A trio of the UK’s brightest entrepreneurs have launched a new multi-million pound fund that they hope will be the catalyst to uncover the next unicorn.
David Newns, Dominic McGregor and Charlie Yates have joined forces to launch Fearless Adventures, which will focus on providing funding, marketing services and talent.
Newns found and sold two companies for £158m within eight years by the time he was 33, taking a seat at the top level of FTSE30 company Imperial Brands in the process. He’s now the chairman of Manchester-based smart clothing firm Prevayl.
University drop-out McGregor co-founded Social Chain with Steven Bartlett and grew it to 700 staff before exiting at the age of 28 in 2020.
Yates, who previously worked at Convex Capital, has advised on the sales of over £1bn of owner-managed disposals.
Fearless Adventures say their one-stop shop of support services will help grow the next generation of direct-to-consumer (D2C) startups in the UK.
Three entrepreneur-led companies are already on board and the company aims to close up to 10 investments by the end of 2021.
Newns explained: “We want founders and startups that we partner with to reach the world-leading heights that we did with our own businesses. We asked ourselves: ‘What support do we wish we had access to when we started?’. It was clear there was a real gap for an offer that helped passionate entrepreneurs, not only raise capital but get a high quality, ready-made support system to help their startups thrive.”
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McGregor added: “Having been through the highs and lows of growing successful businesses, we have experienced almost every problem associated with scaling companies. And we’re passionate about putting that expertise to great use with our partner companies that have already demonstrated a successful market fit, are profitable and are led by talented entrepreneurs who are as ambitious for growth as we are.”
Yates said: “We structure our investments so that we are uniquely incentivised to help deliver as much value to the founders and their companies as possible.”
In addition, the team plans to develop and launch an apprenticeship initiative called The Fearless Academy.