Seedcamp creates US$30m fund to back 100 European start-ups

15 Jul 2014

London-based start-up accelerator Seedcamp has raised US$30m in funding from global investors to evolve its accelerator model to achieve the goal of creating US$1bn businesses across Europe.

Started seven years ago Seedcamp has held 60 events involving 10,000 start-ups and 5,000 mentors and its accelerator has helped to scale 120 companies.

In order to lead European start-ups to the next stage Seedcamp said it needs to evolve its model away from the standard accelerator model.

It said that the “art of the start” is standard across Europe and it is vital now to move towards what it terms the “art of the scale.”

Seedcamp pointed out that European entrepreneurs ambitions have also outgrown traditional forms of acceleration.

From start to scale

“In our experience, providing the first US$75,000 investment and a three-month program to support the growth of a US$10m business is not good enough anymore,” Seedcamp said.

“Breakout success is all about scale and getting the US$200,000, $2m, and $20m of investment that will help build a US$1bn business.

“That’s why Seedcamp is building an evolution of our acceleration model fit for the next decade. We have raised a new fund, worth more than US$30m,  that allows us to be much more ambitious about the way we support startups.

“We will now back companies from ‘start to scale’ because we’re bigger and better, allowing as to back more entrepreneurs, and at a faster pace,” Seedcamp said.

The new Seedcamp 2.0 fund is backed by global investors from China, Russia, Europe and Silicon Valley.

Seedcamp also has access to over 500 investors from Sand Hill road to Hong Kong.

Angels involved in Seedcamp have contributed to the scaling of companies that include AVG, Skyscanner, Skype and Spotify while venture capitalists have backed Just-Eat, King Digital, Zoopla and Dropbox.

Some 85pc of the 120 companies backed by Seedcamo raised an average of US$1.6m and Seedcamp said it will still pay attention to first-time, pre-seed founders.

“We still fully believe in the first-time founder and the importance of backing them, and we will continue to accelerate these startups with pre-seed capital (US$0-US$75K) and access to the Seedcamp platform.

“With our larger fund now, our ability to deploy capital is four times as big. As a result, we will also be backing our alumni, mentors, investors, and a network of founders who want to accelerate their seed stage startups with next stage capital (US$75K-US$250K) and the Seedcamp platform,” Seedcamp said.

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com