Yvonne Bajela, a venture capitalist with more than a decade of experience, has launched her own firm, Evertrue, with $17 million in fresh capital to invest in early-stage companies across the U.K. and Europe. The fund has already backed seven companies and plans to support at least 20 more over the next three years, writing average checks of around £350,000.
Bajela previously worked at LocalGlobe and Impact X Capital Partners, where her investments included the fintech Wise, the insurance company Marshmellow and the robotaxi company Mooves. She said her years of backing founders convinced her the time had come to make a bet of her own and to have the independence to invest according to her own convictions.
Evertrue will concentrate on AI and fintech. Bajela said the current AI boom helped persuade her that the timing was right, because it has changed the economics of starting a company and opened new opportunities for early-stage investors. She said building has been democratized but building something enduring remains rare.
The fund drew five institutional backers, including the British Business Bank and Basecamp, the fund-of-funds of the investment firm Phoenix Court, which is also home to LocalGlobe. Evertrue took part in the British Business Bank's £400 million Investor Pathways capital initiative, which allocated £90 million to 10 first-time fund managers. Bajela said the firm aimed to raise around $13 million but attracted enough interest that she turned away additional investors rather than enlarge the fund, calling fund size a strategic decision rather than a measure of success.
About 80% of Evertrue's limited partners are based in the U.K., with the remainder spread across Europe, Asia and the U.S. Bajela said the international base reflects relationships built over a decade of cross-market investing and the fund's global ambition, noting that more than half of her portfolio already operates in the U.S.
Bajela described fundraising as a grind, saying the hardest rejections came after months of conversations rather than as immediate refusals. She said she looks for founders with a unique insight into a problem, an unusual ability to execute and the ambition to build beyond their initial product, and that she pays attention to the distance a founder has traveled and what they have overcome.
Before her investing career, Bajela worked in Japan as a senior investment manager at Mistusi and began her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. She said her experience has shown her how widely distributed ambition and talent are, and she wants Evertrue to be known for the quality of the founders it backs and the businesses they build.
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