Fred Soneya
Founder of Haatch
Tivat
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder & General Partner
2013 - Current
I Co-Founded Haatch in 2013 following the successful exit of Kiddicare to Morrisons, with a mission to bring entrepreneur and operator-led insight to early-stage investing. By 2018, after the sale of Elevaate (where I was a founding board member), we launched our first EIS Fund, enabling investors to join us in backing the next generation of digital entrepreneurs at the seed stage. In 2021, we expanded with our first SEIS Fund, and in 2022, we secured a £10m investment from the British Business Bank to deepen our support for early-stage founders. Fast forward to today, Haatch is a multi-award-winning venture capital firm managing several funds across SEIS, EIS, and institutional capital. We specialise in B2B SaaS at pre-seed and seed, with a clear goal: helping founders accelerate from day one to £1m ARR, then scale beyond £10m. In 2023, we became the first SEIS fund to launch on Crowdcube, furthering our mission to democratise access to venture capital. In 2024, we announced an £8m regional fund in partnership with EMCCA. In 2025, we secured a second £10m commitment from BBB, followed by a £7m commitment, bringing their total to £27m. As of early 2025, Haatch has invested in 350+ rounds across 120+ companies, created nearly 3,000 jobs, and helped build a portfolio now valued at over £1bn.
Founding Team & Board Director - Acquired
2014 - 2018
A member of the founding team of Elevaate and board director from inception to eventual acquisition by Quotient Technology Inc (NYSE:QUOT) I supported the business in a strategic role focused on fundraising, legal, diligence, product and M&A. Elevaate delivered over 250x return to early investors on exit in 2018.
Ecommerce Lead, Morrisons.com
2011 - 2013
Post Kiddicare acquisition I moved into a multi-channel, multi-brand role and was responsible for major innovation for both the Morrisons and Kiddicare brands. Highlights include the design, build and implementation of Browse & Order points into the baby aisle of Morrisons stores enabling 10m weekly customers to order an extended range at their local Morrisons store. The rollout of 10 large format baby stores in the former Best Buy retail units which included technology experiences such as electronic shelf edge labels on 4,500 SKUs per store and mobile wi-fi triangulation. I also led the SaaS integration for our first extended site, Morrisons Cellar, transforming all Kiddicare technology providers into a multi-site SaaS implementation.
Ecommerce and ECRM Lead - Acquired
2009 - 2011
I ran eCommerce technology for the UK's fastest-growing and largest independent baby store which was acquired by Morrsions in 2011. During my time at Kiddicare, I delivered groundbreaking technology projects which resulted in over 45 industry awards and first-of-its-kind customer experiences that today consumers take for granted. Projects I led included a 9-month IBM Commerce Version 7 extended site upgrade enabling the Kiddicare platform to support multi-site, multi-country & and multi-vertical, the design, build, integration and deployment of Kiddicare Kiosks, the implementation and launch of a state-of-the-art ECRM platform enabling the business to deliver the right message at the right time, the first iOS mobile commerce app which was installed on over 100,000 devices and landed a number of other technologies covering Personalisation, Loyalty, In Store & Mobile.