Reed Elsevier Ventures is one of the few corporate funds set up in 2000 - the heady days of the dot.com bubble - to be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Diana Noble, a former partner at Schroder Ventures (now Permira), was persuaded to lead it and first to join her was Tony Askew. Kevin Brown followed as a principal and was promoted to partner the next year. Noble stepped down as managing partner at the end of 2004 to join the William J Clinton Foundation and Askew took the reins. The three of them discussed with editor James Mawson in last month's issue how the venturing team was originally architected and, in this second article, Reed Elsevier Ventures' approach to investing.
Mawson: Where did you get your dealflow?
Askew: Dealflow is one of the most critical areas; it is the lifeblood of any venture capital (VC) firm. We recognised really early that a passive approach, where we just announced our existence and opened our doors, might generate deals but would not get us into the rarified atmosphere where the best deals are seen and done. Instead we set out to reverse the typical deal generation activities of independent VCs, which rely…
