Over the last 10 years, Octopus Ventures, like many other VCs, has been defined by three things: the money we have available to invest, the deals we’ve done to date and our reputation as people.

Historically we’ve aimed for diversity, striking the balance between generalist and specialist. This has been reflected in the entrepreneurs we’ve backed and the people we’ve brought into the team. From property (Zoopla) to fintech (Calastone), online retail (depop) to femtech (Elvie), our deals have defined us as a generalist with specialist expertise. Likewise, our team ranges in background experience from hard science to law, from gaming to rare-breed pig farming. I myself am chairman of UMI3 , the University of Manchester’s Innovation Company.

Like any good startup, we are adapting to our environment.

In the recent past it was relatively difficult to declare a specialism in robotics or healthtech, because there simply weren’t a sufficient number of those kinds of companies out there to make that viable. This is beginning to change: today a particular fund might specialise in hardware, financial services, blockchain or AI.

So, like any good startup, we are adapting to our environment. We’re ready to coalesce our diversity into three specific areas: money, health and deep tech. This new “pod” structure doesn’t just sharpen our focus, it fires up a predictive intent. The pods’ titles: Future of Health, Future of Money and Deep Tech, reflect this.

These titles define our focus and point us in a particular direction. The Future of Health, for example, builds on our previous investments in digital health,
computational drug discovery and novel pharma-centric marketplaces. The Future of Money expands our existing interest in the blockchain, explores novel consumer-centric finance and insurance products, and aims to find entrepreneurs who want to change the face of money globally. Finally, Deep Tech addresses the bleeding edge developments happening in intelligent robotics, AI and advanced materials amongst others.

Our first love is still outstanding entrepreneurs… the “who” has always been as important as the “what”.

We want to be looking in the right places, at the right depth, with sufficient expertise and reach to discover pioneering entrepreneurs earlier. This process is also one of attraction and by clearly communicating our intention, we hope to draw in the flow as well as actively seek it. The “Future of…” pod titles steer our focus to pioneering operations with world-changing potential.

There is a caveat: this is about specialising, not restricting. Our first love is still outstanding entrepreneurs and we’ll not be afraid to flex our structure to include them. The pods give us a focus of attention, expertise, ambition and reputation, but ultimately the best pioneering entrepreneur is what gets us up in the morning. The “who” has always been as important as the “what”.

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Things are going to change. We know that. Exactly how, we can’t be so sure. But we can point our attention in the right direction and be ready to achieve our main goal: to discover the very best, pioneering entrepreneurs out there and contribute to their world-changing success.