London’s Balderton celebrates over 20 years in business, brings home $680 million, and launches early growth fund

After two decades of being one of Europe’s leading Series A venture firms, Balderton Capital has raised a mammoth $680 million to launch an early growth fund. With this new addition of funds, the firm is now actively deploying over $1 billion in Europe’s future tech giants. To date, Balderon has raised $4 billion.

Already possessing one of the largest growth stage portfolios amongst European VCs, having gone in at Seed or Series A level with darlings including Aircall, ComplyAdvantage, Contentful, Depop, GoCardless, Infarm, Labster, Revolut, THG, Vestiaire Collective, and Zego, Balderton’s new fund is the first time the firm has expanded to a new stage of primary investing.

“I’ve been an investor at Balderton since 2008, and it has been incredible to see the increasing number of ambitious European founders, and to be able to support them financially through those critical first three to five years with our early-stage funds. With this Growth Fund, we can now support them as they scale to become global industry leaders. We predict a $50 billion growth opportunity in Europe in the next three years alone, and we want to be the first choice for those ambitious founders,” says Managing Partner Bernard Liautaud.

The new fund will be aimed squarely at early-growth stage startups, regardless of their primary focus. The firm expects to invest between $25 million and $50 million per company through both primary and secondary investments. 

And if 20 years in operations isn’t a successful enough track record, let’s have a look at some solid numbers: In the 18 months since January 2020, the firm has added 22 new companies to the portfolio and committed to 45 follow-on investments. 

There have been three IPOs, with THG in 2020, Darktrace in 2021; and Flywire in 2021, and eleven portfolio exits since January 2020, including Digital Surgery’s acquisition by Medtronic, Peakon’s acquisition by Workday and Depop’s acquisition by Etsy. 

“We have been lucky enough to have spent the past two decades deeply embedded in the European tech ecosystem, working with hundreds of extraordinary founders. Our partners are a mixture of financiers, tech operators and founders themselves, and together we have a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges of scaling globally from the continent. This fund will allow us to expand our support, not only to our existing portfolio but also to Europe’s most promising future global leaders,” concludes General Partner David Thévenon.