Poland-based Inovo VC launches €100M third fund; to back 20 to 30 startups in the CEE region

Warsaw, Poland-based Inovo VC, a firm that backs early-stage and post-traction startups, announced on Wednesday the launch of its third fund with a target capitalisation of €100M to support CEE-based tech companies with global potential.

The VC reports that private investors have already committed to the fund, accounting for over 50 per cent of its total assets under management, with institutional investors expected to commit by the end of the year.

According to a statement by Inovo VC, Polish venture capital investments have witnessed a growth of 22.6X from 2018 to 2021, reaching a total value of €792M last year. And according to a report from PFR Ventures, in the first 6 months of 2022, the total value of VC investments in Poland has already reached €448M, with 93 deals involving 111 funds.

Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

With this third fund, Inovo VC aims to locate and support “outstanding” Central and Eastern European founders, as the firm expands into global markets. Inovo VC plans to back between 20 to 30 startups with a single investment ticket ranging from €500K to €4M, from pre-Seed to Series B rounds.

The firm intends to allocate 60 per cent of its funds to Polish tech startups and the other 40 per cent to businesses from other CEE nations.

Michał Rokosz, Partner at Inovo VC, says, “We are looking for companies conquering global markets that can grow to $100M in revenue in just a few years. We have managed to become a fund of choice for Polish founders and we want to replicate that in the other CEE countries, as we already see we can be as helpful to those founders as we are to the ones from Poland.”

Inovo VC asserts to be the first Polish venture capital company to launch its third fund, following the success of the prior two vehicles. 

The first fund, now in its exit phase, has already seen a 3X return of allocated capital. The second is still active, but only takes part in the follow-on funding rounds of its existing investments. Innovo VC’s first two funds have backed over €45M in more than 30 companies.

Partner Maciej Małysz says, “We see an increasing interest of international investors in companies founded in the CEE countries. Two third of our portfolio companies managed to raise follow-on rounds with top-tier international VCs. We want to strengthen the links between the CEE region and the global VC ecosystem even more. So far, we have co-invested with over 70 international funds and we are convinced this number will grow at a fast pace.”

Inovo VC has already backed over 30 startups

Inovo VC is led by the partners Tomasz Swieboda, Michał Rokosz and Maciej Małysz, and has already backed over 30 companies, out of which 6 have a valuation of over €100M. The firm has invested in rounds led by notable funds, like a16z, Google’s Gradient Ventures, Insight Partners, Point Nine, and Tiger Global Management.

The current portfolio of Inovo VC includes AllSet – a pick-up or dine-in food marketplace operating in the US market; Archbee – a developers’ collaboration tool; Booksy – a SaaS-enabled marketplace for beauty services; Infermedica – an AI-powered tech for preliminary medical diagnosis and triage; Packhelp – a custom-made packaging producer; Preply – a language learning marketplace, connecting tutors with students; Spacelift – a Terraform-compatible CI/CD platform for infra-as-code; Tidio – a live chat, chatbot and mailing solutions for micro-businesses; Zowie – a self-learning AI chatbot automating customer service for enterprise clients; and SunRoof – a startup developing fully solar 2-in-1 roofs and facades as well as solutions to support smart energy management.

Partner Tomasz Swieboda adds, “Over the last 7 years we’ve seen the region growing at an exceptional pace, which results in the rise of the number of funding rounds and in an even faster rise of startup valuations at every stage of their development. We are sure that the CEE region will raise at least 10 new unicorns in the upcoming 5 years. With our new fund, we want to help make that happen.”