Almost a decade on the investor side
Future Planet Capital, latterly as Director and Portfolio Manager.
I helped build the platform from inception to c. £500MM under management across six funds spanning climate, health and deep tech.
That meant more than allocating capital. It meant sourcing and executing over fifty transactions, sitting on eight investment committees, running portfolio support for more than twenty-five companies and holding board and observer seats through the years when those companies were at their most fragile.
I saw which companies made it through Series B and which stalled. The difference was almost never the science.
Why Pentith exists
The gap is operational, so the answer has to be operational.
Deep tech and life sciences founders are asked to become chief executives of operating businesses while still leading the technical work that justifies the company existing at all. The gap between an outstanding technical team and a functioning company is operational. It is where most of the value gets lost.
Consultancies answer that with a deck and an invoice. Pentith answers it by working the actual problem through to an answer the team owns. Where that needs someone senior inside the company, I take the role where responsibility actually sits.
The same gap exists a level up. A first-time manager is asked to be an investor and to build a firm at the same time, usually with nobody in the room who has done the second part. That work is the mirror image of the first, which is why Pentith does both.
The perspective is the point. I have written the investment memo, defended it at investment committee, watched the company execute against it and dealt with what happened when it did not.
Before that
Defence programmes, then venture.
I worked at KBR Government Solutions delivering programmes for the British Government, the UK Armed Forces, NATO and international partners, on site in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Before that I served five years as a British Army Reservist.
Both are more relevant than they sound. Boards under pressure and small teams under pressure fail in similar ways. The habits that hold in one hold in the other. It also still earns its keep directly: some of the deep tech I have backed since has been defence and dual-use, where the buyer, the funding routes and the timelines all work differently to commercial markets.
I also completed the Venture Capital Executive Programme at UC Berkeley. I am based in London.
Get in touch
The first conversation costs nothing and takes half an hour.
If you are a founder, a chair or a fund with a problem that needs senior attention, start there.
[email protected] Thirty minutes, no materials, no pitch.