# John Taysom

> John Taysom is a seed investor at blinkbox music (London) backing Software and Machine Learning. See 19 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [blinkbox music](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/blinkbox-music)
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Total investments: 19
- Last investment: Mar 2022
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntaysom/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.taysom

John Taysom is a seed investor at blinkbox music in London focused on Software and Machine Learning. John Taysom started the Reuters Venture Capital Fund in Palo Alto in 1995 making 82 investments in internet and web infrastructure and services including Verisign, UltraDNS, Digimarc, ZeroKnowledge and Intertrust. He was a member of the Board of Digimarc pre and post its Nasdaq IPO, a Board member at Intertrust and a Board member at TIBCO throughits Nasdaq IPO. To date, seventeen of his investments have achieved an IPO.John acquired the Fund in an MBO in 2002. Now London-based with a seed portfolio of thirty US and UK start-ups; one has achieved an IPO and several have been acquired by Experian, Linkedin, Tesco, BMC and others.In 2011 and 2012 John took a Fellowship at Harvard to work on privacy issues and holds EU and US patents on a method of improving privacy online. For 2015 John is a Policy Fellow at the University of Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy and a Visiting Professor, Department of Computer Science, at UCL. He is a member of the Board of the Web Science Trust; chairs Performance Horizon, a fast growing UK startup; is a Governor at Hurstpierpoint College; and runs a small farm in Devon.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $500k–$4.3M |
| Angel | $191k–$1.2M |
| Pre-Seed | $196k–$3M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 6 | 32% |
| Machine Learning | 4 | 21% |
| Information Technology | 4 | 21% |
| Mobile | 3 | 16% |
| Analytics | 3 | 16% |

52 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 10 | 53% |
| Angel | 4 | 21% |
| Pre-Seed | 2 | 11% |
| Series A | 1 | 5% |
| Series B | 1 | 5% |

6 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United Kingdom | 11 | 58% |
| United States | 4 | 21% |
| Switzerland | 1 | 5% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Tenyks | Tenyks is a University of Cambridge spin-out inventing the way humanity interacts with AI to protect the world from the terminator. Our MLOps monitoring and validation platform helps ML Engineers working with computer vision data to build more reliable software faster. Specifically, our platform helps ML Engineers understand what's wrong withtheir algorithms and fix issues. Our technology is based on 2 PhD and 1 Master theses in Explainable AI from the University of Cambridge. | $3.4M | Seed | Mar 06, 2022 |  |
| Corintis | Corintis develops cooling technologies for high performance semiconductors. | $4.3M | Seed | Jan 21, 2022 |  |
| Worldr | Worldr is a private, secure and compliant team communication app. While the user experience was designed to be extremely simple and effective, the back-end was architected to be deployable as if it were an in-house application.Worldr is a solution for larger companies, and especially regulated ones, who may not able to use third-partycollaboration applications because of 1) the threat to their data security and 2) lack of Compliance transparency.With 150 companies already signed up for our Beta, ranging from small startups to teams within major banks, Worldr is fully publicly launching in 2021.Please find the landing page at worldr.com | $2.8M | Seed | Jul 20, 2021 |  |
| Valarian Technologies | We’re on a mission to help enterprises ensure their communication tools are secure, compliant and efficient.Valarian’s software allows multinational organisations to make the communication tools they already use compliant with data sovereignty, protection and privacy laws across jurisdictions worldwide. Valarian’s resilient, scalable platform canbe deployed into any environment (on-prem, cloud, or hybrid) and easily integrates with existing business collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and WhatsApp, harmonising compliance, security and efficiency. | $3M | Pre-Seed | Jul 20, 2021 |  |
| LGN | LGN is a developer of artificial perception technology used to balance and automatically connect the AI system to the sensor array. Its technology reduces capture and processing costs by automatically filtering data to only record and process edge cases and by transferring and storing data in a highly compressed form that enable industries with areduced chip cost and power consumption whilst allowing high-level autonomy on lower-cost commodity sensors. | $1.9M | Seed | Mar 23, 2021 |  |
| Pangaea Data | Pangaea Data provides a machine learning-based software solution making scientific and clinical data more meaningful. |  |  | Jan 28, 2021 |  |
| Pangaea Data | Pangaea Data provides a machine learning-based software solution making scientific and clinical data more meaningful. |  | Seed | Jan 28, 2021 |  |
| Encore Musicians | Encore is the UK's fastest-growing marketplace for hiring outstanding musicians. Trusted by thousands of customers ever year, who have written reviews for our musicians with an average score of 4.96 out of 5. | $713K | Seed | Oct 31, 2016 |  |
| Encore Musicians | Encore is the UK's fastest-growing marketplace for hiring outstanding musicians. Trusted by thousands of customers ever year, who have written reviews for our musicians with an average score of 4.96 out of 5. | $191K | Angel | Aug 01, 2015 |  |
| Encore Musicians | Encore is the UK's fastest-growing marketplace for hiring outstanding musicians. Trusted by thousands of customers ever year, who have written reviews for our musicians with an average score of 4.96 out of 5. | $196K | Pre-Seed | Aug 01, 2015 |  |

10 of 19 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [IQ Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/iq-capital-partners) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Ascension](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ascension-ventures-limited) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [CyLon Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cylon) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Salica](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/hambroperksltd) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Koa Labs](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/koa-labs) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Playfair Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/playfair-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

## About blinkbox music

VC Fund · Oxford, United Kingdom

blinkbox music is an ad-supported music streaming service and an integrated MP3 store providing an easy way to listen to music. Its listeners can choose from thousands of stations based around themes such as Top 40 Songs, Ultimate 80s Pop, Dinner Party, or create their own by starting with a song, artist, or genre.Its listeners have theability to listen to blinkbox music for free on the web, as well as through its mobile and tablet apps on both Android and iOS. Its listeners can even save their favorite stations to their mobile or tablet to listen when they don't have an internet connection.blinkbox music was launched in 2007 and is based in Oxford.

2 contacts available at blinkbox music.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| John Taysom | Chairman | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/john-taysom |
| Steve Purdham | CEO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/steve-purdham |

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## FAQ

### What does John Taysom invest in?

John Taysom invests primarily in Software, Machine Learning and Information Technology startups, most often at Seed and Angel stage. Most of the 19 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United Kingdom. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is John Taysom's check size?

John Taysom typically joins rounds of $500k–$4.3M at Seed, $191k–$1.2M at Angel and $196k–$3M at Pre-Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds John Taysom participates in.

### When did John Taysom last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for John Taysom closed in Mar 2022. Shizune tracks 19 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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