INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
New UK early stage VC firstminute Capital launched in June last year to the tune of $60m, with European VC Atomico as its first cornerstone
They were joined by 30 unicorns founders from Europe and the US
Last September they brought in the huge China-based company, Tencent reaching a fund size of $85m.
Today firstminute capital, the
London-based pan-European seed fund announced a final close of $100m, and detailed its first batch of early-stage investments made since
September.
Two institutional investors have now joined
Henkel, the €60bn publicly-listed FMCG giant, is making its first investment into a European seed fund, and Lombard Odier, one of Europe
largest private banks, also joins.
The fund has three partners: Brent Hoberman CBE, Spencer Crawley and Henry Lane-Fox
Hoberman is chairman and co-founder of Founders Factory, a corporate-backed incubator/accelerator based in London, and also of Founders
Forum, a series of invitation-only, but influential annual global events for leading entrepreneurs
He co-founded lastminute.com in April 1998, and sold to Sabre for $1.1bn in 2005
Crawley is co-founder and General Partner was previously Business Development at AppDirect (a San Francisco-based cloud commerce platform
provider, backed by Peter Thiel Mithril Capital, latest valuation $1bn+), Investment Associate at DMC Partners (Goldman Sachs spin-out
Special Opportunities fund), and Analyst in the Moscow office of Goldman Sachs
Lane-Fox is a partner at Founders Forum, Co-founder and CEO of Founders Factory, Co-founder of SmartUp.io, and previously part of the
founding team of lastminute.com.
Hoberman said: &We&re excited to reach a significant milestone for firstminute, that helps us continue to
support the most ambitious entrepreneurs globally
The latest investors to get behind the fund further increase our ability to have real impact, and we are buoyed by the rapid progress our
portfolio founders are making
With our young and hard-working investment team, and our invaluable venture partners, we are hopeful that we can make our brand promise & of
aspiring to be Europe most helpful seed fund & a reality
We were aiming to raise $60m for our first fund, and so to have closed our first fund at $100m is a strong signal for European
technology.
The link to Founders Forum is not insignificant
Hoberman curates an eclectic mix of founders investors and new entrepreneurs which has allowed him to tap a wide range of enthusiastic
These include the co-founders of lastminute.com, Adyen, Supercell, Skyscanner, Trulia, Skype, Autonomy, Betfair, King.com, BlaBlaCar,
Qunar, Carphone Warehouse, Datamonitor, PartyGaming, Tradex Technologies, Net-a-Porter, Capital One Bank, Fox Kids Europe, Webhelp, Airtel,
PartyGaming and others, alongside other successes such as Marketshare, Ticketbis, Nordeus and LoveFilm
Tommy Stadlen, author, former Obama campaign speechwriter and co-founder of Swing, which exited to Microsoft, is both an investor in
firstminute and a venture partner.
firstminute says it has a European focus & with the flexibility to follow local lead funding events in
the US and Israel & and says it typically plans to invest $1m into seed-stage businesses.
There will be a sector agnostic remit for the
fund, but wil take a particular interest in Robotics, vertical AI, Healthtech, Blockchain, SaaS, Cyber, Gaming and D2C.
The fund also
released more details of its portfolio companies to date including:
bull; Cambridge self-driving start-up Wayve />
• Fuel delivery
business Zebra
• Wireless charging platform Chargifi
• ICO exchange Templum (which has raised an additional $10m).
Firstminute says
three of its portfolio have raised subsequent rounds within 6 months of its investment.
The geographic spread of their 17 investments
to-date has been UK, Germany, Portugal and Israel, as well as four investments in the US.
Family offices also feature heavily in the
fund.
These include the JCDecaux family (€6bn market cap business), Baron Davies of Abersoch (former Labour minister and Standard
Chartered CEO Chairman), Sir Paul Ruddock (former CEO of Lansdowne Partners and Chairman of Oxford University Endowment) and Alex de
Carvalho (founder of Public.io and Heineken non-executive director).
Firstminute is also now introducing its full-time operating team
consisting of six investors: Lina Wenner (Cambridge, BCG), Camilla Mazzolini (OLX, Berenberg), Elliot O&Connor (founder of Code at Uni),
Sam Endacott (Goldman Sachs), Anais Benazet (Founders Forum) and Clara Lindh (former freelance journalist).
Finally, three venture partners
Steve Crossan, formerly of DeepMind and Google and co-founder and former CTO of Brandwatch.com, currently also an XIR at Atomico; Arek
Wylegalski, formerly of Index Ventures in London, and currently exploring opportunities in the blockchain space; and Tommy Stadlen.
