Creator Fund is a London-based deep tech venture fund founded in 2019 by Jamie Macfarlane, built on the conviction that Europe's most transformative companies will be founded by scientists, and that reaching them before anyone else requires being embedded on campus. The firm operates the largest student-backed VC model in Europe, recruiting 40 Venture Fellows annually from ~450 applicants across 30 universities in 10 countries, each receiving carried interest and trained to identify PhD founders with commercial potential before they have a pitch deck, a co-founder, or a company name.
The firm focuses on deeptech sectors emerging from academic research, including AI, robotics, life sciences, and quantum computing.
Creator Fund specifically targets companies spun out of universities, where technical depth and intellectual property provide defensibility. Its thesis is to empower PhD-led ventures with both capital and hands-on support, bridging the gap between research and commercialization.
In June 2026, Creator Fund III closed at $56 million, the largest student-backed VC fund in the world
Creator Fund expects to make 40–45 investments from this fund, typically writing checks of $500K to $900K.
LPs include Equation Capital (anchor), KfW Capital, Denmark's Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), Phoenix Court, JIMCO (Jameel Investment Management Co.), Blue Wire Capital, Allocator One, Basecamp (Phoenix Court Group's FoF), and Skaala (founded by early Skype employees Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi), alongside 60+ total LP participants.
Leadership
The firm is led by Jamie Macfarlane, who established Creator Fund to address the lack of venture capital support for PhD founders in Europe. His model combines a network of student investors across top campuses with institutional capital to identify and accelerate research-based startups at inception.
Investment Strategy
Creator Fund is building a pan-European pre-seed platform for academic deeptech startups, with a strategy to invest early in high-potential research teams and then support them through follow-on fundraising.
The firm combines financial investment with operational mentorship, leveraging its academic scouting model for proprietary deal flow.
Other
Creator Fund is deeply embedded in Europe’s university ecosystem and offers access to technical mentorship, a large academic scouting network, and institutional follow-on connections.
Its unique structure makes it a first point of contact for PhD researchers ready to commercialize breakthrough science.
Since 2019, Creator Fund has backed 62 companies, with portfolio companies raising over $250 million in follow-on funding. Two portfolio companies have crossed $100 million in total funding in the past six months. The firm returned its first fund in 2025 when Loci, backed after a Cambridge scout found the founder's computer science thesis online, was acquired by Epic Games.
Jamie Macfarlane - CEO
Alexandra Ntemourtsidou - COO
alexandra@thecreatorfund.com
Sergio Castro - Investment Partner
sergio@thecreatorfund.com
United Kingdom
