Ex-LocalGlobe Investor Yvonne Bajela Closes $17M Debut Fund

Yvonne Bajela has closed an oversubscribed $17 million first fund for her new firm, Evertrue, after initially targeting roughly $13 million and turning away additional investors rather than growing the vehicle. She announced the close on Tuesday.

Bajela spent more than a decade as a venture capitalist, most recently at LocalGlobe and Impact X Capital Partners, where she backed companies that later became unicorns: the fintech Wise, the insurance company Marshmellow, and the robotaxi firm Mooves.

"After more than a decade backing founders who bet everything on their ideas, it felt like time to make a bet of my own," she said. "I wanted the independence to act on those convictions and build something that reflected my own approach to investing."

What will Evertrue actually do?

The firm has already backed seven companies and will focus on early-stage investing across the U.K. and Europe. The average check size will be around £350,000, with plans to back at least 20 companies over the next three years — roughly seven deals per year. In plain terms, the fund is writing small, seed-stage checks and spreading them across a wide portfolio.

Evertrue will invest mainly across AI and fintech. Bajela said she is "particularly interested in people with a unique insight into a problem, an unusual ability to execute and the ambition to build something much bigger than their initial product."

"I also pay attention to the distance a founder has traveled, what they've overcome, and how that has shaped their perspective," she continued.

Why launch a fund now?

Bajela credits the AI boom with convincing her the timing was right. It has changed the economics of launching a company and created new openings for early-stage investors, she said.

"The ability to build has been democratized," she said. "But the ability to build something enduring remains rare."

The U.K. startup scene is having a moment, as TechCrunch has previously reported. King's Cross ranks among the world's top AI hubs, and companies such as Revolut, Synthesia, ElevenLabs, and the Bezos-backed CuspAI are redefining what it means to scale in the British market. For Bajela, that means a chance to buy into the next generation of top British talent early.

"I think more globally significant businesses will emerge from a wider range of starting points," she said.

How hard was the raise?

Hard, by her own account — and the environment for emerging managers made it harder. In the U.S., the market has been described as a barbell, with capital concentrated at the top and among firms led by managers with established track records. The U.K. looks somewhat better: PitchBook data through the end of September shows emerging fund managers in the region raised $7.4 billion, already surpassing the $6.2 billion they raised in all of 2025.

Still, Bajela called fundraising a grind. The hardest rejections, she said, were not the outright nos.

"They were the ones that came after months of conversations and significant time invested, only for the answer to ultimately be no," she said. "Time is one of the most valuable resources a founder has, and a prolonged process without clarity has a real cost."

The fund ultimately secured five institutional backers, including the British Business Bank and Basecamp, the fund-of-funds arm of investment firm Phoenix Court, which is also home to LocalGlobe. Evertrue participated in the British Business Bank's £400 million Investor Pathways initiative, which deployed £90 million across 10 first-time fund managers — an average of £9 million each, making Evertrue's final size notably above that benchmark.

Why turn away money?

Bajela raised more than she planned and declined to expand further, a decision she framed as discipline rather than modesty.

"Fund size is a strategic decision, not a measure of success in itself," she said. "I wanted enough capital to build meaningful positions in my highest-conviction investments without creating pressure to deploy capital simply because it was available."

Around 80% of Evertrue's limited partners are U.K.-based, with the rest spread across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. She said the international LP base reflects relationships built "over more than a decade investing across markets" and the fund's global ambition — a practical stance, since more than half of her existing portfolio already operates in the U.S., and many British founders keep a U.S. expansion in view.

Bajela's résumé spans markets: she lived in Japan as a senior investment manager at Mitsui and started her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. She said the experience showed her how "widely distributed ambition and talent are."

"I want Evertrue to be known for the quality of the founders I back and the businesses they go on to build," she said. The test now is whether a deliberately small fund can land those founders before larger, better-capitalized rivals do.