Draper Esprit will invest $100 million in seed funds around Europe

Draper Esprit, the London- and Dublin-based VC firm, has announced that it will invest up to $100 million in seed funds across Europe over the next five years.

Thus far, the VC firm has committed to investing in Seedcamp and Episode 1 Ventures and previously invested in equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs and Crowdcube. Draper Esprit will invest in between 10 and 20 seed funds.

“By partnering with the best seed funds, we can help them scale up their series A and B funding rounds more quickly, which in turn will accelerate growth for the most ambitious entrepreneurs,” said Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit.

“We have a number of pools of capital to back leading entrepreneurs and to deploy across the different funding life cycles of fast growing technology companies,” he said. “External investors both institutional and private can use our evergreen listed venture capital model to access, on a pooled basis, the top seed funding platforms, screened and picked by our experienced team.”

Cook added that the move will help UK investors to continue to have access to early stage investment opportunities post-Brexit.

“We’ve known Draper Esprit for many years and are excited to be working with them again,” said Simon Murdoch, managing partner of Episode 1, one of the funds to receive investment. “As a leading seed fund our role is to find and accelerate UK startups helping them to become the sort of rapidly growing businesses that Draper Esprit want to invest in and grow to global success stories.”

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