Creator Fund PhD Fund I

United Kingdom

Pre Seed

About Creator Fund PhD Fund I

UK's Creator Fund launched a pan-European fund to back university spinouts founded by PhDs. Invests up to $750k at pre-seed/seed in AI, deep tech and life-science startups.

Investment Focus

Location / RegionUnited Kingdom

Funding StagePre Seed

Industry Focus

Ai Ml

Biotech

Deep Tech

Investor Signals Profile

active

Sweet Spot

PhD founder or academic spinout in deep tech, pan-European, pre-seed

deep-tech

academic-spinouts

PhD-founders

pan-european

pre-seed

Bullish Signals

$41M first close with institutional LPs like EIFO and Equation Capitalblog

Portfolio attracted over $250M follow-on funding, incl. ElevenLabsblog

$56M final close confirmed Jan 2025 — fund fully raisedtwitter

Loci portfolio exit to Epic Games confirmedtwitter

Helical AI portfolio raised $10M seed roundtwitter

30 campuses, 10 countries — scout network expanding across Europetwitter

Airspeed portfolio raised $20M Series A from GoogleDeepMind talenttwitter

200+ students trained through venture programme across 10 countriestwitter

Ovo Labs (FemTech) launched from Max Planck Institute researchtwitter

Quant Diamonds portfolio raised €91M semiconductor inspection roundtwitter

Celeris-1 portfolio approaching GPT-5 level intelligence with 15x speedtwitter

Latent Worlds AI enables robots to learn in wild, Delft spinouttwitter

Next gen investors trained via PhD venture programme at top EU fundstwitter

Allfocaloptics nanophotonic lens tech revolutionizes screen displaytwitter

Contrarian Signals

Only invests in deep tech — no classic software startupsblog

Check sizes under $1M — no capital for later stagesblog

Access primarily via uni scout network — cold outreach harderblog

Unrelated 'Creator Fund' LLC causes brand confusion with creator economy fundlinkedin

Founder Do's

Be a PhD researcher or academic spinout founder

Come from one of the 30 partner university campuses across 10 countries

Build in AI, Biotech, Robotics, Photonics, FemTech, or Advanced Materials

Show clear potential for global scaling from the lab

Use the scout network at your university as first contact

Founder Don'ts

No pure software/SaaS without deep-tech component

Don't expect fund to focus only on London or Berlin

Don't come too late — fund invests before traditional venture radar

Key GPs & Partners

Creator Fund Team

General Partner

thesis-drivencommunity-builderpatient-capital

Jamie Macfarlane

Partner

operator-mindedecosystem-connectordeep-tech-champion

Unlock Investor Signals

$29/month for full signal access. Cancel anytime.

View Plans Browse all Signal Profiles →

Fund Overview

Fund Size$56M

Saves0

Website

Key People

Jason Mayden

Creator Fund TeamGeneral Partner

Jamie MacfarlanePartner

Related Funds

2150 Fund II

$197M

United Kingdom

Series A

Enterprise Software

Fund Manager:Christian Hernandez, Jacob Bro

Series A

Enterprise Software

Tapestry VC Fund III

€8.1K

United Kingdom

Pre Seed

Fund Manager:Patrick Murphy

Pre Seed

Seedcamp Select

$100M

United Kingdom

Series B

Ai Ml, Enterprise Software, Fintech

Series B

Ai Ml

Enterprise Software

Fintech