Leading by Example: The Future Planet Capital Way

Who are they?

The national seed investment team at Future Planet Capital, primarily responsible for the management of UKI2S, the £102m UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, which steps in at the earliest stages to transform breakthrough ideas into market reality. The team guides innovative businesses to success, backing ventures that tackle society’s most complex challenges while attracting private investment and creating vital UK jobs.

Context

With a collective portfolio value of more than £1 billion, in early 2024 this Future Planet Capital team was already operating at a high pace to deliver on a high-stakes mission.

With big ambitions for the coming years, they recognised that the next phase of growth demanded more from the expertise of brilliant individuals. Success meant aligning the team around key strategic objectives, maintaining a laser focus on priorities, and enabling each person to maximise their impact through their unique strengths.

Following a leadership readiness assessment in February 2024, and strengthened by two new team members, they embarked on a leadership journey with Horizon37 in June 2024.

Solution

Together with the Future Planet Capital team, we chose the programme objectives:

Clear direction
Effective and timely decision-making
Greater team cohesion
Proactive feedback and effective communication

Impact

Our journey began with Individual Discovery Calls, gaining deep insights into priority areas while preparing team members for maximum impact. Each participant completed our proprietary Leadership Launchpad assessment, revealing individual learning styles and personality types, while illuminating collective team dynamics and working preferences.

We analysed all the insight gathered, and presented our findings in the first workshop focussing on Team Identity, roles, and responsibilities.

“Wide-ranging powerful insight and practical session” – Andrew Muir, Investment Director

The first session proved powerful – the team aligned on strategic priorities and how to achieve them, deliberately shaped their collective identity, and defined the behaviours needed for success. Together, they had honest conversations about which approaches to embrace and which ones wouldn’t serve them going forward.

“It was a great start for our team to understand ourselves better and find ways to align. They’ve accurately identified the key areas for our team to work on and developed intentional activities to bring these out” – Phoebe Seltzer, Investment Associate

Workshop 1: Future Planet Capital team participating in a “Wanted behaviours” discussion

Two weeks later, allowing insights to settle, we held our second workshop focussing on direction clarity, team culture, and effective decision-making. The results were transformative – the team achieved full alignment on their mission and identified key performance enablers. A strong collective identity emerged as the team defined its core purpose, philosophy, offering, and attributes. The session concluded with practical outcomes: mapping critical decisions for the next quarter and establishing individual “quick wins”.

“If you don’t know your mission or haven’t defined your culture, this is how to do it. P.S. It’s important” – Alex Leigh, Investment Director

Building on strengthened transparency, and having resolved some key decisions, the team embarked on the Hey360 phase of the journey. Each team member received an anonymised feedback report that captured what others see as their strengths and what they count on them for, and provided ideas for professional growth. This brought another level of connection to the team while giving everyone a clear insight into their potential for maximum impact.

“A safe space in which to open up some difficult conversations, and some really useful tools and experiences” – Future Planet Capital team member

In our third and final workshop, we focussed on Psychological Safety & Proactive Feedback – essential for maintaining trust, honesty, and transparency across the team.
We assessed psychological safety in the team, explored how to make conflict safe, healthy, and useful, and defined their team guidelines.

The team then dove deep into the theory behind effective feedback mindsets, practised giving and receiving constructive feedback, and planned how to sustain this open exchange within the team.

Workshop 3: Future Planet Capital team practising feedback-giving and receiving mindsets

“A really challenging topic but so well handled. The session was really well structured to get us all to open up about how to handle conflict and give feedback! Thank you!” – Sakura Holloway, Investment Director

To amplify the impact further, each workshop welcomed selected members of other Future Planet Capital funds – ensuring the benefits rippled across the wider organisation.

Present moment

Post-transformation, the Future Planet Capital team reported significant gains in clarity, trust, transparency, and alignment. They now operate with a clear direction and a strong identity, with full understanding and buy-in on what’s needed for success in the months ahead. A culture of proactive, constructive feedback has taken root, building trust and enabling the team to stay agile and forward-thinking.

With integrity, ongoing support, and proactivity at their core, they are now clearly differentiated in the VC landscape, ready to stand out and provide outsized returns and an unrivalled experience for founders in whom they are investing.