Silicon Canals
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • News
    • Startups
    • Scaleups
    • AI and chatbots
    • FinTech
    • Business Wire
    • Travel & Mobility
    • Coin Canals
    • Software & SaaS
    • Event News
    • Health & Medtech
    • (Crowd)funding
    • Blockchain
    • Internet of things
    • Hardware
    • Accelerators
    • E-commerce
    • Cybersecurity
    • Gaming & Virtual Reality
    • Drones
  • Exclusive content
    • Partner content
    • Amsterdam
    • Community partners
    • Remote: Tech Talent Report
    • Guest Contributions
  • Find a job
  • Tech Events
    • Technology Events
    • Event News
    • Submit event
  • Contact
    • Contact us
    • Sign up for our newsletter!
    • Contribute your content
    • Team
    • About us
  • Partner with us
  • Home
  • News
    • News
    • Startups
    • Scaleups
    • AI and chatbots
    • FinTech
    • Business Wire
    • Travel & Mobility
    • Coin Canals
    • Software & SaaS
    • Event News
    • Health & Medtech
    • (Crowd)funding
    • Blockchain
    • Internet of things
    • Hardware
    • Accelerators
    • E-commerce
    • Cybersecurity
    • Gaming & Virtual Reality
    • Drones
  • Exclusive content
    • Partner content
    • Amsterdam
    • Community partners
    • Remote: Tech Talent Report
    • Guest Contributions
  • Find a job
  • Tech Events
    • Technology Events
    • Event News
    • Submit event
  • Contact
    • Contact us
    • Sign up for our newsletter!
    • Contribute your content
    • Team
    • About us
  • Partner with us
No Result
View All Result
Silicon Canals
No Result
View All Result

London-based Blossom Capital raises $85M, claims to be fastest-ever fundraising from a female VC in Europe

Editorial team by Editorial team
February 26, 2019
in Startups, (Crowd)funding, News
LinkedInTwitterWhatsAppFacebook
Read this article in:

Blossom Capital, co-founded by ex-Index Ventures and LocalGlobe investor Ophelia Brown – one of Europe’s best-known female VCs — announces today that it has raised $85 million to unite the best of West Coast investing practice and operating know-how with the unrivalled opportunity in European tech startups.

Fastest-ever first time fundraising from a female VC in Europe

The female-led firm Blossom’s LPs include leading institutional investors, as well as high-profile tech entrepreneurs such as Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev and Mikkel Svane, founder of Zendesk. The firm claims to be the first ever women-led VC firm to carry out the fastest fundraising in Europe.

London headquartered VC firm Blossom’s partners are a mix of investors and operators who have between them helped build some of the biggest names in technology including Facebook, Klarna and Deliveroo.

“Traditionally European Venture has been dominated by non-technical investors,” says Blossom partner Imran Ghory. “We’ve found having the majority of the investment team with engineering, product and data backgrounds at Blossom makes a huge difference to founders who know we speak their language.”

Facebook, Klarna and Deliveroo

The firm has two partners with engineering backgrounds — Imran Ghory, who previously led data-driven deal sourcing at Index and was head of data insights at MarketInvoice, and Mike Hudack, until recently CTO at Deliveroo, and previously director of product at Facebook working in both Menlo Park and London. Meanwhile, partner Louise Samet, the latest addition to the team and an active angel investor, joined Blossom after six years at Klarna, where she was responsible for their digital products and led their technical sales team. Advisors to the firm include a network of 30 founders and executives from some of the world’s leading technology brands.

“Blossom’s new fund provides early-stage founders in Europe with the opportunity to partner with a local investor that can guide them through the operational support needed to turn their visions into reality,” says Sequoia Partner Alfred Lin. “The Blossom team is filling a longstanding gap in the European market and has the expertise to help the boldest outlier companies scale internationally. With our own recent investments in European-based companies such as Tourlane and Graphcore, we’re increasingly excited by the ambition and talent in Europe. We look forward to potentially co-investing with Blossom in the future, as we continue to support founders from idea to IPO and beyond.”

To lead Series A rounds across Europe

Further, the firm will be investing in European Series A stage consumer and enterprise startups across most sectors. Investments will typically be in the $5 million to $10 million range. To date Blossom has backed Duffel, Fat Llama, Frontify and Sqreen, co-investing with tier one Silicon Valley and European funds including Y Combinator, Greylock and Index.

Not only ‘female-focused’

While Blossom is not a ‘female-focused fund’, the team want to ensure that the firm is approachable to anyone regardless of background or gender. Blossom will be holding dedicated office hours for female founders as it seeks to level the playing field so that women receive equality of airtime. Ophelia Brown has already established the networking and mentoring group Ambitious Ladies in Tech (ALT) in a concerted effort to help redress gender imbalance across the industry.

“We founded Blossom to offer Europe’s leading entrepreneurs a new top-tier VC fund that understands exactly what it takes to scale an early stage company into a global category leader,” says Ophelia Brown. “The European ecosystem has changed dramatically over the last decade; we believe that mission-driven entrepreneurs today want investors who match their ambitions and can help them reach goals far beyond what they thought possible. Too often founders have felt they need to go to the West Coast to raise their Series A — with our unique Silicon Valley ties and deep networks, we’ve set up Blossom to help change that.”

Mike Hudack adds, “Having moved to London from Silicon Valley, I’m determined to help build an ecosystem here that I am proud to work in. We see huge similarities between the populations, internet usage and mobile penetration in the US and Europe, yet the proportion of GDP that is invested by VCs on this side of the Atlantic is much lower than it is in the US. Meanwhile, US funds are looking to Europe for diversification, but they largely lack the European knowledge, networks and experience they need to thrive here. Our mission at Blossom is to blend the best of both worlds and cultures, and leverage them effectively to help European companies become global players.”

Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.

6 things to know before setting up your deep tech scaleup in Belgium today!

Tags: londonVC
ShareTweetSendShare

Partner content | Partner with us

Bunq’s Ali Niknam receives ‘Businessman of the Year’ award: Know more

Belgium’s Fortino Capital closes second PE fund at €377M; backs Amsterdam-based SpeakUp

Amsterdam-based Return unveils second €100M investment to drive energy transition in Europe

Amsterdam’s Rockstart launches its second AgriFood fund; plans to invest in 50 startups in five years

Amsterdam’s Farmless raises €4.8M to free protein production from animals and agricultural land

Silicon Canals | Find a job

Top news | from Amsterdam

Check out the Amsterdam startups that raised funding in November; 5 of them are hiring

Amsterdam-based startups that are fundraising right now

Dutch-Swiss startup Cradle raises €21.9M for pioneering Generative AI in protein design

Germany’s Sastrify expands market reach; acquires Amsterdam-based Pengu and raises fresh funds

Amsterdam’s LAYCO raises €300K to make healthcare more sustainable and accessible

  • About Silicon Canals
  • Partner with Silicon Canals
  • Impressum
  • Contact us
  • Sign up for our newsletter!
  • Find a job
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy (UK)
  • Cookie Policy (EU)
  • Terms & Conditions Silicon Canals

Silicon Canals © 2014-2023 | Design: Bright Idiots. Images: Depositphotos

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • News
    • Startups
    • Scaleups
    • AI and chatbots
    • FinTech
    • Business Wire
    • Travel & Mobility
    • Coin Canals
    • Software & SaaS
    • Event News
    • Health & Medtech
    • (Crowd)funding
    • Blockchain
    • Internet of things
    • Hardware
    • Accelerators
    • E-commerce
    • Cybersecurity
    • Gaming & Virtual Reality
    • Drones
  • Exclusive content
    • Partner content
    • Amsterdam
    • Community partners
    • Remote: Tech Talent Report
    • Guest Contributions
  • Find a job
  • Tech Events
    • Technology Events
    • Event News
    • Submit event
  • Contact
    • Contact us
    • Sign up for our newsletter!
    • Contribute your content
    • Team
    • About us
  • Partner with us

Silicon Canals © 2014-2023 | Design: Bright Idiots. Images: Depositphotos

X
X