Blossom Capital, the early-stage VC firm co-founded by ex-Index Ventures and LocalGlobe VC Ophelia Brown, is announcing a second fund, less than 12 months since fund one closed.The new fund, which is described as heavily oversubscribed, sits at $185 million.
Thats up from $85 million first time around.Blossoms remit remains broadly the same: to be the lead investor in European tech startups at Series A, along with doing some seed deals, too.
In particular, the VC will continue to focus on finance, design, marketplaces, travel, developer-focused tools, infrastructure and API-first companies.Its differentiator is pitched as so-called high conviction investing, which sees it back fewer companies by writing larger cheques, along with claiming to have close ties to United States top tier investors ready to back portfolio companies at the next stage.And whilst a bridge to the valley is a well worn claim by multiple European VCs, Blossoms track record so far bears this is out somewhat, even if it is nascent.
Of the firms portfolio, travel booking platform Duffel has received two follow-on investment rounds led by Benchmark and Index Ventures; cybersecurity automation platform Tines received follow-on investment led by Accel Partners; and payments unicorn Checkout.com is also backed by Insight Partners.In addition, I understand that about half of Blossoms LPs are in the United States , and that all of the firms original LPs invested in this second fund, which Brown concedes was a lot easier to raise than the first.
Thats presumably down to the up round valuations Blossom is already able to tout.Citing benchmark data from Cambridge Associates and Preqin, Blossom says it sits in the top 5% of funds of 2018/2019 vintage in the United States and EU.
Although, less than two years old, I would stress that it is still very early days.More broadly, Brown and Blossoms other partners Imran Gohry, Louise Samet and Mike Hudack argue that the most successful European companies historically are those that were able to attract United States investors but that companies no longer need to relocate to the United States to seize the opportunity.When we looked at the data it was very clear at the growth stage that, outside of Index and Accel, the most successful European outcomes were driven by the combination of European early-stage investors and top-tier United States growth investors, explained Blossom Capital partner, Imran Ghory, in a statement.
From day one we prioritised building those relationships, both to share knowledge but also provide a bridge for European founders to access the best growth capital as they scale.We updated this report with a correction; the original said the fund is less than a year old in fact its less than two years old