Flint Capital, a Boston-based venture capital fund, has closed its third VC fund, raising $160 million. The fund will back early stage startups and a later stage fund, securing a total of $160 million.
The investors in this fund include global IT entrepreneurs and founders of Flint Capital portfolio companies with successful exits.
Funds utilisation
The capital will be used to assist early stage European and Israeli startups in target industries, including Cybersecurity, Digital Health, Fintech, Enterprise SaaS, and B2C, in entering the U.S. market.
The third fund will continue the fund’s investment thesis, which centres around investing in early-stage startups with mature founders such as Nokod Security, Mika Games, and Blinq.io. The investor plans to fund about 25 companies, with 12 deals already completed.
Another area of investment is Israeli pre-seed VC funds and accelerators. This will allow Flint Capital to identify promising new startups and select those with high potential for further consideration without the need of investing directly in them. The addition of the Opportunity Fund allows Flint Capital to provide additional funding to portfolio companies as they scale and move on to their next stage.
Who is behind Flint Capital?
The venture fund was launched in 2013 by Dmitry Smirnov, who independently raised $40 million for the first fund. He was joined by two partners who brought new knowledge, skills, and network: Andrew Gershfeld, a former entrepreneur in the B2C space who knows both sides of the coin, and Sergey Gribov, who comes from the tech industry and has an excellent understanding of B2B, enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity.
“While funds raised less than $20 billion in the first quarter of this year — the lowest amount since 2011 — we raised 1.5 times more than we did before. With the first fund’s TVPI at 4.6 and the second one on the rise and already in the profit zone, many investors in the initial funds not only chose to continue their investment but increased their contributions. Among the new investors, there are also founders of our portfolio companies, people we supported on their path to a successful exit“, notes Dmitry Smirnov, partner at Flint Capital.
Portfolio of investments
It actively helps founders from its portfolio companies to deal with the challenges hat newcomers face when settling in a new country, such as the lack of a support network, problems finding talent and partners, and limited market knowledge.
Previously, Flint Capital has closed two funds. The first one backed three unicorns in its portfolio: Socure, WalkMe, and Flo. Additionally, it also invested in companies with notable exits such as CyberX (acquired by Microsoft), Voca.ai (acquired by Snap), and MatchCo (acquired by Shiseido).
“Working with almost 70 portfolio companies, we noticed an increasing demand for a longer investment cycle and created a late-stage “Opportunity” fund for companies in which Flint Capital had successfully invested earlier. This will allow us to actively support our portfolio companies throughout their full startup life cycle,” commented Sergey Gribov, partner at Flint Capital.
