Draper Esprit aims to ‘Make More Possible’, rebrands to Molten Ventures

Reflecting the ongoing hotbed that is the European tech scene, London’s preeminent venture capital firm Draper Esprit is no longer Draper Esprit, but rather, Molten Ventures. The rebranding also includes a new company motto, ‘Make More Possible’, and reflects the firms’ unique position in the ecosystem. Not only do they invest directly in entrepreneurs, but also run a fund of funds programme, and as a listed company, make more possible for public market investors, as opposed to a limited clubhouse of a few LPs.

Molten Ventures counts 67 companies in the portfolio, a great number of which we’ve reported on here on Tech.eu, covering the consumer, digital health and wellness, AI, Deeptech, and Hardware, and Cloud, Enterprise, and SaaS markets. In other words, Molten has pretty much got their fingers in just about every pie imaginable.

As a clear demonstration of their flexibility and success in backing and supporting companies anywhere from Series A right on through to IPO or acquisition, the firm has placed investments in several European unicorns including Trustpilot, UiPath, Graphcore, Revolut, Cazoo, Ledger, and Aircall.

Again, along the lines of making more possible, while Molten Ventures is always scouting for its own talent, over the course of the past 3 years, they’ve pushed a total of £75 million into seed-stage focused VC funds, an action they have committed to replicating over the next 3 years. The Molten Ventures fund of funds now counts 42 European companies under this wing including Seedcamp, Earlybird, IcebreakerVC, and Future Positive Capital, to name just a few.

On the move to rename the firm (again), CEO Martin Davis commented, “Our rebrand to Molten Ventures is rooted in the team’s long experience of transformation – both our own, and our successful efforts to help our portfolio do the same. It encapsulates that moment when VCs give their energy to help companies succeed and indicates what transformation means to us – for our portfolio, for our investors and for our society we make more possible.”