Laidlaw Scholars Ventures

Laidlaw Scholars Ventures

The firm launched in 2022 when Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay — who built and sold the Institute for International Research — committed $50 million to institutionalize a pattern he had observed within his existing scholarship programme. The Laidlaw Foundation has been funding undergraduate leadership and research at top-tier schools including Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and the University of Toronto since the 2010s. Laidlaw Scholars Ventures gives that network a formal venture arm, turning the foundation's alumni database into a monitored origination channel and making the foundation a limited partner in its own fund. CEO Susanna Kempe, a former FT Live executive and entrepreneur, runs day-to-day investment operations from the firm's London base. LSV writes first-checks from £250,000 up to £3 million, targeting pre-seed through Series A companies where at least one founder is a Laidlaw Scholar. The firm's public portfolio confirms positions in enterprise software, AI/ML tooling, climate adaptation platforms, and digital health diagnostics — a spread that follows the academic disciplines and research labs its scholars emerge from rather than chasing thematic heat. Deal sourcing is structurally centralized: the foundation's database flags newly graduated or active scholars building startups, and LSV's investment committee makes go/no-go decisions on a stream that bypasses the traditional cold-outbound funnel. Co-investors in its rounds have included funds with university-affiliated thesis overlap, though LSV prefers the lead or co-learner seat where it can protect the anti-dilution structure that feeds returns back into scholarships. Kempe has publicly stated the firm's target is 12–15 investments from the inaugural fund, implying average check sizes around $3 million–$4 million per company and an intended high-conviction portfolio. The foundation's offices in New York and Toronto provide recruiting and diligence nodes alongside the London investment team, while a Hong Kong presence connects to Asia-Pacific scholars and LPs. In May 2023, the firm published its first annual report confirming capital deployed into startups founded by scholars from Oxford and University College London, establishing a documented track for the feedback loop between the foundation's grant-making and the venture arm's return generation. LSV's architecture is genuinely distinct: an endowment-style venture portfolio where returns automatically recapitalize the charitable entity. There is no parallel management company siphoning fees away from the mission. The structure also creates a barrier-to-exit incentive few investors share — LSV's carry depends on building companies that survive long enough to generate realizations above a 6 percent preferred return, and every point above that threshold directly grows the scholarship corpus. This makes the firm a rare hybrid of family-office philanthropic capital and thesis-driven early-stage venture, with a sourcing model moated by a roster of 500+ active scholars and alumni across 15 partner universities.