Love Ventures, the venture capital firm, has today announced that it has appointed Carolyn Maddox as Senior Advisor and is welcoming Alex Packham as a Venture Partner. The appointments come as Love Ventures launches its third and largest fund to date with a close at the start of next year.

Love Ventures’ third fund will continue its record of investing in founder-led startups across FinTech, PropTech and ConsumerTech that are tackling some of the biggest problems facing industries today. The fund’s focus on participating in the last funding round before Series A makes it well-positioned to address the clear early-stage funding gap in the UK whilst seeking to maximise return potential for investors.

Love Ventures is deeply committed to getting its start-ups ‘Series A ready’ by working collaboratively with its portfolio companies and giving founders access to its curated and growing community of sector and business experts.

Carolyn Maddox joins Love Ventures with 30 years of experience in the private equity industry. Carolyn began her career at 3i Group, the leading UK private equity and venture capital listed company, followed by Causeway Capital and ABN Amro. She joined pioneering impact investor, Bridges Ventures, now Bridges Fund Management, as Executive Director and was pivotal in growing the company to four funds while she was there. Bridges now has over £1 billion under management across growth, evergreen, outcomes and property funds. Carolyn subsequently joined Next Wave Partners as a Partner and COO and since 2020 she has been advising FSD Africa Investments on various projects including climate-related investments in Africa. Carolyn also chairs the Advisory Board of Leaders’ Quest, a global social enterprise working on purpose-led leadership development and climate change. Carolyn will help to scale Love Ventures with its third fund and subsequent institutional funds.

Alex Packham, the Founder and CEO of ContentCal, which was established in 2016 and sold to Adobe in December 2021, has been appointed as a Venture Partner. Whilst growing ContentCal, Alex raised significant angel and venture capital and scaled the business to over 3,500 customers and more than 60 team members. His scale-up experience will ensure that Love Ventures can continue to support founders, find solutions to the challenges they face and ultimately navigate to their next phase of growth.

Alex and Carolyn will supplement a set of well-established and experienced advisors who sit on the Investment Committee which include Kelly Ducourty (VP, Google Cloud’s GTM Strategy & Operations), John Lunn (Founder of Gr4vy and ex PayPal Ventures), Jules Pancholi (Founding Board Member of Skyscanner) and Rob Hamilton (Founder of The Instant Group). Andrew Hynard (ex UK Deputy Chair of JLL) who joined as a Senior Advisor in 2021 continues to bring a wealth of leadership experience to the Love Ventures team. 

Founded in 2020, Love Ventures has been active in supporting and scaling companies through some of the most unprecedented times in the UK economy.  The firm has continued to grow from strength to strength despite these headwinds and this latest announcement marks a key moment in the next stage of the firm’s growth.

Love Ventures was recently named as Best EIS Investment Manager – New Entrant at the Growth Investor Awards.

Adrian Love and Marcus Love, Partners and Co-Founders at Love Ventures comment on the new appointments:

“At Love Ventures, we pride ourselves on our founder focussed approach, which involves having a community of knowledge and expertise that our entrepreneurs can draw from. We’re delighted that Carolyn and Alex are joining our growing team as it will allow us to enhance our pool of expertise and provide more solutions to the challenges that portfolio companies face as they scale.”

“Whilst the UK is experiencing a period of economic uncertainty, many early-stage technology businesses have proved to be resilient to this, generating exceptional growth and investor returns. Additionally, there is huge potential across each of our sectors to be fulfilled by investing in best-in-class FinTech, PropTech and ConsumerTech businesses.”

“Love Ventures has an established track record of investing in high-growth businesses and now, with the support of our larger, experienced team and on track for our biggest fund to date, we look forward to experiencing even greater success as we continue to institutionalise our offering.”