Today Speedinvest, a European venture capital fund with offices in London, Berlin, Vienna, Munich and San Francisco, launches its third flagship fund of €190 million, surpassing its original target ahead of schedule due to high investor demand. 

Unlike typical European venture capital funds managed by small partnerships or teams, Speedinvest has 40 investment professionals working across five, sector-focused investment teams, along with 20 operational experts providing portfolio companies with full-service HR, growth marketing, business development, and US expansion support.

Working from five cities across Europe, and writing initial tickets from €50K up to €1.5 million, the sector-focused investment teams will invest in fintech, deeptech, marketplaces, industrial tech, digital health and consumer tech startups, supplying the selected early-stage businesses with the time, sector expertise and value-adding operational resources they need to scale. 

CEO Oliver Holle said: “Having been a founder myself, I have a clear view on value creation by investors. You need to deliver sector-specific, operationally relevant input that goes far beyond boardroom advice and cash. In our experience, the best way to do that is to be face-to-face with our founders. That is our mission and our promise to founding teams across Europe. And we invest heavily in the resources required to back it up.”

The €190 million fund sets aside €100 million in follow-on funding to enable Speedinvest to double-down on its most promising companies, while continuing to draw on its global network of Tier 1 lead investors for follow-on rounds.

Speedinvest’s portfolio now includes some of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies, such as wefox (€235 million Series B), TIER Mobility (€55 million Series B) and Curve (€50 million Series B), along with rising stars CoachHub, TWAICE, Billie, TourRadar, Inkitt and Luko.

Julian Teicke, Founder and CEO of wefox Group, says: “Speedinvest has been a value-add partner from the very beginning. They not only helped us establish a successful framework for testing and optimizing our growth and marketing strategy, but have also been instrumental in our international expansion efforts.”

Its two previous flagship funds have also recorded impressive performances, with the first returning more than five times gross, and an overall historic fund performance in the top 25 percent of global VC/PE funds. As a result, 100 percent of cornerstone investors have returned. Scheduled to be finalised in Q2 2020, major commitments include EIF, ERSTE Bank, and US based NEA, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms. 

Today was a good day for challenger bank Revolut, who early this morning announced a new raise of around €460 million in Series D funding, taking the total amount raised by the company to €769 million. These fresh funds set Revolut as one of the highest valued fintechs currently in the world, at approximately €5 billion.

Revolut, which now has over 10 million customers across the world, was launched in July 2015 as a digital alternative to traditional banks. With London as its base, Revolut has expanded to 2000 people in 23 offices, and continues to hit the headlines with news like its unicorn status, fresh features and timely market dominations. 

The new capital was secured on the back of high customer demand and engagement, and a strong financial performance last year. In 2019, Revolut increased customer growth by 169%, the number of daily active customers by 380%, and saw financial revenues in 2018 grow by 354%.

Led by US-based growth capital firm TCV, plus support from existing investors, the new funds will be used to optimise customer experience, the core retail and business offering in existing markets, and product development. Customers can look forward to future plans like lending services for retail and business customers, extending high interest savings accounts beyond the UK, optimised customer service and banking operations across Europe. 

Revolut will also focus on further developing its Premium and Metal subscription accounts, which have proven to be a successful revenue stream for the business, growing by 154% last year. Revolut’s Premium and Metal accounts include a variety of benefits for customers, such as unlimited foreign exchange, airport lounge access, commission-free stock trading and travel insurance. 

Revolut also has geographical expansion on its mind, and will continue growing its team across multiple locations. Last year it made a number of senior appointments to scale up its governance, such as Martin Gilbert (former Co-Chief Executive of Standard Life Aberdeen) as Chairman of the Board. Additionally, Caroline Britton (former Audit Partner at Deloitte) and Bruce Wallace (former Chief Operations Officer at Silicon Valley Bank) were both appointed as Non-Executive Directors. 

Commenting on the new investment, Nik Storonsky, Founder & CEO at Revolut said: “We’re on a mission to build a global financial platform – a single app where our customers can manage all of their daily finances, and this investment demonstrates investor confidence in our business model. Going forward, our focus is on rolling-out banking operations in Europe, increasing the number of people who use Revolut as their daily account, and striving towards profitability. TCV has a long history of backing founders who are changing their industries on a global scale, so we are excited to partner with them as we prepare for the next stage of our journey.”

Commenting on the investment, John Doran, General Partner at TCV said: “We are delighted to partner with Nik, Vlad and the entire Revolut team. Using a modern technology stack and with a relentless focus on delighting customers, Revolut has built a truly exceptional customer experience that is exceeding anything that existing banks can offer. We look forward to supporting the team on their journey to build Revolut into one of the biggest financial services companies in the world.”

John Glen MP, the UK Economic Secretary and City Minister said: “It is clear that the UK fintech sector continues to thrive, and Revolut’s announcement, which comes on the back of record-breaking fintech venture capital investment in 2019, is a clear indicator of our strength as a place for fintech business as we leave the EU.”

Finnish venture capital firm Innovestor has today announced the first close of its new B2B Industrial Technology Fund at €30 million. The fund, which will be capped at €100 million, is the first in the Nordics and Baltics to focus exclusively on early-stage B2B industrial technology companies.

Innovestor’s new fund will offer pre-series A to series A investments to companies in the Nordics and Baltics that focus on Industry 4.0 and sectors benefiting from the fourth industrial revolution such as smart cities, cyber and physical security, and digital energy. 

“Our focus is extremely specific because we are aware that adjacent megatrends close to Industry 4.0 such as sustainability, connectivity, and data security will grow in the long-term future and require more support, and we will be at the forefront of that,” says Innovestor’s CEO, Tommi Äijälä.

According to Innovestor, the companies that will best fit the fund will already have product-market fit and traction, and are ready to scale internationally in order to introduce new technologies that combine physical, digital, and biological elements and will impact multiple disciplines, economies, and industries. 

It also states there’s a significant vacuum in their target market, in that many promising startups are at risk of going out of business despite having growth potential. It sees a massive funding gap for good Series-A companies that are being overlooked or underfunded due to the lack of investors in the market. Myron Seto, Partner at Innovestor, calls this a “crunch that creates opportunities to invest in comparatively de-risked but moderately valued companies“.

Within the Innovestor ecosystem, the company has witnessed disruption become an unavoidable challenge for industrial corporations.

“Industrial corporations know that disruption is coming and they must cooperate with agile partners or risk losing significant business. In addition to our capital, our unique network of founders, investors, advisors, talent, and corporate partners has shown us one of the best ways for corporations to compete on a global scale is to work alongside scaling companies that can provide new innovation,” says Pekka Viljakainen, Venture Partner at Innovestor.

The fund is backed by institutional investors such as Mandatum Life, family offices, and high net worth individuals. The fund will make its first investments as early as Q2 of 2020.

Today Stonly, the modern platform for interactive help content, today announces it has raised a seed investment of €3.2 million led by leading global venture capital firm Accel, plus investments from Eventbrite’s CTO Renaud Visage and PeopleDoc founders Jonathan Benhamou and Clément Buyse.

Founded in 2018, Stonly empowers content creators to make interactive, step-by-step guides that can be embedded anywhere help is needed. Businesses that use Stonly provide better customer service in less time by enabling their users to easily find the help they need and resolve issues themselves. Their Help Content solution allows customers to present support articles for their users in simple steps they’ll understand, and their Agent Guide solution guides customer support agents to the right resources and responses for each ticket, reducing the time spent per query.

Founder Alexis Fogel explains: “In 2020, companies cannot afford to support their customers with linear, static, one-size-fits-all articles built with tools imagined last century. Our interactive, step-by-step format is the next generation of help content and it takes the experience from frustrating to enjoyable.”

Stonly has quickly found traction with customer support teams, signing up businesses such as Devialet, Happn, Dashlane and Calendly. Dashlane has seen a 25% decrease in customer support tickets for their highest-volume issues using the product. 

On its integration with Stonly, Chams Ejjaouani, director of marketing, EMEA South at Zendesk said: “Modern service teams are increasingly seeking the tools to empower customers and agents with the right information to deliver a standout customer experience. Stonly’s innovative solution helps to deliver this, integrating with Zendesk to enable our customers to surface interactive support and agent productivity tools. We are proud to work with Stonly as both as an integration partner and as a participant in our Zendesk for Startups incubation program at Station F, in Paris.”

Already based in Paris and Kraków, Stonly is now expanding to the US with the launch of a New York office and the hire of David Rostan as Head of Revenue, including all of marketing and sales. Additionally, David joins Stonly from Calendly, where he was the VP of Sales and Marketing, overseeing tremendous growth during his time there. He will be rapidly growing the company in New York with marketing and customer success teams based in the city.

Luciana Lixandru, who led the investment for Accel and will be joining the board, said: “Alexis is a second-time founder and, with Dashlane already under his belt, exemplifies the new profile of ambitious repeat entrepreneurs in Europe. He, along with Krzysztof and the rest of the Stonly team, have achieved an impressive amount in the seven months since launch and will quickly build on their early success.”

Swedish startup AlgoDx, which focuses on supporting disease detection and prediction with machine learning algorithms, has closed a €600K seed round. The round was led by Nascent Invest, with participation from angel investors Fredrik Sjödin and Tomas Mora-Morrison, co-founder of Cambio Healthcare Systems.

Founded in 2018, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase efficiency and save time for healthcare professionals. Today, many healthcare processes require manual input and analyses, which is time consuming, expensive and leaving room for human errors. For example, in sepsis treatment, time factor is critical, as the cornerstones of intervention are early and appropriate antibiotics together with source control and fluid administration. Current detection methods for sepsis are incapable of early prediction. That’s where AlgoDx comes in. 

AlgoDx’s first product, ExPRESS, has been developed to autonomously predict sepsis in hospitalized patients using data from electronic healthcare records. Reliable early prediction can mean the difference between life and death for patients that develop sepsis.

“We invested in AlgoDx because we believe that the team has a strong competitive edge within machine learning and a profound understanding of the clinical validation required to bring products to market in areas with unmet medical need”, says Erik Gozzi, CEO at Nascent Invest.

The fresh funds will be used to further develop its first product ExPRESS, specifically by further scaling clinical validation and showing the benefits of autonomous sepsis risk monitoring in patients being treated at Intensive Care Units.

“This seed round will allow us to continue the clinical validation of our sepsis prediction algorithm as planned. We are very proud to be supported by investors with a commercial outlook and a long-term investment horizon”, says David Becedas, CEO at AlgoDx.

“We are at the commencement of a new age where machine learning approaches will enable earlier and more accurate detection and prediction of disease. The founding team at AlgoDx understands that clinical rigor is essential in order to bring machine learning solutions to market with integrations into electronic healthcare record systems”, says Tomas Mora-Morrison, who will also chair the company’s new Board.

Estonian company Timbeter, which is digitalising and bringing transparency to the forestry sector, has closed a seed round of approximately €920K. The round was led by TMT Investments and the Change Ventures, as well as being supported by EigenKapital, Toggl founders Ahti and Alari Aho, Contriber Ventures and Wiser.

Timbeter, founded in 2013, is a global industrial timber measurement, logistics and reporting platform. Timbeter’s precision forestry platform eliminates manual counting, measuring and tracking of timber assets, cutting measurement and documentation times by 10 and increasing accuracy by 5 times.

How does it work? Having built the world’s largest database of photometric measurements of roundwood, it can track timber assets in real time, down to individual shipments and piles throughout the forestry value chain. Compared to traditional methods, its algorithms use artificial intelligence to speed up forestry operations, raise transparency, increase employee safety and save resources. 

The startup’s approach is also contributing to combating illegal forestry activities, which continue to be a problem, both in terms of undermining responsible wood fiber products and harming the environment and populations in many parts of the world. By combining precision forestry, forest governance and legal trade, Timbeter’s solution is helping to create conditions for a more secure trade and prevent illegal logging.

Additionally, the company has already snapped up some major local and international clients, such as CMPC (Chile), International Paper (Brazil), Faber-Castell (Brazil), Siam Forestry Group (Thailand), Mekong Timber Plantations (Laos), Port Blakely (USA), SEQH (Australia), among others.

Anna-Greta Tsahkna, CEO of Timbeter, explained that the new financing round will help Timbeter expand its sales activities in the target markets, and also to develop a bridge between companies and governmental organizations, by reducing the sector’s administrative burden in insurance, tax and regulatory reporting. “By facilitating smooth digital data exchange between the government and companies, it is easier to ensure sustainable forest management and fight illegal logging”, said Tsahkna.

“We are very excited about this investment, because we see Timbeter’s precision forestry platform bringing similar dramatic increases in profitability, transparency and efficiency to the timber sector that precision agriculture platforms have delivered in farming,” said Yrjö Ojasaar, founder and partner of Change Ventures.