Yvonne Bajela Closes Oversubscribed Fund to Back Early-Stage UK and European Founders

Yvonne Bajela spent more than a decade backing now-unicorn companies like Wise and Marshmellow, but her hardest test came when she tried to raise money for herself. On Tuesday, she announced that her own new firm, Evertrue, officially closed an oversubscribed seventeen million dollar Fund I. The fund surpassed its initial target of roughly thirteen million dollars, though Bajela deliberately turned away additional investors to keep the vehicle lean.

She wanted enough capital to build meaningful positions in high-conviction startups without facing pressure to deploy cash just because it was available. That discipline stands out in a market where raising capital as a first-time fund manager remains a grueling grind, despite regional data showing emerging managers in the UK pulling in billions this year.

Bajela secured five institutional backers, including the British Business Bank and Basecamp, leaning on international relationships built across a career that includes stints at Goldman Sachs and Impact X Capital Partners. Her strategy centers on early-stage investments across the UK and Europe, writing checks averaging three hundred fifty thousand pounds with plans to back at least twenty companies over three years.

Our read is that Bajela is weaponizing the artificial intelligence boom's paradox against itself.

While AI has drastically lowered the cost of building software and democratized creation, she argues that building something truly enduring remains profoundly rare.

That scarcity of execution is where an experienced investor plans to extract value.

Evertrue has already backed seven companies, with more than half of that early portfolio already operating in the United States.

Whether a tight, disciplined fund size can outmaneuver massive macro pools in an AI-obsessed market will define her next decade.

Bajela chose independence to chase founders with unusual execution abilities and hard-won perspectives, proving that stepping out from behind legacy funds is only the first hurdle.

The real work is finding the rare builders who can scale past the initial hype.