UK tech scene could outdo Silicon Valley, says senior venture leader

“Not only could the UK rival Silicon Valley,” says Catherine Lenson, “it already is.”

It is a bold claim, but one that carries weight. As chief operating officer of Phoenix Court, Lenson sits at the centre of one of Europe’s most influential venture platforms.

Founded by father and son Robin and Saul Klein, Phoenix Court is home to LocalGlobe, Latitude and Solar – the funds that back companies from first cheque to IPO – and is the number one investor in EMEA for backing both unicorns and “thoroughbreds”, companies generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, from seed.

Few executives have a clearer view of Britain’s innovation economy at every stage of growth than Lenson. And she is unapologetically bullish.

“I’m sorry to break the bad news,” she tells Jewish News, “But despite everything that’s said about the UK, the reality is that we’re already one of the strongest innovation economies in the world. We are pathologically optimistic.”

The Phoenix Court portfolio includes UK fintech giants Monzo, Wise and Tide, alongside AI company Faculty, the first UK tech unicorn of 2026 after its $1 billion-plus acquisition by Accenture.

“The narrative around the UK is often far more pessimistic than the reality,” she says. “When you look closely at what’s actually being built here, the picture is extraordinarily strong.”

Despite being only the sixth-largest economy by GDP, the UK is now the world’s third-ranked innovation economy. Beyond unicorns and thoroughbreds, Phoenix Court tracks what it calls “colts” – companies generating between $25 million and $100 million in annual revenue.

“There are more than 800 colts and thoroughbreds in the UK. That’s more than France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands combined. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than ten.

“We don’t need to chase Silicon Valley anymore,” she adds. “We’re building something distinctive here.

Lenson began her career in human resources on a graduate programme at UBS – “not the most obvious destination for a Cambridge graduate eager to make her mark in the City,” she admits. HR was still known as “personnel”, not yet rebranded as “people”.

She went on to spend years on trading floors through the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the financial crisis and Brexit, before becoming the first female managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, helping build the SoftBank Vision Fund into the world’s largest venture fund.

“It gave me a way into financial markets through people,” she says. “And venture capital, ultimately, is exactly that – investing in companies through a lens of people.”

That philosophy sits at the heart of Phoenix Court’s strategy.

“It always comes back to the person,” she says. “At the very earliest stages, the idea you back today will almost certainly look very different in five- or ten-years’ time.

“We’re not backing an idea. We’re backing the person.”

Venture capital, she explains, operates under what investors call a “power law”: out of dozens of investments, only a handful will generate the majority of returns.

“You have to be quite sanguine about the fact that some of the founders you back will not succeed,” she says. “That’s not a crisis, that’s the job.

“It’s about spotting something in a founder that the rest of the market can’t yet see.”

Inside Phoenix Court, that instinct has its own shorthand.

“We talk about seeing around corners and about squinting to see the future,” she says. “You’re backing a human being for a ten, or fifteen-year journey.”

Alongside its UK focus, Phoenix Court has built a growing presence in Israel and now ranks among the country’s leading seed-stage investors.

“Israel has always been an extraordinary innovation economy,” Lenson says. “The depth of science, engineering and entrepreneurial talent there is exceptional.”

What has struck her most is how that ecosystem continued to function through war.

“It tells you something very profound about Israeli resilience,” she says.

Her own timing at Phoenix Court has given that connection unexpected personal resonance.

“I joined in early 2023 with no idea what was coming in October,” she reflects. “Sometimes I think a higher power put me in a Jewish-owned firm at exactly this moment.

“To be grounded in a firm whose values feel aligned, and to be proudly supporting Israeli founders through this period has mattered enormously.”

For Lenson, that alignment between professional life, identity and responsibility has shaped how she thinks about leadership.

She began her working life on a highly male-dominated trading floor. While the dial has shifted, the numbers remain stubbornly low.

According to the British Business Bank, only around 13 per cent of senior individuals on UK venture capital teams are women, and nearly half of firms have no women at all on their investment teams.

Over time, she has come to think of leadership life as a triangle.

“You’re always managing three things: your job, your family, and your community.”

She and her husband both hold senior executive roles while raising two children.

“The juggle is real,” she says.

As one of a small number of Jewish women operating at senior levels in venture capital, she believes that scarcity carries its own responsibility.

“There are not enough of us,” she says. “And that creates a positive demand from the community to step up and use those skills.”

In recent years, that has meant serving on the board of Hadley Wood Jewish Community synagogue and as a trustee of the University Jewish Chaplaincy, which has faced unprecedented pressures since October 7.

“When moments arrive that test your community, you realise you have to show up,” she says.

For Lenson, leadership, whether in business or in community, is more about responsibility than position.

And that sense of responsibility extends well beyond gender. For all her optimism, she is clear that Britain’s innovation story is still a work in progress.

“This government and the one before has taken meaningful steps,” she says, “but there is still more to do, to put the right capital in the right place and to make sure the value created here benefits people here.”

If Silicon Valley once represented the ultimate destination for ambitious founders, she believes that era is fading.

“We don’t need to chase anyone anymore,” Lenson says. “We’re building our own model.”

For an investor accustomed to making decisions that will only truly be judged a decade from now, the conclusion feels simple.

“The future is already being built,” she says. “We just need to believe in it.”