Index Ventures, the venture capital (VC) firm that backed Lovefilm, Last.fm, Skype and Net-a-Porter, has unveiled a new €350m (£284m) fund to invest in disruptive tech start-ups. It’s the final piece of €1bn of new capital they’ve raised in the last 12 months to complement the international platform they have been building to invest in both early stage and growth technology as well as life sciences companies.
The fund will offer seed and early-stage investment in technology start-ups, with a focus on ambitious new companies in Europe and Israel.
Index Ventures highlighted five key areas that it considers “most exciting” to invest in right now, which the new fund will be targeting: big data, cloud computing (consumer and enterprise), commerce (especially fashion), financial services, games, mobile and marketplaces.
Saul Klein, partner at Index Ventures, said the company will be looking for “outstanding European and Israeli born companies looking to build global category leaders”.
He cited various successful early experiences with European companies such as ASOS, Net-a-Porter and Skype but he sees them as a prelude to greater things. Within Index’s current portfolio, including Mind Candy, Viagogo, Moo.com, Housetrip, Farfetch and Funding Circle, Saul stated how they are scaling from the earliest stages to the international stage, showing that European and Israeli born teams are just at the beginning of their potential.
Klein added that early-stage investment in promising ideas will be critical for fuelling the economic recovery, and that Europe has much potential to produce world-beating start-ups.
“Providing the building blocks for start-ups, in the form of mentorship and financing, inevitably leads to job creation. In our portfolio alone, there are currently over 1,000 open positions.
“We continue to believe that Europe will be fertile ground to discover and help develop world-beating innovations.”
