An Austrian investor specializing in early-stage startups wants to model itself after the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock Inc., after raising one of Europe’s largest dedicated funds.
(Bloomberg) — An Austrian investor specializing in early-stage startups wants to model itself after the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock Inc., after raising one of Europe’s largest dedicated funds.
Vienna-based Speedinvest GmbH closed a fourth funding round with €500 million ($528 million) for so-called seed and pre-seed investments. The cash haul is the sixth largest this year among its peer group of European venture capitalists, that typically target later-stage investments, according to PitchBook data. It raises the company’s managed assets to more than €1 billion.
The fresh cash inflow comes amid strong headwinds for the industry, which is sliding toward its worst dealmaking year in more than two decades. That’s prompting Speedinvest — an early shareholder in companies including Bitpanda and GoStudent — to transform operations by allowing sector-focused teams to handle larger volumes of investment decisions.
Venture Capital Deals Set for Worst Drop in Over Two Decades
“It’s a shift from a boutique mom and pop investment style to a proper platform for seed-stage investing,” Speedinvest’s founder and managing partner Oliver Holle said in an interview. “You can call it the BlackRock of early-stage venture.”
The ambitions are bold in an environment where rising interest rates are ending a years-long boom in venture capital, and several high-profile corporate melt-downs have made investors wary of the asset class. BlackRock itself has come under fire recently for its focus on environmental, social and governance investing.
Holle says US investors were reluctant to participate in the most recent round of funding due to the market volatility, and in part due to the stigma on European investments from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
About two-thirds of the new cash came from existing investors, including New Enterprise Associates, the European Investment Fund and Bpifrance, as well as insurers and family offices. The fund is more than double the size of its previous investment vehicle raised in early 2020.
Holle plans to allocate €300 million to new startups and has earmarked €200 million for follow-up investments. Its teams focus on six sectors, giving a structure for allocations: deep tech, finance, health, consumers, industrial tech and software as a service.
“We think 2021 and to some degree 2020 was more the outlier than the norm, with both tourist money and tourist founders,” Holle said. “We do do things differently: there is method to the madness.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
