5 European VC’s, 5 Investment Theses
I put this together following some personal research about how venture capital firms position themselves in the venture capitallandscape. I wanted to research their investment theses following some thoughts on what my own would be. These types of ideas I like sharing because it’s the types of things I look for in an attempt to understand larger economic decisions that are made.
For Founders, it’s important to understand investors have particular risk appetites. Which you may or may not fall under. It’s important to research how venture capital firms position themselves in the market and historically decision-making in terms of their portfolio.
There are so many firms out there but I thought I’d just take a couple and share what I find. What I haven’t included is other important information such as portfolio companies, assets under management, markets, geographic regions, company stage, investment process, timeline etc. A great resource is Crunchbase and Angel.co. I’m sure there are more but if you look hard enough.
Notion Capital
- Companies at or very close to product-market fit with meaningful commercial traction (typically more than €1m ARR).
- We will also come in later where a company has scaled further through bootstrapping and or larger seed funding as long as we can achieve our stake objectives.
- Our first cheque sizes range from €1m to €8m.
Octopus Ventures
- Future of Health
- Future of Money
- DeepTech
- Later Stage Companies
- £1 million for Seed
- £10 million for Series B
- Follow our investment right up to £25 million
- UK and European-based companies
Seedcamp
- Sector agnostic
- Large Markets
- Lead pre-seed £150–180K, usually targeting 6.5% equity
- Co-invest in seed rounds of up to £2M
IQ Capital
- Seed up to 1.5M
- Series A up to 5M (Revenue run rate 1M+)
- Growth up to 30M
- AI, Data Science, IoT, DeepTech
Connect Ventures
- Purpose-led founders obsessed with solving hard problems at scale by creating products and companies that people love. We’re passionate about the power of product to transform the way people live and work, on a massive scale.
Notes
Stake Objective — Notion (and other firms) have a desired ownership % they target. Although you may have an amazing company, that’s highly profitable with a founding team that works well together if they can not have an ownership % within their tolerance level, the investment can appear unattractive.
First cheque size — Sometimes your company and a venture capital firm may be a great match but they invest less than you are asking for or more than you are asking for (this is also relative to a particular stake objective). Many startups have a story of being underfunded but it is also possible to be overfunded and can have as significant an impact on future growth.
“Lead Investor is an individual or group who are leading a funding round. Groups leading a round often appoint an individual lead who, while not necessarily the one investing the most money, is often the one who can contribute the most to the company in terms of time and experience” — Syndicate Room