Jude Popham

Jude Popham

Computational Biologist, ex-Nucleome Therapeutics

Venture Capital

Alongside my research I work across early-stage venture capital: running the venture community at Oxford, investing into deep-tech and AI-native companies, and building quantitative tools for sourcing and diligence.

Overview

President, Oxford Venture Capital Network

I am President of the Oxford Venture Capital Network (OxVCN), Oxford's venture capital society. The Network connects students with founders and investors through speaker events, educational VC workshops and its flagship Venture Capital Programme, which trains aspiring analysts.

I lead the events programme, using my own and the society's network to bring investors and operators to Oxford, and running workshops and hackathons in partnership with other university societies.

Investor, Proximo Ventures

I am an investor at Proximo Ventures, an early-stage fund backing deep-tech founders out of the top UK universities (Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial) across climate tech, life sciences and Industry 4.0. The model puts investors on the ground at the universities they cover: sourcing companies, running due diligence and working directly with founders.

I am also an angel investor in Assuric, one of our portfolio companies.

Venture Scout, Ellipsis Ventures

I scout for Ellipsis, a Zurich-based fund writing first cheques into AI-native companies at pre-seed and seed. Ellipsis is led by Yariv Adan, co-founder of Google Assistant and Google Lens across seventeen years at Google, alongside founding partners including Matthias Dantone, and runs its sourcing, diligence and operations on an autonomous agentic system.

The mandate is companies where AI is the product rather than a feature on top of one, with defensibility coming from proprietary data and deep domain expertise.

Research Intern, Vela Partners

I was a research intern at Vela Partners, a San Francisco fund that describes itself as the first product-led, AI-powered venture firm, and which publishes much of its AI-for-VC research with the University of Oxford.

My work there applied quant-finance backtesting discipline (point-in-time data, leakage controls, survivorship-free universes, pre-registration) to venture signals: predicting which research ideas compound rather than fade, and which founder profiles produce outliers. Vela now runs an extended version of the first of these in house as a monthly research-trends product.

Events

Speaker events, workshops and hackathons run with the Oxford Venture Capital Network. The society's full listing, including upcoming events, is at oxfordvcnetwork.com/events.

How are VC Decisions Made?

Speaker event · Oxford Venture Capital Network · 2026

What actually happens behind closed doors when a VC decides to back a startup or pass on it.

VC Reverse Pitch

Speaker event · Oxford Venture Capital Network · 2026

Turning the pitch around: leading VC firms presented their investment thesis, sector focus and approach to partnering with early-stage founders, to a curated room of Oxford entrepreneurs.

Co-Founder Matching

Networking · Oxford Tech Week · 2026

Connecting potential co-founders at Oxford Tech Week, on the basis that choosing one is among the most consequential decisions a founder makes.

Lumina House Hackathon

Hackathon · Oxford · 2026

An all-female gamified hackathon over two days in Oxford, co-hosted with the Oxford Founders Society, the OX1 Incubator and others.

Pint & Pitch with Oxford Seed Fund Office Hours

Networking · The Lighthouse Pub, Oxford · 2026

An informal evening combining pitch conversations with Oxford Seed Fund office hours, deliberately held in a pub rather than a lecture theatre.

Female Founders & Funders

Speaker panel · Oxford Venture Capital Network · 2026

A panel on the funding disparities female founders face, followed by speed networking between founders and investors.

AI Gold Rush and Investments

Speaker event · Keble College, Oxford · 2026

Is the current wave of AI investment genuine innovation, or the next tech bubble? A discussion at Keble College.

Quantitative VC Research

Quantitative research on venture signals, built during and after my research internship at Vela Partners. Every project below applies the same discipline: point-in-time data, a leakage test that fails the build, survivorship-free universes, and hypotheses fixed before scoring.