About Us

We team with fast growing, exceptional Fintech businesses across Europe, and push them to achieve their full potential.

What makes us tick • Founder Perspectives • We’ve gone public • Office Hours.

OUR INVESTMENTS

Fintechs that stand out from the crowd

Unique or disruptive business models, first mover advantages and best of breed businesses get us excited. We invest in teams that have the talent, passion, and grit to transform sectors, and entrepreneurs that have the potential to become industry leaders. See our current Portfolio here.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Get to know you early, stick with you long term

We nurture relationships with entrepreneurs early, investing only when the time is right for their business. When we invest, we invest for the long term. We are patient. We seek to maximise the potential of businesses rather than limit upside in pursuit of short term gains.

OUR STYLE

Hands-on, hands-off

Having been on both sides of the fence we understand the fine line between investor help and hindrance. We love working with our companies, but focus on the most important issues without getting in the way of day-to-day management. Our network is at our entrepreneurs’ disposal, to help refine products, develop strategic partnerships, enter new markets and add potential investors, customers and advisors.

FOUNDER PERSPECTIVES

See what our portfolio say

Our portfolio Founders/CEOs share their experiences of working with Augmentum.

Founder Perspectives: Why did you choose to take investment from Augmentum?

Founder Perspectives: How has your experience been working with Augmentum?

Founder Perspectives: Would you recommend Augmentum as investors?

We’ve gone public!

On March 13th 2018 we became the first publicly traded Fintech focused VC in the UK. Listing on the main market of the London Stock Exchange puts us in a unique proposition:

We want to democratise investment in Fintech businesses. Now we have

Exciting Fintech businesses, meet World; World, meet exciting Fintech businesses!

For too long access to flourishing Fintech companies has been privatised. We’ve opened the door of opportunity to everyone!

We want to back our companies for as long as it takes. Now we can

World beating Fintech companies aren’t built overnight.

Success takes time; we want to be able to keep working with you until you reach your peak. Our structure frees us from conventional VC restrictions. While other VCs drop their companies after 5 years, we provide funding for as long as it takes.

We want to give you exposure to the public markets. Now you’ve got it

Exciting Fintech businesses, meet World; World, meet exciting Fintech businesses!

As a public fund anyone can invest in our companies, from large institutions to your latest app downloader. That means more public exposure, more engagement, and, if the opportunity is right, an advantaged route to IPO.

Tim Levene

Tim Levene is CEO of the UK’s only publicly listed, fintech-focused investment company Augmentum Fintech. After launching the first iteration of the fund in 2010 with the backing of RIT and Lord Rothschild, Tim and Co-Founder Richard Matthews launched Augmentum Fintech plc on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018.

Tim has sat and currently sits on multiple fintech boards including Interactive Investor, Tide, Zopa, Farewill, iwoca and Monese and is highly active in cross-industry initiatives working to boost the UK fintech sector, including the UK FinTech Strategy Group.

An experienced entrepreneur, Tim co- founded juice bar business Crussh and being a founding employee of Flutter.com, the latter of which became one of the highest profile digital businesses in the UK after it merged with Betfair.com in 2001.

Richard Matthews

Richard has 17 years venture capital and private equity experience in the technology, retail and leisure sectors on both sides of the fence. Having studied economics at the University of Manchester, Richard started his career as a Chartered Accountant at Coopers & Lybrand before leaving in 1999 to join Tim at Flutter.com (now Betfair) as CFO.

In 2002 following the merger with Betfair he left to join Benchmark Capital Europe (now Balderton Capital), one of the early investors in Betfair. At Benchmark he worked on early stage technology investments both in the investment phase and assisting the investee companies post funding. He then joined Manzanita Capital in 2005, where he spent 5 years investing in the retail and leisure sectors globally before leaving to form Augmentum Capital. In 2018 Richard and Tim successfully launched Augmentum Fintech on the main market of the London Stock Exchange, in the process becoming the first Fintech focused public VC in Europe.

Away from the office Richard enjoys spending time with his family, watching Arsenal and playing golf, though in the case of the latter 2 the word “enjoys” is used in its loosest sense.

Perry Blacher

Perry is a fintech specialist with 25 years’ experience in building and operating online businesses, and has spent the last decade as an investor in, and advisor to, numerous fintech businesses.

Perry graduated from both Cambridge and Harvard before starting his career at McKinsey & Company. In 1998 he left to join Microsoft, before later moving to become a founding Principal of Chase Episode 1 Partners.

Perry later followed the route of the entrepreneur when he went on to become founder and CEO of two businesses, both of which sold to public companies (Serum in 2002, and Covestor in 2007). More recently, Perry has been a Venture Partner at Amadeus Capital, and holds advisory or non-executive roles with Barclays UK, Google, Onfido, Transfergo, Clearscore, CDC and other fintech businesses.