Laidlaw Scholars Ventures

CEO Susanna Kempe leads the investment function from London, supported by a committee that includes foundation principals and senior venture advisors. Kempe joined from FT Live and previously founded her own ventures, bringing operator experience to the institutional fund. The board includes Lord Laidlaw, who retains influence over strategic direction and alignment with the foundation's educational mission.

The firm draws exclusively from the Laidlaw Foundation's network of scholars and alumni across 15 partner universities globally, including Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and the University of Toronto. The foundation's database tracks scholars during and after their undergraduate years, flagging those building startups as they graduate or leave academic roles. This gives LSV a monitored pipeline that requires no traditional outbound sourcing model.

LSV makes direct equity investments in operating companies where at least one founder is a Laidlaw Scholar, typically taking lead or co-lead roles in pre-seed through Series A rounds. The firm does not publicly commit to outside venture funds as an LP, concentrating all capital into direct holdings that generate the returns needed to recapitalize the foundation.

All returns above a 6 percent preferred return hurdle flow back into the Laidlaw Foundation, which uses the capital to fund additional scholars and research programmes. This cascading structure means the firm's carry is directly tied to charitable impact, not just financial performance. It also means the foundation is both the anchor LP and the primary long-term beneficiary of the venture portfolio.

The Laidlaw Foundation partners with 15 research-intensive universities worldwide, including Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, the University of Toronto, and the University of Hong Kong. The scholars programme funds undergraduate research and leadership development, and these alumni become the sole eligible founder pool for LSV investment.

The Laidlaw Foundation is the charitable entity that runs the undergraduate scholarship programme; Laidlaw Scholars Ventures is a separate for-profit venture fund housed inside the same group. The foundation acts as the anchor LP in LSV's funds, and excess returns above the pref hurdle are contractually channeled back into the foundation's educational mission. They share a founder, Lord Laidlaw, and overlapping board oversight but maintain operational separation.

It is a venture firm with a single-family-origin anchor LP — Lord Laidlaw seeded the $50 million inaugural fund with wealth from his business conferences and publishing exit. However, LSV invests in third-party founders (the scholars) and does not manage the Laidlaw family balance sheet directly, making it closer in practice to a mission-driven VC than a family office.