Draper Esprit announced series of new investments

Venture capitalist firm Draper Esprit has announced a series of investments. It said it has invested a total of £130 million (€152 million) during the year to date, including eight new and six follow-on investments.

In the past three months, additional investments of £25 million (€30 million) and £15 million (€18 million) have been made in existing portfolio companies, Form3 and CoachHub, respectively. Another existing portfolio company, Cazoo, has listed on the New York Stock Exchange, receiving proceeds of over $1 billion (€850 million) before expenses.

Draper Esprit participated in the $160 million (€137 million) Series C round for platform payment technology provider Form3. The round was led by new investor Goldman Sachs and also included existing investors Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society, Barclays, Mastercard and 83North.

Founded in 2016, Form3 offers an alternative to the traditional payment infrastructure model, providing an always-on, cloud-native, payments-as-a-service platform.

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Based on the valuation implied by the fundraising, the gross fair value of Draper Esprit’s holding is approximately £58 million (€68 million). Excluding the £25 million (€30 million) of newly invested capital, this is an uplift of approximately £23 million (€27 million) to the March 2021 gross fair value of £10 million (€12 million).

Scalable coaching programme

Draper Esprit also moved in September to put more money into CoachHub as part of an $80 million (€68 million) Series B extension round, also supported by existing investors RTP Global, HV Capital, Signals Venture Capital, Partech and Speedinvest.

CoachHub is a talent development platform and enables organisations to create a personalised, measurable and scalable coaching programme for the entire workforce, regardless of department and seniority level.

It uses artificial intelligence to match individuals with more than 2,500 certified business and wellbeing coaches in 70 countries across six continents, with coaching sessions available in more than 60 languages.

In August, a third Draper Esprit portfolio company, Cazoo, announced a merger with AJAX I and its listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The online car retailer received $1 billion (€850 billion) in proceeds before expenses from the transaction, which will be used to further build out its brand and infrastructure.

Since being founded in 2018, Cazoo has delivered more than 35,000 cars to customers across Britain and mainland Europe.

Based on the share price of $9/share the company’s gross fair value holding is approximately £37 million (€43 million), which is an uplift of approximately £11 million (€13 million) to the March 2021 gross fair value of £26 million (€30 million).