Connect Ventures, a London-based VC firm focused on seed-stage investments, has announced a new $80 million (£65 million) fund to support product-led founders across Europe. This third fund was raised from a combination of existing and new LPs, including Top Tier Capital Partners, Isomer Capital, British Patient Capital, De Agostini, Big Society Capital, Draper Esprit and Korelya Capital.
As a first or early-stage investor, Connect has helped several tech startups build well-known European businesses: urban mobility startup Citymapper, Barcelona’s Typeform, digital banking app Curve, and TrueLayer, the open-banking API provider which raised a $35 million round led by Tencent and expanded into APAC last fall.
Founded in 2012, the firm is led by General Partners Pietro Bezza, Rory Stirling and Sitar Teli. Teli, who’s also a co-founder, explains the firm’s ‘thesis-driven’ investment approach: “We’ve intentionally created a low volume, high conviction, high support investment firm to back these founders. That’s why we’ll be targeting the same curated number of seed investments with this fund, using the larger fund size to provide the right capital and support on our journey together.”
The third fund has already invested in Parentalist, a subscription-based childcare and babysitting platform; Emma, a personal finance app; and Oyster, a distributed workforce platform.
Photo: General Partners Pietro Bezza, Sitar Teli and Rory Stirling
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