Sarah Drinkwater

Experienced investor, advisor, and leader in technology and entrepreneurship

Sarah Drinkwater, Solo GP at Common Magic

Sarah Drinkwater is the solo general partner at Common Magic, a pre-seed and seed stage venture capital fund investing in products with community at their core.1 2 Some key facts about Sarah and Common Magic:

Common Magic is targeting a £10m fund to back about 30 European and US startups, writing cheques of £100k-150k on average.2
Sarah has a preference for "first rounds" when other institutional investors haven't backed a company yet. The fund has a light reserve strategy, meaning it won't set aside much money for follow-on investments.2
Sarah has over 15 years of experience building communities in tech. She has advised protocols like Filecoin and Gitcoin on ecosystem building, grown Google's startup space Campus, and built an angel investing portfolio of 36 startups.4
Common Magic's LPs include Atomico, Phoenix Court Group's fund-of-funds, Basecamp, Taavet+Sten, Hugging Face CTO Julien Chaumond, Stripe CTO David Singleton and WeTransfer cofounder Nalden.2
Sarah believes the community component can help early-stage companies reach product-market fit faster and get better product feedback. She sees community as a mechanism to build trust and loyalty with customers.2 4

Prior to launching Common Magic, Sarah was an angel investor and advisor to various startups and organizations.3 She has a diverse background spanning journalism, community management, and responsible tech investing at Omidyar Network.3

Highlights

Dec 16 · twitter

My kingdom for someone to hoist a set of these over the ocean to my house.

Essentially perfect colours

Oct 7 · twitter

This is cool. Democracy relies on citizen knowledge & many aspects of modern government obfuscate that.

Jun 4 · eu.vc

Newcomer of the Year Finalist: Sarah Drinkwater, solo GP at ...

Jun 4 · open.spotify.com

Sarah Drinkwater, solo GP at Common Magic on community as ...

Oct 20 · eu.vc

EUVC #234 Sarah Drinkwater, Common Magic

Jun 4 · sifted.eu

Solo GP Sarah Drinkwater raises fund to back 'community' startups ...

Experience

Solo GP at Common Magic

Head of Campus London, Google (2014 - 2018) Global Lead, Google Local Guides, Google (2011 - 2014) Community Lead, Qype [acquired by Yelp] (2010 - 2011), Advisor at Omidyar Network, Protocol Labs, The Design Museum, Ceramic Network, Non Executive Director at Mind Foundry, Director at Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab

Education

Stanford University, Tech, Ethics and Public Policy, 2020 Curtis Brown Creative, 2011 UCL, MA Distinction, Renaissance to Enlightenment, 2002-2003 University of Reading, Bachelor of Arts - BA, English Literature, First