MiddleGame Ventures, a fintech focused investment firm, announced a $165m fund targeting post-seed, series A and series B investments in Europe and North America.
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Balderton, the London based venture capital firm, has closed a new $400M early stage fund which will be deployed into outstanding European founders looking for Series A investments. The new fund will be managed by an investment team of 15 working as a single team across Europe, with permanent staff members based in both Paris and Berlin to help build close relationships with entrepreneurs, seed funds and accelerators and to provide ongoing support to portfolio companies on the ground. Portfolio companies will also have access to Balderton’s Build platform that
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Access to capital continues to be a barrier to success with just over two thirds of tech entrepreneurs seeking to raise investment in the coming months.
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Investment Growth in Q1 The first quarter of 2017 was strong in terms of investment rounds announced by UK tech companies. A total of £576.85m ($719.27m) in funding was recorded on the Tech City News Investment Tracker in the first three months of the year. This represents a 142.8% increase on the £237.56m announced in Q4 2016 and an 80.2% increase on the £320.14m raised in Q1 2016. March was the month that saw the most investment activity, with £239.82m recorded across 30 rounds. The largest round recorded in this
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The Angel CoFund, a London, UK-based venture capital fund launched with an initial Government-backed funding of £50m has announced its main results culminating with the celebration of its fifth birthday. With its mandate remaining to back the best UK-based high potential and high growth early stage companies and to partner with business angels via co-investment, the fund has hit several milestones, including: more than £33m invested which leveraged £175m of co-investments from angels and angel networks 71 companies funded Four successful exits Three IPOs And an ROI of 3x on average
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Stormburst Studios, a Birmingham, UK-based startup which develops game-inspired software for business use, raised £150k in seed funding from Mercia Fund Management. Co-founded by Derry Holt and James Heath, Stormburst Studios provides OneUp, which allows sales teams to pit themselves against each other in a fantasy sports competition. By using gaming concepts such as leaderboards and dashboards to replace spreadsheets, OneUp offers a new approach to sales management, helping to motivate and engage employees while allowing managers to gain detailed performance insights. The company will use the funds to further develop
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Companies currently raising rounds of venture investment are inevitably learning some hard truths. Primarily, VC money isn’t as readily available as in previous years, and for the companies that are receiving funding, they’re finding that the terms are becoming increasingly more onerous. The good news for startups looking for funding is that a new source of direct investment is coming to the rescue: the family offices of wealthy individuals and families. Single-family offices (SFOs) were first pioneered by the Rockefellers in the late 1800s as a way to centralise the management
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Keen Venture Partners, a new VC firm operating out of London and Amsterdam, has announced the launch of its €90m inaugural tech investment fund. Called Keen Venture Partners Fund LP, the fund will look to invest in between €5m to €10m per early stage tech company. In Europe, the fund will focus on innovation hubs across the UK, Netherlands, Sweden and Germany. Additionally, it will also consider US-based tech companies looking to expand into Europe. Founded by Ben Verwaayen, former CEO of both BT and Alcatel-Lucent; Alexander Ribbink, former COO of TomTom;
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As an advisor to young and growing companies, there’s one major mistake I see inexperienced entrepreneurs make time and time again – moving too slowly. But the need for speed in launching a startup has little to do with being the first to market, and everything to do with having the necessary resources to actually GET your product to market. Often new entrepreneurs spend so much time trying to get everything perfect that they run out of money. To launch a startup, you need to be agile and you need to be
Read more →UK-based FinTech firms received 80% less VC funding than their German counterparts throughout Q2 2016. According to CB Insights and KMPG’s “The Pulse of FinTech” Q2 2016 report, venture capital-backed FinTech firms in Germany saw more than an 80% increase in funding than those in the UK – with notable deals going to startups including N26 and Finanzcheck. Given global market uncertainties associated with political events such as the UK’s Brexit vote and the upcoming US presidential election, the report notes that it was not surprising that venture capital investors
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