British Growth Fund's £200 million venture arm will restructure and 3 partners are leaving

BGF Ventures

BGF Ventures partners Rory Stirling, Simon Calver, Wendy Tan White, and Harry Briggs

• British Growth Fund, or BGF, is to restructure its £200 million venture arm to invest in more companies outside of London.
• The restructure means three BGF Ventures partners are leaving - namely Wendy Tan White, Harry Briggs, and Rory Stirling.
• Lead partner and former LoveFilm chief executive Simon Culver will remain to lead BGF Ventures' "scaled up" operations.
• BGF has was originally set up in 2011 with £2.5 billion in funding from the UK's five biggest funds, and launched its BGF Ventures arm in mid-2015.
• One source told Business Insider that Briggs and Stirling are thinking about setting up their own fund.

British Growth Fund, the £2.5 billion investment company set up by the UK's big banks, is to restructure its £200 million venture arm.

The restructure will mean three of BGF Ventures' partners will leave: Rory Stirling, Harry Briggs, and Wendy Tan White, who has been in the position for less than a year.

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BGF Ventures was set up in 2015 and has £200 million to invest in early stage, risky startups. It has so far focused on tech startups, while parent company BGF invests in more established small-to-medium enterprises.

Now it seems the lead partner Simon Culver, who continues to head up the fund, will lead efforts to invest in more startups outside London.

Simon Calver said in a statement:

"BGF Ventures was created to extend BGF's proven investment approach to earlier-stage companies. Our long-term strategy has always been to create a nationwide platform that enables us to make long-term, patient capital investments in volume - building scale and getting more capital to more growing companies. The challenge for BGF Ventures now is to disrupt early stage investing in the way that BGF has disrupted growth investing since 2011. We intend to do that by expanding what we offer to more sectors, particularly knowledge-based businesses and tech-enabled companies, and to use out national footprint of 12 offices across the UK and Ireland to invest in more companies based outside London."

One said suggested that Harry Briggs and Rory Stirling were considering raising their own fund.

Wendy Tan White is the newest partner at BGF Ventures and only joined in June 2017. She is the cofounder of website builder Moonfruit and was formerly general partner at UK company builder Entrepreneur First. She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to technology businesses.

Briggs was formerly a principal at another major venture firm, Balderton Capital, and led investments into market research startup Streetbees and ad platform Tapdaq. He is also an advisor to Diversity VC, a campaign group to promote women and minorities in venture capital.

Stirling was previously a partner at MMC Ventures, and sits on the boards of fashion startup Mastered and direct hotel booking platform Triptease.