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Euan Blair co-founded WhiteHat two years ago with Sophie Adelman
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Aliya Ram and Henry Mance in London SEPTEMBER 11 2018
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A tech start-up co-founded by the 34-year-old son of former UK prime minister Tony Blair has raised $4m in a seed funding round led by Silicon Valley investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.
WhiteHat co-founders Euan Blair and Sophie Adelman, both former bankers, started the company two years ago to train and connect apprentices with employers including Google, Facebook, WeWork, Salesforce, Warner Bros and Burberry.
It has remained relatively small, relying on a grant of about £300,000 from Ufi, a charitable trust that supports vocational training, and a £567,211 “capital contribution,” which the company said came from “friends and family” including the Blairs.
The new funding from Lightspeed, which is best-known as the first outside investor in messaging app Snapchat, will be used to hire coders and data scientists to develop WhiteHat’s machine-learning technology, which matches apprentices to jobs.
The investment should boost the credentials of the start-up, which has faced scrutiny because of Euan’s high-profile parents, Tony and Cherie Blair. Euan Blair has also invested in property with his mother through a company called Oldbury Residential.
Ms Adelman said WhiteHat met its new investors through her and Euan’s personal contacts and had been “put through the wringer” by Lightspeed to demonstrate its financial viability. She added that the group was due to move out of its current offices in a building owned by the Blairs to a WeWork co-working space in London.
Tony Blair had “no involvement whatsoever in the fundraising”, his spokeswoman said.
Village Global, a fund with capital from major technology entrepreneurs including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, also participated in the funding round.
“They brought one idea together in a way that really changes the game,” said Nakul Mandan, partner at Lightspeed. “Their model really relies on them delivering value to the companies they are giving apprentices to.”
WhiteHat has put 500 apprentices through its training process so far, 65 per cent from minority ethnic backgrounds, 50 per cent who have claimed free school meals and 7 per cent who are refugees or asylum seekers. The start-up aims to have 10,000 apprentices on the programme by the end of 2023.
Euan Blair, an ancient history graduate, said going to university had not prepared him for his first job as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley: “I’m not convinced that those degrees taught us anything about those industries,” he said.
In 2015, the UK conservative government announced plans for an apprenticeship levy that gives a tax break to employers with apprentices. Tony Blair was a fierce advocate for university education while in office from 1997 to 2007.
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