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September 02, 2006
Whos's Got Money For Euro VC? Partech and Neuhaus Join The List
Jean-Marc Patouillaud of Partech International, based in Paris, was telling us last week that his firm's fundraising for its latest fund ( targeting $300M) is going well. It has had a first closing on $150M and is on track towards closing target.
We also heard from Neuhaus Partners in Hamburg (the former Dr Neuhaus Techno Nord) that it is also on track towards raising $100M with cornerstone investors in place. Both have stirred up interest from new institutional investors, limited partners, this time around. (Image Source: European Central Bank)
Why is this news on a tech venture blog? Because founders looking to raise capital and VCs looking for co-investors need to know which VC firms in Europe actually have capital to invest over the next five years or so.
As most of our readers know European VC is the least loved sector of the alternative asset class. As a group, the track record has not been stellar in the past. It is very difficult for GPs here to raise capital from limited partners.
So when a venture firm here raises a new fund in this new cycle it registers on our radar. We keep track of it, and we've got a nice table below that gives an overview of the state of the venture market here.
It's not like in the US market where VCs can coast on their "brands" and past performance for one or two funds of less than stellar performance before limited partners pull the plug. Dan Primack, editor of the PE Week newsletter and a contributor to Buyout magazine, uses the baseball metaphor to describe the phenomenon, saying that typically after "three strikes" a VC firm is out.
Click image for a full-sized view of recently raised VC funds
We sourced the data for the table from recent interviews with venture firms and press releases, so if we’ve left anyone out, let us know by either posting a comment, or sending us an email.
This kind of information is hard to come by for entrepreneurs, as BV Capital's Christian Leybold points out in a recent post on his blog.
There are a few things to note before consumption. The funds here are the ones that have raised large sized funds from institutional investors in what is a typically highly competitive process. But it is not comprehensive, there are smaller funds that do seed and early stage investing in tech startups in each country in Europe. We don't have visibility on all of them so we left that category out for the time being.
The funds marked with an asterisk * are still in fundraising mode and have not announced a closing on their targets yet, so we posted how much they have raised so far.
In the Country column we published the countries where we’ve seen these investors close deals in our work as a journalist.
One caveat, some of the funds like Index Ventures, Banexi, Sofinnova and Innkap also invest in biotech/medtech - so not all of that capital is targeted at software and tech ventures.
Read - Venture Capital FAQ Part II: Do’s and Don’ts to get the right VC meeting (Christian Leybold bloggingvc blog)
Read - Crescendos Two Strikes And Why It Matters (siliconbeat blog)
Posted on September 2, 2006 07:32 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Permalink
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