New Venture Capital for Startups
Together with Speedinvest, Pioneers is pushing Austria’s venture capital (VC) industry to the next level. After only five months of fundraising, we are more than happy to announce the first closing of the Speedinvest 2 fund, in which Pioneers is a major stakeholder and partner. EUR58 million have already been committed in investments. Needless to say, the original goal of €25 million in a first round was slightly exceeded. The second and final closing of the fund will take place in September 2015 – at that point the fund is expected to have a total volume of around €70 million, although an even higher number is not unrealistic. Startups will receive funding as of today – the first four investments will be made public in the upcoming weeks!
The Leading Seed Fund in CEE
Speedinvest 2 will focus on seed and early stage investments with an average ticket size of €500k. The size of the fund allows for follow-on investments of up to €3 million – a significant and certainly necessary next step for Europe’s startup scene, which will fuel growth in the region of Central Eastern Europe and especially Austria. More than 50 percent of the fund’s investments are planned to take place outside of Austria. Pioneers will specifically be in charge of the fund’s micro-investment arm: investments of €20k to €100k. Deal flow will certainly be fostered through Pioneers’ international network and events. The entire fund will have a very strong focus on Fintech and Deep Tech. There will be a hardware focus in particular – but certainly not exclusively – the fields of robotics, IoT, and wearables.
The Faces Behind the Fund
Since we love numbers, we want to share another impressive statistic: €51 million – that is 87% of the current volume of the fund – were committed by private individuals. More than 90 private investors, entrepreneurs and business angels have committed funds to Speedinvest 2, including Johann “Hansi” Hansmann – Austria’s most prominent Business Angel (and also Pioneers’ lead investor) as well as established startups out of the Austrian ecosystem like Paysafecard, Gentics, Wikidocs, Blue Tomato, Dynatrace and Runtastic.
How did Speedinvest and Pioneers manage to raised the largest fund in Austria’s VC history in less than 5 months? All these nitty-gritty details will be revealed at PioneersVienna, on 3 March 2015.
