FT Ventures looking for investments up to $6 million

FT Ventures, the new venture capital arm of the Financial Times Group, is looking invest sums of between £500,000 and £5m in a range of promising information companies, reports Bron Maher of Press Gazette.

Maher reports, “All the businesses in which FT Ventures invests, she said, would be ‘linked to information, intelligence, media – it could be data, it could be content. We don’t want to limit it too much, but there is that fundamental link with our industry…

“‘The purpose of it is to help the FT Group innovate and grow, to help small businesses do that alongside us.’

“FT Group, which is privately-owned by Japan-based Nikkei, grew revenue by 5% to £458m in 2022 and reported operating profit down 7% to £29m.

“Calinikos said the establishment of FT Ventures was ‘a logical next step in our corporate development strategy… we’ve been thinking about it for quite some time.’

“The FT has made investments in media brands before, for example Sifted, a news site targeted at young European start-up founders, and B2B website The Business of Fashion.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.