Balderton Capital, investor in tech firms such as Lovefilm, MySQL and Betfair, has launched its fifth fund worth US$305m, bringing to US$2.2bn the amount of capital raised to date.
The London-headquartered venture-capital player, originally known as Benchmark Europe, has achieved a considerable number of US$250m-plus exits.
“We have more people on our investment team who have founded or led companies, and worked with major tech businesses, than any other top-tier European venture fund,” said Bernard Liatuad from Balderton Capital.
The company has also appointed two new partners: Suranga Chandratillake, the founder of Blinkx, and Daniel Waterhouse, formerly of Yahoo! and board member of Hailo.
European entrepreneurs, arise!
“This new fund is also a renewed commitment in our belief in the capacity of European technology companies to be world leaders, a strategy that we are doubling-down on over the next few years,” Liatuad said.
“Europe has produced some of the world’s most important technology companies. We believe this trend is growing, last year alone we saw almost 10,000 businesses in Europe, worked with and hosted events for over 1,000, and invested in 17 new teams, as well as re-investing in many of our existing ones.
“While we can’t work with them all, we’re thankful to all the entrepreneurs that approach us, and they continue to inspire us with the skills and innovative approaches they take to building disruptive businesses.”
Digital Europe image via Shutterstock
