Venture Capitalists are an important part of startup ecosystems. Raising funds and garnering support from VC’s can be a make or break point for many early-stage startups. But finding the right VCs to go into business with can be a tricky process.
In this regard, Draper Esprit has been one of the most active venture capital firms in Europe, developing and investing in disruptive, high-growth technology companies.
Recently, the Dublin and London-listed venture capital firm, Draper Esprit announced £110M (approx €121M) through an oversubscribed placing of 19.8 million shares at 555 pence each. “We can now accelerate our plans to help the best entrepreneurs in Europe invent that future.” CEO, Martin Davis
The placing price represents a premium of 0.5% to the company’s 552p per ordinary share closing price on Thursday. The stock on Friday was up 8.3% at 598.02p each.
According to the VC firm, the allotment of the Placing Shares is conditional, inter alia, upon the company obtaining approval of the shareholders at a general meeting of the company, that has been scheduled for 10.00 a.m. on 20 October 2020. This meeting is being conducted to grant the directors the authority to allot the Placing Shares and to disapply statutory pre-emption rights which would otherwise apply to such allotment.
To date, the VC has backed some of the ambitious companies like Revolut, Trustpilot, Graze, Ledger, Transferwise, and Graphcore. It also supported numerous Irish firms like CurrencyFair and Roomex. A few days back, Draper Esprit participated in an $87 million (approx €74.1M) Series C fundraising round in ICEYE, a World-leading Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) data provider.
Main image credits: Draper Esprit