Symvan Capital Limited

Symvan Capital Limited

About

Symvan Capital is an award-winning EIS & SEIS technology venture capital fund manager. We invest in companies seeking to have a material impact in their industry with the potential to deliver exceptional investment returns within a realistic time frame. ​ We provide investors the opportunity to access today’s most exciting early stage tech companies. They aim to become tomorrow’s most exciting growth companies. **OUR NAME** Symvan is a Greek word implying a happening or an event. συμβάν Greek n. happening, event, occurrence

"The level of due diligence and research they undertake on potential investee companies is impressive and gives advisers and investors alike great confidence in their investment. Investor communication also appears to be excellent with regular investor meetings and updates, all of which offer a glimpse into the inner workings of the SEIS which few funds can match."

EISA Judges' comment, February 2016

Investment focus

Symvan will not consider making an initial investment unless we believe that the investee company can make investors a ten times increase in valuation. In fact we prefer companies who have the potential to scale to even higher valuation multiples but we realise that these are difficult to find to say the least. This is but one reason as to why we like to get involved at an early stage, leading us to spend a lot of time searching for dynamic entrepreneurs. Where do we find these exciting young companies, buzzing with intimations of potential unicorn-like growth? This is where our experience comes into play. Symvan Capital was founded in 2013 by Kealan Doyle and Nicholas Nicolaides who have worked together for 12 years working with and investing into dynamic growth companies. We are as comfortable with publicly listed growth companies as we are with private equity and EIS investing. Symvan’s founders also have many years experience working within blue- chip investment banking firms, and are very knowledgeable concerning the challenges and opportunities facing growth companies both in working with and competing against large enterprises. Our track record for portfolio selection evidences how we strive to actively reduce investment risk and generate superior returns. We are in our element when investing at an early stage into companies with dynamic management teams, helping to grow them through to and including a Series A funding round. Part of our appeal to entrepreneurs is that the principals of Symvan are entrepreneurs themselves and know what it takes to build and scale a business. Entrepreneurs generally hate working with bureaucratic partners, which is why most of them leave a large firm as soon as they can following an acquisition. Although Symvan is a relatively young firm, we believe that we have brought together a team with a blend of youthful imagination, seasoned experience and with very active outside advisors. We have won awards and our earliest investments are really starting to gain traction and acclaim. Watch this space.

Key team members

Kealan Doyle - CEO & CO-founder

Kealan is CEO and co-founder of Symvan Capital. He has worked with venture capital companies for 15 years, both in a corporate finance advisory capacity as well as a fund manager. He prefers to invest in a wide range of technology companies, but is also very interested in finding synergies within the Symvan portfolio of companies. Company interests include big data analytics, fintech, SaaS, 3D printing and network security. Before his involvement in venture capital investing, Kealan previously lead a structured equity products team at HSBC, and has worked at Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and UBS. Together with Nicholas, he has since founded his own entrepreneurial businesses to focus on VC investing. Kealan holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Toronto.

Nicholas Nicolaides - Director & Co-founder

Nicholas is a Director and co-founder of Symvan Capital. He is passionate about technology and believes it has never been a more exciting time to invest in the sector. His early capital markets experience at Paribas seeded his involvement in the sector, working on numerous technology transactions including the IPO for Autonomy Corporation Plc. Most of his recent experience involves working with and investing in early stage technology SMEs. He is particularly interested in big data, high performance computing and the opportunities for disruption in the education and recruitment sectors. Nicholas believes that both the quality of the management team and timing are the most important factors in determining success of a technology investment, and propounds that the Symvan mantra of “deeper not wider” is essential and requires the close involvement of the venture capital investor to nurture the businesses. Prior to setting up his own VC businesses, Nicholas worked with AiM brokers and the ECM team at Lehman Brothers, focussing on European Telecom & Media. Prior to that he worked in the TMT Corporate Finance and European Equity Capital Markets teams at BNP Paribas. Nicholas gained a BSc (Hons) in Statistics & Economics from UCL and in a MBA from Imperial College Management School.

Maria Lennon - Investor Relations

Maria joined the Symvan team in 2015, with a focus on enhancing the way in which we engage with our investors and the broader investment community. Communication is at the heart of her role at Symvan, for which her extensive experience as a professional stage and screen actress leaves her uniquely equipped. Maria holds a Bachelor of Laws, having graduated from University College Cork. Before her acting career took off, she worked in journalism, building a social media presence before the existence of social media by creating an attention grabbing events guide for a Dublin newspaper. Prior to joining Symvan, Maria worked with a firm of architects, resolving complex legal issues by finding common ground between contractors and clients.

Investment opportunities

Symvan Capital Limited

We are working to make investments from this manager available on our platform.

Investment opportunities are added daily, please check back soon.

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Example portfolio companies

We have invested in companies that operate in ed-tech, HR-tech, insure-tech, OSINT, VR/AR, with utilisation of big data analytics and machine learning **Digital Clipboard:** A client onboarding platform for wealth managers that is being developed in conjunction with St. James’ Place Wealth Management. To see it in action, this link is one minute long: https://symvan.app.box.com/s/t8ogg0tbhdwlcqgnj5y1n7fodnu9rx27 **Neotas:** A "deep-dive” due diligence company with proprietary software that integrates open source intelligence and machine learning into existing compliance and fraud prevention processes. **RightIndem:** Every insurance company in the world deals with the same expensive, time consuming question. How does one distinguish between genuine and fraudulent claims? This link shows the technology: https://play.buto.tv/pHtXH

Awards

Finalist Investment Week Tax Efficiency Awards 2018/19
Winner Growth Investor Awards 2018 Best SEIS Investment Manager

Investments offered

  • EIS
  • SEIS

Contact

Assets under management

£21,400,000