
8:19 – What are the biggest challenges currently?
9:18 – Exits to date – Credit Kudos (to Apple) and Adepto (to Degreed)
10:20 – If someone’s going to invest in a VCT this year, why Triple Point?

To learn more about Triple Point Venture Fund, including documents and how to invest, visit [Wealth Club](https://www.wealthclub.co.uk/y/triple-point-vct/).

Please subscribe to our channel (+ 🔔 ) to stay updated with more “Meet The Manager” video interviews.

IMPORTANT: The opinions expressed in this video are the interviewee’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Wealth Club Limited. This interview, like our service, is not advice, and the products featured are not suitable for everyone. VCTs are higher risk and less liquid than mainstream investments. You could lose your capital. Tax rules can change, and tax benefits depend on your circumstances. If you’re unsure an investment is right for you, please seek professional advice.

[Source](https://www.wealthclub.co.uk/y/triple-point-vct/)

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# Transcript
Hello, I’m Alex Davies, founder of Wealth Club, and today I’m with Seb Wallace of Triple Point to talk about the Triple Point Venture fund. Hello Seb. Firstly, tell me about Triple Point and also give me some background about yourself.

Yes, so Triple Point’s been around since 2004. We’re an alternative investment fund manager. We actually began with a VCT, we’ve since expanded out from there, we now manage £3 billion of capital from retail, institutional, and government sources. We have five strategies – private credit, social housing, energy infrastructure, and digital infrastructure, and finally what we’re here to talk about today, venture. I joined in 2017 and was part of the team that founded the venture investing at Triple Point.

So tell me about the Triple Point VCT and what it aims to do for investors?

Yes, the VCT has been around since 2011, although the Venture share class that we are here to talk about today has been around since 2018. It’s the fifth raise for the share class, it now has £40 million under management and we have 37 companies, up from 25 the last time we spoke, across 11 sectors. Broadly speaking, the strategy is to grow the NAV total return alongside regular dividends for our investors.

So what type of companies are you looking to invest in?

The way to deliver returns in venture capital investing is to focus on exits, and so our strategy is built around maximizing the possibility of exits. So that means we invest in early-stage B2B venture capital. We invest in B2B because B2B companies exit two times more than consumer businesses do. And we focus on the seed stage because that’s where there’s the real opportunity for growth. In the UK, 60% of successful exits happen for under £50 million in total value, so if you’re investing at the seed stage you can still deliver real capital growth with that in mind.

And are there any types of companies that you avoid?

Yes, I mean really what we’re focused on is companies that have found some degree of product market fit in their early stages. They’re not just an idea but they’ve got initial customers and initial traction. What we don’t do is back businesses that are what we call “build it and they will come” – they’re businesses that have a product that’s unverified or untested in the market and have a hypothesis. We obviously expect companies to still grow their products and innovate and find new markets after our investment, but we’re not looking at just an idea in a pitch deck.

And obviously one of the most important things is the management team in a company – what do you look for? What characteristics?

Yes, the overarching thing with the management team is domain expertise. And that can come in two forms, typically. The first form is that they have themselves experienced the pain they’re solving, and they’ve been effectively the buyer that they’re now trying to sell to. In those cases, you can resonate well and you can probably have a quicker sell-through rate. If you’re not somebody in that situation, then you’ve worked in an adjacent sector or have acquired knowledge, an understanding of the issue that enables you to build a product with your end customer’s needs in mind. They’re two of the core things that we focus on.

So can you give me some examples of recent companies that you’ve invested in?

Yes. One example is Trumpet – now, Trumpet has built online microsites, or what they call ‘pods’, to help B2B salespeople. When B2B salespeople are making sales, only six percent of their attachments are open, and they spend over 60% of their time doing administration, not actually selling. So Trumpet’s focus is on effectively removing a significant portion of that sales collateral administration, which helps them sell quicker and use data to inform themselves rather than intuition. They’ve been in the market now for two months and they’ve got over 800 customers, so really promising growth so far.

Another business we’ve invested in is Scan.com – they’re a medical imaging platform; they effectively want to be the infrastructure layer for all private market medical imaging. And through them, you can typically get a scan or an image that you need in a third of the time that it takes in the NHS. They plug in not just to private self-pay patients but to insurers across the UK, Europe, and America, and they, for example, have a partnership with Aviva. And they’ve done over 10,000 scans, and that whole market is projected to grow from £37 billion to £58 billion over the next six years, so a really promising opportunity.

And what about some of the more established companies in the portfolio, how are they doing?

Yes, one of those businesses is Ably – they’re effectively an API middleware provider, they power a lot of the data, real-time data that you see being used in technology today. They did a Series B with Insight Partners in 2021, their revenue has grown over 4x since that round, it’s looking really strong. Another business is Quit Genius, they’re a digital therapeutics company helping people get over their addictions. They did a Series B last year as well with Kinnevik and Atomico, and that business is really focused on their revenue growth as well and it’s looking very strong. A more recent business that’s done an interesting round is Veremark. They’ve just completed their Series A, we backed them at pre-seed. They’ve just completed their Series A with Stage Two in the US and that is a 2.5x markup on our last round, so that’s looking exceptionally promising.

Besides funding, what do you offer the companies that you invest in?

Yes, so over the last 20 years, Triple Point had an opportunity to build a platform unlike many other managers. We obviously have our advisory committee, that’s Charles Delingpole and Christian Faes, both of which are founders of businesses now worth 9-figure sums in the UK, but alongside that we have a big platform that we use to focus our help to our portfolio – whether that’s, for example, they need somebody to help them do their ISO certification,…

We talk to Seb Wallace about Triple Point Venture Fund, a share class of Triple Point VCT 2011. This new B2B-focused share class, launched in 2018, has already had its first exits. It seeks to back seed to Series A stage companies in B2B services and software. Watch the interview to learn more. We cover:

0:00 About Triple Point and background on Seb Wallace
0:56 What does Triple Point Venture Fund aim to do for investors?
1:25 What type of companies does the VCT invest in?
2:34 What is important in a management team?
3:15 Investing in Trumpet – B2B sales software
3:52 Investing in Scan.com – medical imaging platform
4:29 Investing in Ably – API middleware provider
4:49 Investing in Quit Genius – digital therapeutics company
5:01 Investing in Veremark (now also backed by Stage Two)
5:16 What does Triple Point offer companies besides funding?
6:09 How’s the economic environment affecting these companies?
7:22 Has the portfolio been revalued to reflect the changes in the market?
8:19 What are the biggest challenges currently?
9:18 Exits to date – Credit Kudos (to Apple) and Adepto (to Degreed)
10:20 If someone’s going to invest in a VCT this year, why Triple Point?

For more details on Triple Point Venture Fund, including documents & how to invest, see https://www.wealthclub.co.uk/y/triple-point-vct/.

Please Subscribe (+ 🔔 ) for more Meet The Manager video interviews.

IMPORTANT
The opinions expressed in this video are the interviewee’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Wealth Club Limited. This interview, like our service, is not advice and the products featured are not suitable for everyone. VCTs are higher risk and less liquid than mainstream investments. You could lose your capital. Tax rules can change and tax benefits depend on your circumstances. If you’re unsure an investment is right for you, please seek professional advice.