Backed has raised $169.7 million (€150 million) to spend money on tech entrepreneurs in Europe throughout a wide range of gaming and tech industries.
The London-based fund is the second raised by Backed, and it stated that its focus to champion seed entrepreneurs in Europe with a human-centric mannequin. About half of the cash goes into a brand new seed fund, Backed Core 2, and half is for Backed Encore 1, which is backing its portfolio of current investments.
Backed’s portfolio has an combination worth of $12.1 billion, with three current investments already unicorn standing (a price above $1 billion): Thought Machine, Sky Mavis, and Immutable X.
One in all its earliest investments, Hutch Video games, was acquired by MTG Group for $375 million in November 2020. Backed invested in early rounds of main United Kingdom entrepreneurs akin to Emma Sinclar (Enterprise Alumni), Andy Shovel (This) and James Subject (LabGenius).
Immediately Backed has 10 folks, 60 enterprise scouts, an 18-month proprietary founder assist program, and over 30 brand-hosted occasions yearly.
“Before everything – we wouldn’t be anyplace with out the dedication and ambition of the founders we’ve backed,” stated Alex Brunicki, associate at Backed, in a press release. “They carry the magic, day-in and day-out, we’re merely a supporting act.”
He added “We’ve pushed ourselves to be an entrepreneurial fund. We’ve not all the time received it proper, however we iterate, hear and take a look at at tempo. I’d say we’ve made it to our Sequence A. I couldn’t be extra enthusiastic about the place we stand at the moment and what lies forward: we’re creating a deeper edge in frontier markets like biotech and crypto; we’re bringing nascent communities collectively – akin to coin-op – in a significant method, and we’ve constructed an distinctive staff to assist founders at scale.”
Launched in 2016 by companions Andre de Haes and Brunicki, Backed has grown to a staff of 10. The portfolio now consists of 67 firms with an combination worth of $12.1 billion. 4 portfolio firms have exited.
Backed’s traders embody 5 main establishments each publicly listed companies akin to Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (by their Sienna Capital automobile) and personal companies akin to Wilshire Associates, alongside 20 main venture-focused household places of work and over 20 entrepreneurs, together with a number of from Backed’s personal portfolio. About 80% of Backed’s latest funding got here from current traders.
Backed’s has an 18-month program with 24 options throughout startup fundamentals with a particular emphasis on people-related elements, together with situational management coaching, tradition and values workshops, hiring assist by way of an in-house recruiter, entry to psychological well being providers, and an in-house government coach for founders and management groups.
The emphasis on neighborhood has knowledgeable the fund’s occasion technique. It hosts over 30 occasions yearly from founder dinners to a 1,000 individual occasion on the Finnish tech convention Slush, and cohosting conferences akin to Coin-Op, a world blockchain-gaming summit held on the London Science Museum.
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