London-based Balderton Capital, a venture capital firm that claims to have backed Europe’s ambitious early-stage entrepreneurs for more than two decades, has today launched a $680M (approx €558.86M) “early growth” fund to invest in European future tech giants.
This fund follows Balderton’s launch of Europe’s first dedicated secondary fund, Liquidity I in 2018, and the firm’s seventh Series A fund in 2019. It comes after a record year for both Balderton and its portfolio.
How will the funds be utilised?
The firm believes that the growth opportunities in the tech ecosystem in Europe are really maturing despite the pandemic. Besides, the firm also witnessed that the number of deals between $5M and $50M in Europe has been growing steadily year-on-year, in comparison to the US. A decade ago, the US was doing five times the number of venture deals compared to Europe, and that ratio has now more than halved.
Managing Partner Bernard Liautaud has been with Balderton since 2008, and claims to have seen the increasing number of ambitious European founders. He says, “With this Growth Fund, we can now support them as they scale to become global industry leaders. We predict a $50B growth opportunity in Europe in the next three years alone, and we want to be the first choice for those ambitious founders.”
With this new fund, Balderton is now actively deploying over $1B in Europe’s break out companies. The Fund will particularly target exceptional companies at the early-growth stage and is sector-agnostic. It will invest between $25M and $50M per company through both primary and secondary investments.
Since the firm’s inception in 2000, it has raised $4B to invest in European startups and backed more than 230 companies.
To invest in 15 exceptional companies
According to Balderton, after investing two decades as one of the leading European Series A venture firms, the firm is now building on the success of its Liquidity Fund and is now expanding to primary growth investing.
Rana Yared, who joined as General Partner at Balderton in 2020, says, “Our approach for this fund will be ‘one of few’. This means personalised attention from the entire partnership, plus access to Balderton’s leading platform team. We’re looking for fifteen or so really exceptional companies that have the potential to be sector leaders and disrupt global industries.”
Some of Balderton’s Seed or Series A investment leaders include Aircall, ComplyAdvantage, Contentful, Depop, GoCardless, Infarm, Labster, Revolut, THG, Vestiaire Collective and Zego. The firm’s Liquidity I portfolio also includes some of Europe’s leading growth companies, such as Darktrace, Flywire, Graphcore and Truecaller.
Who will lead the fund?
The Balderton Growth I team will be led by experienced investor operators, including Balderton’s Managing Partner Bernard Liautaud, General Partner David Thévenon (previously at Google and Softbank); and General Partner Rana Yared (previously at Goldman Sachs).
This team has been chosen based on the experience they bring by being on the board of global giants across Europe, Asia and the US, including Grab, SoFi, Lemonade, Talend, THG, Tradeweb, and Unqork.
However, the Growth team will also be supported by the firm’s equal partnership as Balderton’s partners are equally vested in every portfolio company’s success, and all founders benefit from access to the full team’s experience and support.
Besides, the portfolio founders will also have access to Balderton’s leadership team of 50 investors, including functional specialists in marketing, talent, legal, and finance, and 23 investors across key European hubs including London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm.
Speaking on the development, David Thévenon, General Partner at Balderton, says, “Our partners are a mixture of financiers, tech operators and founders themselves, and together we have a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges of scaling globally from the continent. This fund will allow us to expand our support, not only to our existing portfolio but also to Europe’s most promising future global leaders.”
Recent developments
Since January 2020, Balderton has invested in 22 new companies and has made over 45 follow-on investments. Additionally, there have also been 3 IPOs, including THG in 2020, (the second most valuable technology IPO in Europe), Darktrace in 2021, and Flywire in 2021.
The firm has also seen 11 portfolio exits since January 2020, including Digital Surgery’s acquisition by Medtronic, Peakon’s acquisition by Workday, and Depop’s acquisition by Etsy.
Not only that, companies in the Balderton portfolio have themselves raised more than $5B since January 2020 to fuel growth, of which close to $1.7B has been since the beginning of 2021. Balderton’s portfolio now employs over 25,000 staff in over 50 countries globally.
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