CompanyBeacon report · refresh 23 October 2026

Portfolio survival by incorporation cohort

How long tracked SEIS/EIS portfolio companies stay on the register, and how each fund compares once the age of its portfolio is accounted for.

Read this first. Survival is measured from incorporation, not from the date of investment — CompanyBeacon does not hold investment dates, so this is a company-age measure, not a holding-period return. Remaining on the register is not success: companies are also dissolved after an acquisition, a solvent wind-down or a group restructure. Portfolio membership comes from a curated snapshot dated 2026-03-31 and does not prove a fund currently holds a position.

Companies with a date3,145

Currently active2,356

Funds comparable57

Separated from norm1

The main finding. Raw active rates across the 57 comparable funds span 54.2% to 92.0% — a spread that invites a league table. Once each portfolio is measured against the survival rate of its own incorporation cohorts, 1 of 57 separate from the norm by more than ordinary variation. Most of the apparent difference between these funds is the age of their portfolios, not their selection.

Survival by incorporation year

Each row is every tracked company incorporated in that year, counted once. Cohorts of fewer than 15 companies are excluded because the rate moves too far on a single dissolution. The most recent cohorts have had little time to fail, which is exactly why the fund table below adjusts for it.

Incorporated	Companies	Still active	Active rate
1996	15	13	86.7%
1997	16	8	50.0%
1999	15	10	66.7%
2000	25	22	88.0%
2001	19	15	78.9%
2002	29	19	65.5%
2003	35	26	74.3%
2004	28	21	75.0%
2005	39	29	74.4%
2006	49	31	63.3%
2007	68	50	73.5%
2008	52	26	50.0%
2009	58	40	69.0%
2010	71	50	70.4%
2011	73	47	64.4%
2012	102	72	70.6%
2013	114	79	69.3%
2014	146	109	74.7%
2015	158	105	66.5%
2016	188	149	79.3%
2017	190	139	73.2%
2018	210	162	77.1%
2019	194	157	80.9%
2020	208	159	76.4%
2021	210	168	80.0%
2022	216	170	78.7%
2023	196	152	77.6%
2024	153	108	70.6%
2025	150	126	84.0%
2026	23	23	100.0%

Active rate by company age

Age reached	Companies	Still active	Active rate
3+ years since incorporation	2,819	2,099	74.5%
5+ years since incorporation	2,407	1,777	73.8%
10+ years since incorporation	1,395	992	71.1%

Fund comparison, adjusted for portfolio vintage

A fund's raw active rate largely reflects how recently it invested. The adjusted ratio divides the companies actually active by the number expected if each company had performed like the whole corpus of its own incorporation year. 1.00 means exactly as expected for that vintage. The bracketed range is a 95% interval; where it spans 1.00 the difference is not distinguishable from normal variation, which is the case for most funds here. Only funds with at least 20 dated companies are shown.

Fund	Companies dated	Active	Raw active rate	Expected active	Vintage-adjusted ratio	Reading
Foresight Enterprise VCT plc	50	46	92.0%	36.2	1.27 (0.90–1.64)	In line with vintage
Northern 2 VCT PLC	47	42	89.4%	34.7	1.21 (0.85–1.58)	In line with vintage
Foresight Technology VCT Plc	28	25	89.3%	21.0	1.19 (0.72–1.65)	In line with vintage
Oxford Science Enterprises	28	25	89.3%	21.1	1.19 (0.72–1.65)	In line with vintage
Amadeus Capital	27	24	88.9%	20.4	1.18 (0.71–1.65)	In line with vintage
Zinc VC	53	47	88.7%	40.1	1.17 (0.84–1.51)	In line with vintage
British Business Investments SEIS	27	23	85.2%	19.8	1.16 (0.69–1.64)	In line with vintage
Playfair Capital	49	41	83.7%	35.6	1.15 (0.80–1.51)	In line with vintage
Mercia EIS	69	59	84.3%	51.4	1.15 (0.85–1.44)	In line with vintage
Ascension Ventures	69	59	83.1%	52.6	1.12 (0.83–1.41)	In line with vintage
Parkwalk	81	67	82.7%	59.9	1.12 (0.85–1.39)	In line with vintage
Concept Ventures	23	20	87.0%	17.9	1.12 (0.63–1.61)	In line with vintage
MMC Ventures	65	54	83.1%	48.5	1.11 (0.82–1.41)	In line with vintage
Haatch	46	39	84.8%	35.3	1.10 (0.76–1.45)	In line with vintage
Bethnal Green Ventures	61	50	80.6%	45.3	1.10 (0.80–1.41)	In line with vintage
BGF	91	73	80.2%	67.3	1.09 (0.84–1.33)	In line with vintage
SyndicateRoom	46	37	80.4%	34.1	1.08 (0.74–1.43)	In line with vintage
Octopus Ventures EIS	56	46	80.7%	42.9	1.07 (0.76–1.38)	In line with vintage
Cambridge Enterprise	34	27	79.4%	25.3	1.07 (0.67–1.47)	In line with vintage
Oxford Capital	24	19	79.2%	18.1	1.05 (0.58–1.52)	In line with vintage
IW Capital	21	16	76.2%	15.4	1.04 (0.53–1.55)	In line with vintage
Symvan Capital	50	38	76.0%	36.7	1.03 (0.71–1.36)	In line with vintage
SuperSeed	27	20	71.4%	19.6	1.02 (0.57–1.46)	In line with vintage
SFC Capital	520	401	76.8%	394.3	1.02 (0.92–1.12)	In line with vintage
Wayra UK	20	15	71.4%	14.9	1.00 (0.50–1.51)	In line with vintage
Foresight Group EIS	43	32	74.4%	31.9	1.00 (0.66–1.35)	In line with vintage
Fuel Ventures	108	81	74.3%	82.1	0.99 (0.77–1.20)	In line with vintage
Downing Ventures	26	19	73.1%	19.4	0.98 (0.54–1.42)	In line with vintage
Foresight Ventures VCT Plc	65	46	70.8%	47.0	0.98 (0.70–1.26)	In line with vintage
Par Equity	50	36	72.0%	36.8	0.98 (0.66–1.30)	In line with vintage
Triple Point Ventures	22	16	72.7%	16.4	0.98 (0.50–1.46)	In line with vintage
Kindred Capital	50	37	74.0%	38.0	0.97 (0.66–1.29)	In line with vintage
Blackfinch Ventures	37	27	69.2%	27.8	0.97 (0.60–1.34)	In line with vintage
Deepbridge	72	52	72.2%	54.1	0.96 (0.70–1.22)	In line with vintage
Ada Ventures	33	24	72.7%	25.1	0.96 (0.57–1.34)	In line with vintage
Sustainable Ventures	56	40	70.2%	42.1	0.95 (0.66–1.25)	In line with vintage
AlbionVC	40	28	70.0%	29.5	0.95 (0.60–1.30)	In line with vintage
Seedcamp	86	62	72.1%	65.4	0.95 (0.71–1.18)	In line with vintage
Seedrs	101	72	71.3%	76.1	0.95 (0.73–1.16)	In line with vintage
Crowdcube	66	45	68.2%	47.7	0.94 (0.67–1.22)	In line with vintage
Founders Factory	50	36	70.6%	38.2	0.94 (0.63–1.25)	In line with vintage
Entrepreneurs First	57	40	70.2%	42.8	0.93 (0.64–1.22)	In line with vintage
IQ Capital	38	26	68.4%	28.1	0.93 (0.57–1.28)	In line with vintage
Notion Capital	78	53	66.3%	57.5	0.92 (0.67–1.17)	In line with vintage
Carbon13	53	38	71.7%	41.4	0.92 (0.63–1.21)	In line with vintage
Ignite Accelerator	24	16	66.7%	17.6	0.91 (0.46–1.36)	In line with vintage
Molten Ventures	23	15	65.2%	16.6	0.90 (0.45–1.36)	In line with vintage
Hambro Perks	43	29	67.4%	32.3	0.90 (0.57–1.23)	In line with vintage
Emerge Education	39	26	66.7%	29.0	0.90 (0.55–1.24)	In line with vintage
Jenson Funding Partners	40	27	67.5%	30.1	0.90 (0.56–1.23)	In line with vintage
Hoxton Ventures	67	45	67.2%	50.6	0.89 (0.63–1.15)	In line with vintage
Antler UK	58	38	65.5%	42.8	0.89 (0.60–1.17)	In line with vintage
Guinness EIS	25	16	64.0%	18.4	0.87 (0.44–1.29)	In line with vintage
Calculus Capital	29	18	62.1%	21.6	0.83 (0.45–1.22)	In line with vintage
Built Ventures	29	17	58.6%	21.9	0.78 (0.41–1.15)	In line with vintage
Techstars London	75	44	57.1%	57.7	0.76 (0.54–0.99)	Below vintage norm
Outward VC	24	13	54.2%	17.5	0.74 (0.34–1.15)	In line with vintage

Method and limitations

Status is the daily live Companies House check where available, falling back to the curated snapshot status.
Expected actives use indirect standardisation against the whole-corpus survival rate for each company's incorporation year.
The interval is a Poisson approximation on the observed active count, so small portfolios produce deliberately wide ranges.
Companies held by more than one fund count once in the baseline and once within each fund they appear in.
No investment amount, valuation, exit or return data is held, so this cannot describe financial performance.

How CompanyBeacon handles source dates · Fund portfolio comparison

A closer look at Portfolio survival by incorporation cohort

Reading the Companies column

In the 30 numeric rows displayed in this table, Companies ranges from 15 (1996, 1999) to 216 (2022). The difference is 201 in the column's stated units. This summary covers the displayed rows and retains the table's period and scope.

Reading the Companies column

In the 3 numeric rows displayed in this table, Companies ranges from 1,395 (10+ years since incorporation) to 2,819 (3+ years since incorporation). The difference is 1,424 in the column's stated units. This summary covers the displayed rows and retains the table's period and scope.