Have you ever considered how to make more of your investment portfolio? Or perhaps you have a business with big potential that needs investors? Kealan Doyle tells us all about venture capital investing and how a venture capital fund operates.


About Kealan Doyle
Kealan Doyle from Symvan Capital, an award-winning EIS/SEIS technology venture capital fund manager, joins The Next 100 Days Podcast to explain the potential to deliver exceptional investment returns from identifying start-up and scale-up high growth technology companies.

His father was from Dublin and his mother was born in England, he was born in England and grew up in Canada and has lived in London for the last 25 years.

His career started in investment banks and performed roles as an economist and running a global equity derivatives team. Alongside his business partner of 13 years Nic Nicolaides, he runs Symvan Capital. They focus on investing in growth companies. In particular, investing in technology companies.

How to invest in technology business - Kealan Doyle
Where does the word SYMVAN come from?
Symvan Capital was started as a corporate finance advisory company for technology businesses. In the last few years, it has morphed into an asset management company. In 2008, at a different company where Kealan and Nic worked, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, oil was at a very high price and it was causing a lot of the budget airlines to have a real problem, because they hadn’t hedged their exposure. A lot of them were loss making.

There was a move to consolidate them all, which ended up not working, but they had to come up with a product, a bond that turned into an equity if an event happens. To cut a long story short, they were looking for a name for the product. They asked a Greek colleague how he would describe it. He used the word ‘symvan’. Almost like catalyst. It is something that causes something else to happen.

When they went to name their business, Kealan and Nic, felt Symvan had good connotations for them, and so named the firm Symvan Capital. They also wanted a name that wasn’t offensive in another language!
Venture Capital Investing in Technology Businesses – why it’s important to the UK?
This podcast is not offering investment advice, but what is interesting is understanding the processes and benefits of investing in technology businesses as part of a balanced investment portfolio.

Historically, at the time of the industrial revolution, Britain was the first country to move to the next stage of human economic development. It’s still true today. The UK, is a very innovative economy, always has been and probably always will be.

Example, from the FT’s research of the Top 1000 high growth firms in Europe, 24% of them are British. https://ig.ft.com/ft-1000/ 19% were from Italy and 14% were from France.

This is not a new phenomenon. But, according to Kealan, there is a lot of inventiveness in the UK without the necessary financial backing. So, on the one hand, you have the City of London, dominant in global finance. And then you have all these innovators, coming from places like Cambridge, Nottingham, Bath etc.

The environment has changed a lot, because technology has changed dramatically, but also it is a very global thing. So, there may be an English person working with French and Italian people to come up with something. The UK creates a great backdrop for them. It is much more business friendly than France and Italy etc.

It is a really fertile environment.

The Chancellor’s recent budget contained something called the Patient Capital Review https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/patient-capital-review which was profoundly positive for tax efficient investing.
Patient Capital Review
“Patient” in the sense that you don’t want to make an investment and cash-out in 6 months. For most people that is most people. Like your house. Kealan has been living in his home for over 20 years. Graham too.

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