Creator Fund is a London-based pre-seed venture capital firm founded in 2019 by Jamie Macfarlane. Its mission is to transform cutting-edge university research into scalable deeptech startups by backing PhD founders and academic entrepreneurs at the earliest stages. Operating across 28 university campuses in Europe, Creator Fund uniquely leverages student investors as scouts, ensuring early access to promising spinouts from top institutions.
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 October 2025, Creator Fund announced the close of its first European institutional vehicle at $41 million.
The fund is anchored by Equation Capital and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), with participation from more than 60 LPs including Blue Wire Capital, Basecamp (Phoenix Court Group’s FoF), and Skaala (founded by early Skype employees Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi).
Creator Fund expects to make 40–45 investments from this fund, typically writing checks of $500K to $900K.
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.
Notable Investments
To date, Creator Fund has backed 55 startups whose founders have raised over $250M in follow-on funding. Early investments from the new fund include:
Notable Exits
Creator Fund has already recorded one known exit:
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.
