Investor Firstminute Capital has launched a $111m venture fund backed by a proverbial who’s-who list of tech entrepreneurs as it gears up to invest in more European tech startups
Firstminute Capital raised its first early-stage venture fund in 2018 to the tune of $100m.
Since then the company has backed several tech startups, including cryptocurrency smart wallet startup Argent and the FinTech Skew, which picked up a $5m round in the spring of 2020.
The limited partners backing the new fund included 70 founders of billion-dollar businesses, including 16 founders behind decacorns such as Palantir, Wayfair, Ocado, MongoDB, Zalando, Supercell and Check Point, TechCrunch reported.
And more may still be to come, according to Brent Hoberman, the founder of Firstminute Capital as well as the founder of lastminute.com and MADE.com.
“European technology is reaching escape velocity, and it’s fantastic to enable so many global serial entrepreneurs to give their experience to the next generation: we have over 70 unicorn founders joining us on this journey so far, and more to come as we approach final close,” said Hoberman. “Seed venture investing is attracting ever higher quality backers which will help more founders succeed.”
RIT Capital Partners served as the fund’s anchor investor, marking the investor’s first such position in a European venture capital firm. They previously backed leading US funds including Sequoia, Benchmark, Thrive and Iconiq.
Tencent, Henkel, Atomico and four Californian multi-stage firms also served as investors to Firstminute Capital’s second seed fund.
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