Yvonne Bajela is bringing $17M in fresh capital to Europe’s startup scene

Yvonne Bajela knew it was time to launch her own fund. She spent more than a decade as a VC, most recently at LocalGlobe and Impact X Capital Partners, where she made bets on now-unicorn companies like the fintech Wise, the insurance company Marshmellow, and robotaxi Mooves.

On Tuesday, she announced that her own fund, Evertrue, officially closed an oversubscribed $17 million Fund I.

“After more than a decade backing founders who bet everything on their ideas, it felt like time to make a bet of my own,” she said. “I wanted the independence to act on those convictions and build something that reflected my own approach to investing.”

The firm, which has already backed seven companies, will focus on early-stage investing across the U.K. and Europe. The average check size will be around £350,000, she said, with plans to back at least 20 companies over the next three years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she said this AI boom helped her realize that this was the right time to launch her own fund. Not only has it changed the economics of launching a company, she said, but it has created new opportunities for early-stage investors like herself. “The ability to build has been democratized,” she said. “But the ability to build something enduring remains rare.”

As TechCrunch has previously reported, the U.K.’s startup scene is having a moment. King’s Cross, for example, is one of the world’s top AI hubs, while companies like Revolut, Synthesia, ElevenLabs, and the Bezos-backed CuspAI are redefining what it means to scale and attract success in the U.K. market. For someone like Bajela, this moment means there is an opportunity to snap up investments in the next generation of top British talent early. “I think more globally significant businesses will emerge from a wider range of starting points,” she said. 

However, this is also a tough market for emerging fund managers. In the U.S., it has been described as a barbell market where capital is concentrated at the top and among firms led by those who already have solid track records. Things may be slightly rosier in the U.K., as PitchBook data through the end of September shows that emerging fund managers in this region raised $7.4 billion, already surpassing the $6.2 billion they raised in all of 2025.

Still Bajela said fundraising was a grind. The hardest rejections weren’t necessarily the outright nos. “They were the ones that came after months of conversations and significant time invested, only for the answer to ultimately be no,” she said. “Time is one of the most valuable resources a founder has, and a prolonged process without clarity has a real cost.”

Still, she said the fund nabbed five institutional backers, including the British Business Bank and Basecamp, the fund-of-funds of the investment firm Phoenix Court, which is also home to LocalGlobe. Evertrue was part of the £400 million British Business Bank’s Investor Pathways capital initiative, which saw it pour £90 million to 10 first-time fund managers. Bajela said Evertrue wanted to raise around $13 million but saw a lot of investor interest. She decided to turn down additional investors rather than expand the fund size.

“Fund size is a strategic decision, not a measure of success in itself,” she said. “I wanted enough capital to build meaningful positions in my highest-conviction investments without creating pressure to deploy capital simply because it was available.”

Around 80% of Evertrue’s LPs are U.K. based, with the rest scattered across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. She said her international LP base represents the relationships she’s built “over more than a decade investing across markets.” It also reflects the fund’s global ambition, she said, especially since so many British founders keep their eyes on a U.S. expansion; more than half her portfolio already operates in the U.S.

Evertrue will invest mainly across AI and fintech, she said, adding that she’s “particularly interested in people with a unique insight into a problem, an unusual ability to execute and the ambition to build something much bigger than their initial product.”

“I also pay attention to the distance a founder has traveled, what they’ve overcome, and how that has shaped their perspective,” she continued.

She’s lived in Japan as a senior investment manager at Mistusi and started her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Throughout her career, she said she’s seen how “widely distributed ambition and talent are.”

“I want Evertrue to be known for the quality of the founders I back and the businesses they go on to build.”

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