Webinar Recap: The LP Lens
Building relationships that last beyond the close with BBB and Epidarex
The LP Lens: Partnering with the British Business Bank
The British Business Bank is the largest LP investor in UK venture capital. This month Invest In Equity brought together Mark Andrews, Senior Director of Funds at BBB, and Liz Roper, Managing Director at Epidarex Capital and Invest in Equity advisor, to talk through what partnering with the bank actually looks like in practice.
Mark opened with an overview of how the bank is structured across its investment programmes. For fund managers, the two most relevant entry points are the Enterprise Capital Funds programme, which supports emerging managers raising first-time funds and requires 100% UK deployment, and the Patient Capital Funds programme, the larger institutional vehicle where more established managers sit. A newer initiative, Investor Pathways Captial, is designed specifically for talented early-stage GPs who lack access to traditional routes into fund management, running on a cohort basis with at least 50% of capital targeted at female GPs. Separately, the bank has earmarked £100M for funds with either increased female GP representation or a higher proportion of female-founded portfolio companies, running through existing programmes rather than as a standalone application route. Mark also highlighted the Life Sciences Investment Programme as a dedicated vehicle addressing the growth stage funding gap in UK life sciences.
The fireside conversation between Mark and Liz was candid about what the LP-GP relationship requires to work. Epidarex first came into the BBB ecosystem through ECF during Brexit, and has now received a cornerstone commitment from the Patient Capital team for their fourth fund. That progression spans ten years and two funds and was built, both speakers agreed, on one thing above all: transparency. Mark was direct on this point. LPs do not handle surprises well, and the distinction that matters is between surprises that are circumstantial and those that arrive because a GP held something back. The latter is what erodes trust irreparably.
Liz described setting up weekly calls with the BBB team between dry close and first close, using them not just to report progress but to share market intelligence in both directions. She credited the bank’s willingness to hold a dry close as a turning point, a signal to other prospective LPs that capital had been committed, which shifted the dynamic in subsequent conversations. Mark confirmed this as a deliberate shift in the bank’s approach over the past six to nine months, moving away from waiting for a fund to reach first close before making a public commitment. For GPs currently mid-raise, both speakers converged on the same word: preparation. Research the specific LP, understand their portfolio mandate, know what questions are likely to come, and build back office infrastructure to meet institutional reporting requirements before you need it rather than after. As Liz noted, going through the process with an institutional investor like BBB sets you up well for every other LP conversation that follows.
On what BBB looks for beyond track record, Mark was clear the cornerstone decision is less about a checklist and more about whether a fund manager is filling a gap that matters to the UK ecosystem and whether they need that level of support to get the fund off the ground. Geographical spread beyond the Golden Triangle, early stage provision, and growth stage capital all featured as areas of active interest, alongside a broader openness to managers taking less conventional approaches to therapeutic or technological focus. For European managers specifically, the bank does not set a fixed percentage requirement for UK deployment but operates on a general expectation that every pound invested by BBB is matched by a pound deployed into UK companies, with some portfolio-level flexibility applied case by case.
The clearest thread running through the conversation was that institutional LP relationships are built over years, not funding cycles. The earlier you start, the better placed you are when it matters. For fund managers navigating this environment, the message was consistent: show up prepared, be transparent early, and treat your LPs as long-term partners rather than a close-and-move-on transaction. For those of us focused on who gets access to that capital, the work starts well before the first conversation with an LP.
Invest In Equity’s Lunch and Learn series continues on 12 May with a session on decision-making. More details and registration are available here.
The recording of this session will be available to IIE members. If you are interested in getting involved with Invest in Equity and gaining access to our growing library of resources, get in touch at info@investinequity.vc.