Female-led Pact Launches £30m Seed Fund with Focus on Inclusion, Well-being, and Climate
London, UK. 24th November 2022: Pact has launched its first £30m seed fund to back early-stage startups across Europe using technology to tackle key priorities for the next generation – economic inclusion, personal and professional well-being, and climate solutions. The new venture capital fund is the first in the UK to be co-founded by three female partners – Tong Gu, Reem Mobassaleh Wyndham, and Monik Pham.
Pact’s LPs include anchor investor Campden Hill Capital, Jeff Dean, the Head of AI at Google; Yeming Wang, the former head of EMEA of Alibaba; Fahd Beg, the COO of Naspers; Keith Teare, the founding shareholder of TechCrunch; Todd Ruppert, the retired CEO of T. Rowe Price Global and venture partner at Greenspring Associates, Tilo Bonow, CEO of PIABO and Anne Hathaway, UN Woman Goodwill Ambassador and Oscar Award Winning Actress among others.
Speaking on the fund’s investment thesis, Pact Founding Partner Tong Gu highlighted, “Our thesis stems from our passion for improving the future. These areas are full of commercial opportunities within global markets we’ve invested in across our careers. We’re launching a dedicated vehicle based on our experiences and understanding of the early-stage founder journey. We want to build long-term pacts with our portfolio and help them change the world.”
Pact’s fund will lead seed-stage investments into purpose-driven companies that positively shape the future of how we work and live, providing companies with £1-1.5m in funding. The ABC themes created by the Founding Partners cover Access (economic inclusion), Betterment (personal and professional well-being) and Climate. Before launching Pact, the three partners worked and made investments individually and collectively within these themes.
Notable past investments are Clause, a legal automation service which exited to Docusign and multiple now Series C stage businesses, including Onto, an electric vehicle subscription service; Perlego, an online learning platform; and Yoco, an African FinTech company.
Before forming Pact, Tong Gu was an investor at ADV and a former founder. She built a data analytics startup in Shanghai, enabling economic participation for independent brand owners, which she grew to 40 people and exited. Reem Mobassaleh Wyndham was also an investor for ADV focused on financial inclusion investments and previously worked as Vice President, Technology for Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala. She is also a former founder, having built a luxury brand in Dubai. Monik Pham is an operator and entrepreneur who was part of the founding team of the early-stage fund Fuel Ventures, a foreign direct investment firm covering Asia and the Middle East and launched several social enterprises in Africa and India.
Founding Partner Reem Mobassaleh Wyndham said, “We invest where we can add value. Through our diverse experience across 12 countries, we can provide our founders with the intellectual, social and financial capital to help boost their global reach and impact.”
In addition to capital, Pact will provide founders in its portfolio with access to a global collective of former founders, operators and investors to support the portfolio as they grow. This collective includes Ronny Shibley, Former CTO and Co-Founder of Gorillas, Guarav Dhar, CEO of Marshall and MENA FinTech Association Board Member, Murali Akella, Head of Growth Drivewealth and Amy Rennison, Impact advisor. Pact’s team has strong ties to MENA, Southeast Asia and China, where we enable startups to test and validate new markets and fundraise from strategic investors.
Pact Founding Partner Monik Pham added, “We’ve built a firm where high performance and flexibility are part of its foundation. We’re inclusive by design – necessary as all three of us had our first children while raising the fund. We have considered how to deliver at every level, from our investment themes to policies and support provided to the portfolio, including a founder well-being programme.”
Pact’s first investment has been made into Growth Kitchen, a London-based company that uses data insights to launch food brands with sustainability as its core operations. Pact has also made two investments yet to be announced – one that uses AI for automation tools for SMBs, and a financial inclusion platform for migrant communities in Europe.
For more information, go to pactvc.com
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Press Kit: Available here
Press Contact:
CEW Communications for Pact
Cathy White, [email protected], +44 (0)7791 232834
Sarah Norford-Jones, [email protected], +44 (0)7748 617118
Further Information on Past Investments made by the Partners
Past VC Investments
Clause: Supported from concept to exit. Clause’s founder is a pioneer in combining technology to provide more equitable and accessible legal services for everyone. They pioneered ‘connected contracting’ technology which turns contracts into living documents – providing efficiencies across all industries their clients operate in, including manufacturing, supply chain and financial services.
Onto: Backed from since seed. Onto’s mission is to drive the easy adoption of EVs for consumers. Since making this investment, Tong has sat on the board, and Pact VC has introduced them to co-investors, lenders and senior team members. Four years later, Onto is now the leading EV operator in Europe and recently announced a series C round.
Perlego: Invested at the seed stage (~10m valuation), and the startup has recently raised a series c round. Perlego’s mission is to democratise learning by providing affordable digital textbooks through a subscription and learning as a service platform. The Pact VC team has Tong, Monik, and Reem have worked with the founder on their Asia expansion strategy in multiple geographies.
Angel Investments
Penfold: The team invested at pre-seed as angel investors when they were contractors and recognised the need for a pension platform that catered to freelancers and contract workers. Penfold allows its customers to consolidate their pensions, allowing them to have a more financially secure future. They now have thousands of customers and $100m in AUM.
Yoco: The team spotted Yoco when it was valued at just 400K and invested as angels. The company is now one of Africa’s fastest-growing fintech companies and raised a Series C round of $83M last year led by Dragoneer. Yoco is commercially viable and competitive while simultaneously in line with Pact’s ‘Access’ pillar, providing tools and enabling economic participation for smaller businesses to accept payments.
Team Biographies
TONG GU
Tong is Founding Partner at Pact. After completing her degree in Computer Science at Imperial College London, Tong started her career in Tech and Media investment banking working across London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Having realised her desire for entrepreneurship and her passion for enabling “the underdogs,” Tong started a data analytics business that enables economic participation for independent brand owners, which she grew to 40 people before exiting to become a strategic investor and complete her MBA at INSEAD. Tong is passionate about working with founders and supporting them on their journey. In her previous fund, Tong led deals in the top-performing portfolio companies and has facilitated roadshows for multiple deals in Asia.
REEM MOBASSALEH WYNDHAM
Reem is a founding partner at Pact. Since graduating from Brown University with a BA in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Reem has been working and investing in technology for 15 years as a global foundry asset manager, angel and institutional venture investor focused on financial inclusion, with 30+ companies in her portfolio, and founder. With a large social conscience, Reem has ultimately been on a lifelong quest to find efficient systems that can maximise better outcomes for more people. She is a polymath at heart and curious about the layers of the world, how it works and how it can work better, leading to her (un)usual path to VC. Reem has an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Columbia Business School.
MONIK PHAM
Monik is a founding partner at Pact. Monik embarked on her journey as an operator and entrepreneur, launching a foreign direct investment firm and, later, an early-stage fund with a successful former founder. She has driven business development in markets including China, Hong Kong, Turkey and the Middle East. Monik has also worked at several early-stage startups leading their business development and fundraising, one of which exited to DocuSign. She is an active angel and has invested with a family office for many years. Since her earliest memory, Monik has been driven to find ways to level the playing field. As an immigrant, she saw first-hand the path to equity and mobility through entrepreneurship in her own family and later through the support she gave building social enterprises in developing markets such as India and Africa.
