Pan-European seed investor Seedcamp has held the £60m final close for its fourth venture fund, with around 15 per cent earmarked for FinTech startups.
The vehicle received support from over 100 founders, mentors and angels, and includes £2m contributions from founders across Seedcamp’s history and an ‘innovative collaboration’ with crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
Part of the funds raised for the vehicle was completed through Seedrs to enable founders of Seedcamp-backed companies invest.
Backers to the fund include Orange Digital Investments, Cachette Capital Management and MUFG. Founders backing Fund IV include UiPath’s Daniel Dines, and TransferWise’s Taavet Hinrikus as well as MoveGuides, MyBuilder and Zemanta founders.
Seedcamp managing partner Carlos Eduardo Espinal said, “When we talk about Seedcamp as a lifelong community of support we really mean it; it’s amazing to have founders who we backed when we were first starting out join us as part of our new fund as we invest in the next generation of world-class entrepreneurial talent.
“Their investment would not have been possible if it weren’t for our partnership with Seedrs which has enabled us to bring on board so many of our founders.”
Late last year, FinTech Global reported Seedcamp had held the £41m first close for Fund IV, with contributions from 60 backers. Some of these investors include Investec, Unilever Ventures, Thomas Cook Money, MassMutual Ventures, ADV, Index Ventures and Atomico.
The vehicle will be used to support up to 100 startups across Europe, and will keep a sector-agnostic approach. However, the firm did state FinTech offered a huge potential and is targeting around 15 per cent of Fund IV to be deployed into FinTech startups. This figure could increase, due to the sectors overlap across multiple different verticals.
Fund IV is more than 30-times bigger than Seedcamp’s debut vehicle which closed on $2.5m in 2007. The vehicle has already been tapped to make 15 investments including into digital healthcare app doctorly, shared workspace Veratak and anti-fake news and misleading content company Factmata.
The firm also used the new vehicle to back retirement planning platform for millennials Vantik, as part of a €800,000 funding round.
UiPath CEO and Founder Daniel Dines said, “Seedcamp took a chance on us back in 2015 when we were a team of just ten people in Romania and now, three years later, we have more than 590 employees across 14 countries and valued at over $1bn.
“I trust the Seedcamp team implicitly when it comes to uncovering and investing in new categories and Europe’s future leaders and am delighted to support the next generation of entrepreneurial talent to come out of Seedcamp.”
Earlier in the week, Seedcamp invested into payment card provider Pleo’s $16m Series A funding round.
Copyright © 2018 FinTech Global
