A Former LocalGlobe Partner Closes £13M First Fund Targeting UK and European Founders

The Leap from Established Platform to Solo GP

Yvonne Bajela spent more than ten years making early bets at LocalGlobe and Impact X Capital Partners, building positions in companies that would later reach unicorn valuations. Her portfolio included stakes in the cross-border payments platform Wise, digital insurance provider Marshmallow, and autonomous vehicle company Mooves. Now she is writing cheques from her own vehicle.

Evertrue Capital closed its inaugural fund at £13 million in early November, according to Bajela, exceeding the initial target of approximately £10 million. The fund attracted five institutional limited partners, including the British Business Bank and Basecamp, the fund-of-funds arm of Phoenix Court, the investment group that also houses LocalGlobe. Evertrue was selected as one of ten recipients under the British Business Bank's £400 million Investor Pathways programme, an initiative designed to channel capital to first-time fund managers.

Bajela turned down additional commitments rather than expand the fund beyond its target range. She views fund size as a deliberate constraint, allowing the firm to concentrate capital in high-conviction positions without pressure to deploy simply because dry powder remains.

At Opentechwire, we have tracked the steady professionalisation of Europe's venture ecosystem over the past five years. The region now produces a deeper bench of solo general partners spinning out from established platforms, often with institutional backing secured before launch. Bajela's trajectory fits that pattern, though the fundraising environment she navigated remains far from forgiving.

Fundraising in a Barbell Market

Emerging fund managers in the United States face what industry observers describe as a barbell market: capital flows disproportionately to mega-funds and to managers with established track records, leaving first-time GPs competing for a narrower slice of LP commitments. The dynamic in Europe appears marginally more accommodating. Data compiled by PitchBook through the end of September shows that emerging managers in the UK raised $7.4 billion in 2026, surpassing the $6.2 billion raised across the entirety of 2025.

Bajela characterises her fundraising experience as a grind. The most difficult rejections, she notes, came after months of dialogue and significant time investment, only to conclude with a decline. Time, she argues, carries a real cost for any founder building a firm from scratch.

Around 80 per cent of Evertrue's limited partners are based in the UK, with the remainder distributed across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Bajela attributes the international LP base to relationships built over a decade of cross-border investing, and to the fund's ambition to back founders who scale globally. More than half of Evertrue's current portfolio already operates in the US market.

Portfolio Construction and Investment Thesis

Evertrue has deployed capital into seven companies since inception. The fund will write initial cheques averaging £350,000, with plans to back at least 20 companies over a three-year investment period. The firm will focus on early-stage opportunities across the UK and continental Europe, with thematic concentration in artificial intelligence infrastructure and financial technology.

Bajela describes her selection criteria as centred on founders who possess a unique insight into a problem, demonstrate an unusual capacity for execution, and harbour ambition that extends beyond an initial product. She also considers what she calls the distance a founder has travelled, the obstacles they have overcome, and how those experiences have shaped their perspective on building.

The AI boom, Bajela argues, has altered the economics of company formation. The cost and complexity of launching a technology business have declined, democratising access to the tools required to build. Yet the ability to construct something enduring remains scarce. For an early-stage investor, that gap represents opportunity.

The UK's Moment and What It Means for Early Capital

The UK startup ecosystem is experiencing a period of heightened activity. King's Cross has emerged as a global hub for AI research and commercialisation, while companies including Revolut, Synthesia, ElevenLabs, and the Bezos-backed CuspAI have demonstrated the region's capacity to scale. For Bajela, the moment creates an opening to secure positions in the next cohort of high-potential British companies before they attract larger pools of growth capital.

She expects that globally significant businesses will emerge from a wider range of starting points than in prior cycles. That belief underpins Evertrue's geographic and sector focus, and its willingness to back founders whose backgrounds diverge from the conventional venture archetype.

Bajela's own career includes stints as a senior investment manager at Mitsui in Japan and as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. She argues that ambition and talent are widely distributed, and that Evertrue's success will be measured by the quality of the founders it backs and the businesses they build.

Strategic Constraints as Competitive Advantage

Evertrue's decision to cap its first fund at £13 million reflects a broader calculation about portfolio concentration and deployment discipline. A smaller fund allows the firm to avoid dilution across too many positions, and to reserve sufficient capital for follow-on investments in breakout companies. It also reduces the pressure to deploy capital into marginal opportunities simply to meet a target deployment schedule.

The trade-off is that Evertrue will need to be highly selective. With an average cheque size of £350,000 and a target of 20 investments, the firm has limited room for experimentation. Each investment decision carries meaningful weight in the context of the overall portfolio.

For first-time fund managers, that constraint can be an advantage. It forces clarity on investment thesis, sector focus, and founder profile. It also signals to limited partners that the GP is willing to prioritise quality over asset accumulation.

What Comes Next

Evertrue is now in active deployment mode, with seven portfolio companies already onboarded and capital reserved for follow-on rounds. Bajela intends to remain thesis-driven, focusing on AI infrastructure and fintech while remaining open to adjacent opportunities where founder quality and market insight align.

The fund's performance will ultimately be judged on exits, but the early signals, institutional backing from the British Business Bank and an oversubscribed close, suggest that Bajela has secured a credible platform. The harder test lies ahead: whether the founders she backs can convert insight and execution into the kind of enduring businesses that define a fund's track record.

For now, Evertrue joins a cohort of first-time European managers who are building firms in a climate that rewards discipline, sector focus, and differentiated access. The capital is deployed. The clock on Fund I has started.