GUV Powerlist 2018: #12 Victor Christou

Victor Christou has been with Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), the investment affiliate of University of Cambridge, since 2013, working as a senior investment director for almost two years before a promotion to chief executive in September 2015.

CIC has raised £125m ($165m) to date, though it is in the process of raising substantially more from UK and international investors. The patient capital fund’s architect was Tony Raven, chief executive of Cambridge Enterprise, the university’s tech transfer office.

What differentiates CIC from other university venture funds – most notably its peer Oxford Sciences Innovation – is that it invests not only in spinouts from its its name-giving institution, though it has access to that dealflow through its close partnership with Cambridge Enterprise, but in startups emerging throughout the so-called Cambridge Cluster, the region around the city that has a wealth of startups in the software, electronics and biotechnology sectors.

Cambridge Innovation Capital focuses primarily on healthcare and technology businesses, with a view to supporting them to maturity and driving their valuation up to more than $1bn.

Christou is uniquely placed to lead the fund, having considerable experience on both sides of the investment table. He became a venture partner at pan-European venture capital firm Wellington Partners in 2011 and earlier in his career founded Opsys, an organic electronics business focusing on OLEDs. Christou was a member of the team that sold Opsys to Cambridge Display Technology, itself later acquired by Sumitomo Chemicals.

Christou’s career has also involved being a Royal Society university research fellow and junior research fellow at University of Oxford’s Balliol College, though the rivalry between the two institutions has not stopped him becoming one of the most influential people in Cambridge. Proof, perhaps, that thought leaders will make an impact wherever they choose to be.

As chief executive, duties can sometimes be removed from the daily investment activities, but Christou has been involved in every investment CIC has made during his time in charge and he has taken board positions with five portfolio companies – geospatial database technology provider Geospock, media asset management software producer Imagen, automated music composition platform Jukedeck, flexible electronics maker PragmatIC and software debugging tools producer Undo.

Christou manages an investment team of just five people, and while CIC employs more staff across other teams, it is remarkable how much the fund has achieved to date.

Case in point – medical device developer CMR Surgical closed a $100m series B round in June this year backed by CIC and just two months later revealed it had bagged a contract with the UK’s National Health Service to deploy its Versius robot, which enables ultra-precise keyhole surgery, from next year. Versius will compete with the existing, but larger, Da Vinci system, manufactured by US-based Intuitive Surgical and deployed across 70 hospitals in the UK.

Many more successes are likely to follow for Victor Christou and Cambridge Innovation Capital.