Hussein Kanji
Partner & Co-Founder, Hoxton Ventures. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounder@hkanji ↗LinkedIn ↗hoxtonventures.com ↗
He co-founded London-based early-stage venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures in 2013 to help European tech founders scale into global markets. He is recognized for early seed investments in multibillion-dollar companies like Deliveroo and Darktrace, earning a spot on the Forbes Midas List Europe.
1shows
2appearances
80statements
21resolved
12supported
1contradicted
57%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything Hussein Kanji said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kanji: Most European VCs Are Momentum Investors Seeking Quick Markups
“I think most of us become momentum investors in this industry. We write the check largely to get the next markup, not to build the long-term, durable, big company of tomorrow. And I don't think there are that many people in Europe who do those kinds of things.”
Kanji: European VCs are trained in private equity and focus on downside protection
“And I don't think people in Europe think in that kind of way. I think people in Europe are largely trained in private equity. They think about how do I minimize my downside.”
Kanji: Deliveroo altered legal docs to strip Hoxton's pro-rata rights
“And then we had a weird scenario in that particular company where our pro rata rights got taken away from us, and in the legal documents, they changed the definition of who would get the pro rata, To basically, I mean, basically singling us out.”
Kanji: European Investment Fund is too dominant and should be split into five
“I think if you have someone like the EIF where there's 30% of the aggregate capital of the LP commits, it's too big. What you should really have is what happened with AT&T in the US where they broke it down into the bells. You had five different bells kind of …”
Kanji: Europe needs dominant superstar VC funds, not micro funds
“I don't know if the world right now needs yet another emerging manager, yet another micro cap fund. I think what we need is like five to 10 dominant Superstar venture funds in Europe, kind of the way in the Bay Area, they're like, 10 or 15 of those.”
Kanji: Chinese EVs will wipe out the German car industry
“Yes, I'm really terrified that the German car industry is going to get wiped out by China. Like, by the EVs in China. I think they're asleep at the wheel.”
Kanji: Carried interest should be taxed as income, not capital gains
“I have no problems paying income tax on carried interest. Like, I think it's income, right? I mean, it's not my capital work doing it. It's because I'm doing my job.”
Kanji: Female VC partners are hard to poach due to high retention pay
“There are some great women who are very capable. It is hard for me to poach them because they're very well taken care of in their existing funds for very good reasons, because there's a shortage of them.”
Kanji: Venture VCs aim to build scale monopolies despite regulatory resistance
“We as a venture industry have to think about how to create monopolies. Like, the regulator doesn't want monopolies, but we want monopolies. We want companies with increasing returns to scale, with deep defensible moats. You build this thing, it has this huge m…”
Kanji: America is the best path for scaling a startup financially
“Your best path to scale from a financing perspective is America. The rounds are bigger.”
Kanji: Venture managers should fundraise for fixed time, not fund size
“Do not do a fundraise for a size of the fund. Do a fundraise for time of the fund. Give yourself 90 days. Whatever you get, go start investing.”
Kanji: VCs Should Sell Post-IPO Stock via a Three-Tranche Formula
“And so I think the formula that we now have is at the time of the IPO, as soon as you're out of lockup, A third of it you sell, a third of it you sell six months later, and then a third of it you sell another six to 12 months after that. Just make it a formula…”
Kanji: Multi-Stage VC Funds Treat Early Checks as Simple Call Options
“But these days, with the growth of those guys, it's all call options for them, right? They will invest into something and see how it plays out, so they can write the 30, fifty million dollar check, where it starts to get meaningful.”
Kanji: European startup conversion rates match US, but funding amounts lag
“And the biggest structural problem that we have in the UK and Europe, the conversion rate between series, between seed and series A to series B to series C, is basically these days on par with the US. But the capitalization of our companies from seed to series…”
Kanji: A $10M seed round doubles outlier odds versus $5M
“And there is a statistical, like, correlation between if a seed round raises, like, a hundred K, the probability of it becoming an outlier is very, very, very, very small. Kind of makes sense. If that seed round goes up to, like, ten million, the odds between …”
Kanji: Europe is on par with the US in AI for the first time
“When you look at what's happening in AI, you got DeepMind down the road in London, you got Meta running its AI stuff in Paris, like we are for the first time ever in European history on par from the company creation or technology creation as the US in not a ni…”
Kanji: I tried to talk Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus out of LSE listing
“And then right after that, Tavit went public with Wise on the LSE, and I tried to talk him out of it. I said, go, go in America.”
Kanji: Darktrace suffered severe LSE discount before $5B privatization
“I think it was trading at huge, a huge multiple discount. Seven hundred thirty-two million of revenue, like I said, trailing, trailing, got privatized at five billion.”
Kanji: Seed investors should sell early if offered a 50x return
“If someone offers you like, 50 X on your first investment, maybe there's actually a reason to take some money off the table. But, you know, normally you would have said, do that, you get your 50 X's at the IPO stage, or at the very late stages, and then the sa…”
Kanji: AI euphoria is driving venture investors to skip due diligence
“And I think we're seeing some of that same stuff in AI. Like, there's so much euphoria for AI that people feel they have to have some of these companies in their portfolio.”
Kanji: Capital injected directly correlates with startup probability of success
“There is a correlation between how much money goes in to a company and what the probability of success is.”
Kanji: Reaching unicorn status requires an average of $300M in funding
“The average is about like three hundred million to get to a unicorn status”
Kanji: VC Employees Optimize for Fast Markups Over Real Returns
“If you're the general employee, you optimize for getting to the next career ladder, and how do you show that you can get to the next career ladder? You do a deal, and then General Catalyst, or Index, or Kleiner, or Sequoia, or Andreessen, I mean, there are so …”
The other half of the tape: Hussein Kanji's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Hussein's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner & Co-Founder, Hoxton Ventures | 2 | 80 | 57% 12/21 | full record on 20VC → |