The co-founder of European VC Atomico Mattias Ljungman has launched Moonfire Ventures – a VC aimed at providing seed stage funding for FinTechs among others.
According to Sifted, Moonfire has already raised a $60m fund to target seed and pre-seed deals. The company will focus on FinTech, gaming, digital health and the future of work and has already made investments in companies such as Skunkworks, Homerun, Electric Noir Studios and Humaans.
Founded in 2006, Atomico is an international investment firm focused on helping the world’s most disruptive technology companies scale and become global leaders. To date, it has made over $2.7bn of investments across Europe and has backed Swedish FinTech giant Klarna.
While the company had helped transform the European VC space, the co-founder claimed that the region’s entrepreneurs needed a further catalyst at the earlier stages to push them to be bolder. From this, he identified focusing on pre-seed deals around the $100k to $3m mark.
Ljungman said, “The seed stage is under-invested in Europe. I think we have some amazing funds in the US and there’s quite a lot of them. And while here in Europe we do have some really good funds, it’s just not the depth and breadth that we need.â€
He added that his new company will be ‘methodical and data-driven’ in its approach to investing.
He commented, “I think we’re going to be moving more to a data-driven approach, which I see is something that is augmenting that personal approach. I describe it as kind of like we’re going to be putting on a bionic suit.â€
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