2021 broke the record as the busiest year of dealmaking with over $138B in venture capital invested in startups across EMEA. Venture capital investment in Europe crossed the €100B ( $113B ) mark for the first time ever in 2021, with some of the region’s biggest economies doubling their fundraising totals from the previous year. This has been contributed to by the rebound in investor confidence as well as the fact that many startups are increasingly benefiting from increased demand for remote digital products and services in the new global normal.
Sourced from Dealroom, this ranking of VC investors, is not only for information purposes but also a tool to help founders navigate the vast, and often at times opaque venture market, for their respective growth stages.
This ranking was established by analysing several key areas of interest. First: Investing stage; The stage at which investments were made played a key role, with earlier stages having more command than later stages. Secondly was the “Unicorn Score” which considered the investment outcomes, past and future. It crucially considered the number of investments undertaken in the past year and calculated a score considering these factors, among others.
Below is the top ten overall list of the top EMEA VCs per the EMEA VC Investor Prominence 2022 edition:
Kima Ventures
Location: Paris, France
Preferred Investing Round: Seed
Current portfolio value: $59.94B (€56.5 B)
Total value of exits: $2.2B (€2.33B)
Notable investments: Wise(exited), Carta, Sorare, AngelList, Alan, Docker, PayFit, Formlabs, Ledger & Movable Ink.
Kima Ventures is recognised as one of the world’s most active early-stage investors, investing in 2 to 3 startups on a weekly basis. The VC provides its founders with not only funding but also access to growth networks and support to reach the next stage of their journey.
Its investments are mostly Seed to Series A, mostly as a lead investor while also working alongside other investors to back ambitious hard-working founders. Headquartered in Paris with an office in London, the company considers itself not only an investor but also a network of founders and experts sharing a common forward-thinking mindset.
Kima was founded and backed by Xavier Niel, the founder of Iliad and supporter of entrepreneurs through such projects as Station F, 42 and 101projets alongside co-founder Jeremie Berrebi. Over the last 5 years, the VC has invested in over 400 startups across 24 countries. Kima has featured on TFN, investing in startups such as Kiln, a startup enabling institutional crypto staking as well as in Gama, an aerospace company that expects to deploy a solar sail from a satellite launched by SpaceX Falcon 9 slated for launch in October 2022.
Lakestar
Location: Zurich, Switzerland.
Preferred Investing Round: Series A
Current portfolio value: $103.85B (€97.9B)
Total value of exits: $12.4B (€13.15B)
Notable investments: Spotify(exited), SoFi(exited), Revolut, Blockchain, Glovo(exited), Opendoor, Oscar, Argo AI, AngelList, & Cedar.
Lakestar is a VC firm investing in tech companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs, bragging funding the founders of Skype, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb. Since raising its first fund in 2013, Lakestar has grown to manage an aggregated volume of over €1B across three early-stage funds and more recently, a growth fund. In a growing list, the company holds in its broad portfolio investments in the likes of Opendoor, Oscar, Glovo, GetYourGuide, Sender, Eigen, Five & Revolut.
Founded in 2012 by Klaus Hommels, Lakestar has grown to have a presence in Berlin, Zurich and London. It has helped companies identify new markets and expand into them rapidly, with interest in the US and Europe. We’ve identified some of our Lakestar features on TFN like the investment in the European stocks trading fintech lemon.markets and in the healthcare super app & French unicorn Alan.
Global Founders Capital
Location: Munich, Germany
Preferred Investing Round: Early VC
Current portfolio value: $164.75 (€155.3 B)
Total value of exits: $55.8B (€59.19B)
Notable investments: Meta (formerly Facebook)(exited), Canva, Revolut, Slack(exited), Rocket Internet(exited), HelloFresh(exited), Zalando(exited), Brex, Personio & Next Insurance.
Founded in 2013 by Oliver Samwer, GFC is a globally oriented, stage agnostic VC that aims to empower gifted entrepreneurs. The firm seeks to invest in companies operating within the internet, retail, finance such as the “Stripe of the Philippines”; media, communication and IT sectors.
Insight Partners
Location: New York City, US.
Preferred Investing Round: Series B
Current portfolio value: $435.6B (€410.6 B)
Total value of exits: $183.5B (€194.66B)
Notable investments: Alibaba(exited), Shopify(exited), FTX, Delivery Hero(exited), Twitter(exited), Checkout.com, Fanatics(exited), JD.com, DocuSign(exited) & Qualtrics(exited).
Insight Partners is a P.E investing in growth-stage tech and software companies. Across its portfolio, the firm encourages a culture around a core belief that growth equals opportunity. Founded in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock, the firm currently has over $20B in assets under management having cumulatively invested in more than 300 companies worldwide.
Insight Partners has already been featured on TFN, bragging investments in unicorns such as Teleport as well as Germany’s Choco.
Balderton Capital
Location: London, UK.
Preferred Investing Round: Series A
Current portfolio value: $85.8B (€80.9 B)
Total value of exits: $21.2B (€22.49B)
Notable investments: The Walt Disney Company(exited), Revolut, Flywire(exited), Flutter Entertainment(exited), Sinch(exited), Yoox Net-a-Porter(exited), GCL System Integration Technology(exited), Lendable, Darktrace(exited), & Contentful.
Balderton is a venture capital firm exclusively focused on backing European-founded startups. The company was founded in 2000 and invests broadly in debt, early-stage venture, late-stage venture, private equity, secondary market & Seed rounds. Balderton Capital raised $600M late last year in its bid to further assist European startups, with the raise touted as one of the biggest in the entirety of early-stage funds.
HV Capital
Location: Munich, Germany.
Preferred Investing Round: Series A.
Current portfolio value: $24.5B (€23.1B)
Total value of exits: $11B (€11.67B)
Notable investments: HelloFresh(exited), Delivery Hero(exited), Zalando(exited), Depop(exited), Rocket Internet(exited), Ozon(exited), Flix SE, Verbit.ai, Lazada(exited) & Solarisbank.
HV Capital is a Munich-based VC firm that assists founders in developing their internet companies.
Formerly HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, HV has invested in internet and technology companies through various generations of funds. Since its founding in 2000 by Lars Langusch, the VC has grown to be one of the most successful and financially robust early-stage and growth investors in Europe. HV Capital supports startups with capital between €500,000 and €50 million and is one of the few VCs in Europe that can finance startups through all growth phases. HV Capital co-led the biggest ever Series A in climate tech and has also participated in other notable investments such as Storyblok‘s & KoRo‘s early rounds.
Seedcamp
Location: London, UK.
Preferred Investing Round: Seed.
Current portfolio value: $66.7B (€62.9 B)
Total value of exits: $1.5B (€1.59)
Notable investments: Revolut, Wise(exited), UiPath(exited), Sorare, Hopin, Pleo, wefox, Viz, Grover & Curve.
Founded in 2007 by Reshma Sohoni and Saul Klein, Seedcamp is an early-stage European seed fund which identifies and invests in world-class founders tackling large global markets and solving real problems using technology. The Seedcamp Nation includes over 400 startups building groundbreaking businesses that change the way in which people live, interact and buy.
Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder’s vision by availing immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong support community and a global network built upon more than a decade’s experience backing exceptional talent. Seedcamp has participated in financing eye-catching startups such as FUEL, the ‘Shopify for NFTs’ and cybersecurity startup Cyscale, among others.
Index Ventures
Location: London, UK.
Preferred Investing Round: Series A.
Current portfolio value: $254.9B (€240.3 B)
Total value of exits: $122.1B (€129.53B)
Notable investments: Meta (formerly Facebook) (exited), Etsy(exited), Slack(exited), Roblox(exited), Arista Networks(exited), Revolut, Robinhood(exited), Flutter Entertainment(exited), Adyen(exited), & Datadog(exited).
Index Ventures is a VC based in London, San Francisco and Geneva, assisting entrepreneurs to turn bold ideas into global businesses. Since its founding in 1996 by David Rimer, Giuseppe Zocco & Neil Rimer, Index has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs reshaping the world through tech, among them: Deliveroo, Dropbox, Slack and Supercell, among other notable mentions. Index Ventures has teamed up with Google to back Rooser, a Scottish startup combating seafood waste and other interesting startups such as Argent, which hopes to build a super app for all things Web3 & DeFi.
Accel
Location: Palo Alto, US.
Preferred Investing Round: Series A.
Current portfolio value: $1.49Tn (€1.4 Tn)
Total value of exits: $199.7B (€211.85B)
Notable investments: Meta (formerly Facebook) (exited), Verizon Communications(exited), Cisco, Adobe Systems(exited), Walmart, Qualcomm, Raytheon, Spotify(exited) & CrowdStrike(exited).
Since its founding in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz in Palo Alto, California, the early and growth-stage venture capital firm Accel has powered a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel has backed entrepreneurs who have gone on to build world-class and category-defining businesses.
With over three decades of experience in building and supporting companies, Accel’shas featured a lot as an accelerator of the growth of next-generation industries. Some Accel-backed companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Dropbox, Etsy, Flipkart, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, & Vox Media among others. Accel announced in March that it had raised $650M to back Indian startups, as covered on TFN.
LocalGlobe
Location: London, the UK
Preferred Investing Round: Seed
Current portfolio value: $45B (€42.5 B)
Total value of exits: $8.6B (€9.12B)
Notable investments: Wise(exited), Robinhood(exited), Figma, Melio, Riskified(exited), Zoopla(exited), Improbable & Hibob.
The London-based seed investor LocalGlobe, came out on top of both the seed and overall rankings for EMEA, with 14 unicorn seed investments, and 11 future unicorn seed investments. Founded by Robin Klein & Saul Klein, LocalGlobe is a UK-based VC that focuses on Seed and impact investments. Some of its highlights since its founding in 1999 include Citymapper, Transferwise, Improbable, Lovefilm, Moo, Tweetdeck and Zoopla. LocalGlobe was our top feature for our VC list and has featured countlessly on TFN, investing in founders such as Funding Circle’s co-founder Samir Desai and startups like Breedr & GetHenry in a growing list.
