The geography of venture capital in the UK has been shaped since 2000 by a significant increase in public sector venture capital funds. Venture capital investments are now less concentrated in the South East.However, investment activity in the Midlands and North is dominated by the public sector. Deal sizes in these regions are small. Venture capital, measured by the total amount invested, remains over-concentrated in London and the South-East where private sector investors continue to dominate. The paper concludes by questioning whether this increased dependence of Northern regions on public sector venture capital matters. Regional StudiesMurray, G. C. (1998) A policy response to regional disparities in the supply of risk capital to new technology-based firms in the European Union. Regional Studies, 32, 405-419. Murray, G. (1999) Seed capital funds and the effect of scale economies.

Online peer-to-peer (P2P) business lending, where individual investors provide unsecured loans directly to individual business borrowers without the intermediation of banks, has experienced rapid growth in recent years. However, very little is currently known about the individuals who lend money through the online P2P lending platforms. Drawing on the cognitive evaluation theory and responses to a survey from 630 investors of the Funding Circle platform, the largest P2P business-lending platform in the United Kingdom, this article describes their personal characteristics, investment criteria and their motivation to invest. A typical P2P business lender is male, highly educated and relatively wealthy with a science, business or finance degree. According to the factor analysis, variables related to company quality and associated risks are important investment criteria, while the expectation of making a financial return is the main motivation behind individuals’ decision to lend money to companies. In contrast, intrinsic motives such as geographical location, personal relationship or knowledge of the company are of significantly less importance.

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This paper examines the link between publicly backed venture capital funds and business innovation in the UK venture capital market. In examining this relationship, the research empirically analyses the characteristics of 4,113 investment deals made to 2,359 UK based companies. We use patents as a proxy for innovation and find that obtaining investment solely from publicly backed VC funds, reduces the probability of the recipient company to apply for a patent compared with those companies that receive investments from private VC funds. In contrast, the probability of a company to have a patent or have applied for one does not vary significantly between companies that receive investments from both the public and the private sector and those companies that receive investments solely from private VC funds. The results have implications for both policy makers and practitioners and stress the importance of co-investments between publicly backed and private venture capital funds to promote innovation.