A London-based venture capital firm is highlighting Bath and the West of England as one of Europe’s most attractive places for investment in start-up companies.
Since its launch just over a year ago, Downing Ventures has invested almost a third of its entire portfolio in start-ups based in the Bath-Bristol area. 
Its investments include a diverse range of high-growth web-enabled businesses such as Natter, the Bath-based social network based on the principle of three word status updates, along with Bristol firms Duel, a competitive photo sharing social network, Zenstores, which provides order management and fulfilment software for small e-commerce businesses, and Habu, a room-booking and resource management platform.
Head of Downing Ventures, Matt Penneycard, said: “London attracts the majority of the UK’s venture investment, with far fewer private investors looking outside the capital to find exciting opportunities.
“However, we believe that there are significant growth opportunities in the South West. Fantastic talent, quality office space and great facilities that are more affordable, means that investment capital stretches significantly further.”
He points to the presence in the region of tech giants such as HP, Toshiba, IBM, Sony, Amazon and JustEat as well as its fast-growing and prospering digital, gaming and animation clusters and incubators such as SETsquared, which operates from the city's Innovation Centre and is backed by the University of Bath.
The area also has the highest number of new business start-ups in the UK after London.
Bristol SETsquared centre director Nick Sturge said: “The tech and digital cluster in and around Bristol and Bath is thriving – not only is there a really creative streak in the region, it’s also highly entrepreneurial.
“If you add the long and distinguished record in technological innovation you have a perfect storm for building a generation of growth businesses supported by investment partners such as Downing.”
