Plural, a new investment platform has been launched today alongside an early-stage venture funding of €250 million. Its investors include former founders and operators with decades of experience in building a company.
Backs next-gen founders
The scalable investment platform will use the funds to back the next generation of founders with global ambitions. Plural works with the intention to be a more hands-on investor, with a focus on leading early stage rounds between €1 million and €10 million.
Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise, said: “We’re the investors we would have liked to have when we were building our own companies. Founding a company is a craft and the best way to learn that craft is to work alongside those who have done it before.”
Ian Hogarth said: ‘We call experienced founders ‘unemployables’, because once you’ve experienced the intense authorship that comes with creating something new it’s hard to work for anyone again. We created Plural to give unemployables a place to call home and put their entrepreneurial energy behind missions and founders they deeply believe in.”
Khaled Helioui said: “So much opportunity is left untapped today as exceptional founders often fail to meet standard investors’ pattern recognition criteria. Sadly investors lack the risk appetite needed to fulfill founders’ ambitions and consequently the full impact founders seek can not be realised. By changing the funding mechanisms that act as conservative gatekeepers today we can unlock so much potential.”
Sten Tamkivi said: “We are huge optimists for the potential of technology coming from Europe which can benefit the whole world, as well as improve the lives of people across the continent. We’ve already seen the real impact a well-funded startup scene can have on economies in small countries like Estonia — now it is time to scale this GDP level impact across the whole of Europe.”
By founders for founders
Plural was founded by Ian Hogarth, Khaled Helioui, Sten Tamkivi and Taavet Hinrikus (founder of Wise, one of the world’s biggest fintechs) along with other recognised founders who will announce themselves soon. They have founded four startups such as Wise, Songkick, Teleport and Certific and played a significant role in building three companies, including Skype, Bigpoint and Topia.
They also turned into angel investors and have been investing for several years in a slew of companies, including for Deliveroo, Hopin, Pipedrive, Chorus, Uber, Zego and Bolt.
They saw a vast majority of investors across Europe lacked experience of building tech businesses. Plural, founded by founders for founders has already invested in 14 companies, including Feather, NFTport an NFT infrastructure company, energy storage company Field, metaverse company Ready Player Me and student banking challenger MOS.
