Firstminute Capital is a London-based seed and early-stage venture fund founded in 2017 by Brent Hoberman and Spencer Crawley. Hoberman is best known as co-founder of Lastminute.com, the Founders Forum network, and Made.com. Crawley brings a background in investment banking and early-stage tech. The fund operates from London and invests globally, with a particular pull toward European founders and transatlantic companies expanding between the UK, US, and emerging markets.
The firm raised a debut fund of approximately $100 million and followed with a second vehicle reported at around $200 million. A key part of their model is a distributed scout network – operators, founders, and angels who surface deals before they reach traditional VC pipelines. This approach lets the team move at pre-seed speed without needing a large partnership. Public AUM figures beyond the two disclosed fund sizes are not available.
Firstminute sits in the generalist early-stage category but has shown consistent interest in consumer tech, marketplaces, SaaS, and, more recently, Web3 and crypto-adjacent infrastructure. Their crypto portfolio – tracked at 16 companies with 1 lead investment – is a smaller slice of a broader portfolio that spans multiple sectors.
Notable investments
- Depop – secondhand fashion marketplace, acquired by Etsy in 2021 for $1.625 billion. Their clearest public win to date.
- Cabify – Spanish ride-hailing company operating across Latin America and Spain, one of the few ride-hail challengers to Uber at scale in Spanish-speaking markets.
- Tessian – email security platform, acquired by Proofpoint in 2023.
- PolyAI – conversational AI for enterprise customer service, raised at significant valuations through 2024.
- Relativity Space – 3D-printed rocket manufacturer based in the US, backed as part of the fund's cross-Atlantic mandate.
Specific named crypto or blockchain portfolio companies from their 16-project digital-asset roster are not consistently documented in public sources. Public information on the crypto sub-portfolio is limited.
Team
Brent Hoberman (Co-founder and Managing Partner) chairs Founders Forum and has been an active angel in European tech since the late 1990s. His track record includes early stakes in companies across e-commerce, travel, and consumer internet. Spencer Crawley (Co-founder and Managing Partner) manages day-to-day fund operations and leads many of the firm's investment decisions. The wider team includes several investors and an extended scout network, though individual partner bios beyond the two founders are not consistently disclosed in public filings.
Recent activity
Through 2024 and into 2025, Firstminute continued writing seed and pre-seed checks in AI-native companies, reflecting the broader European VC shift toward applied AI. The fund participated in rounds for companies building on large language models and automation tooling. Their Web3 activity in the same period was quieter – consistent with a general pull-back in institutional seed appetite for pure crypto deals during the 2023–2024 rate environment. No new dedicated crypto-focused vehicle has been publicly announced.
Firstminute sits in a competitive bracket of London-based generalist seed funds alongside Atomico, Index Ventures seed arm, and Episode 1. Their edge is network density – Hoberman's relationships give the fund warm access to second-time founders and operator angels across Europe and the US. The Depop exit remains their most visible data point for fund returners, and the broader portfolio will need several more liquidity events to confirm fund-level performance. For crypto specifically, the 16-company portfolio is relatively modest for a firm of this profile, suggesting digital assets remain an opportunistic rather than thesis-driven allocation.
More detail on their full portfolio is available on Crunchbase and their official website.