There is a fight going on all the way down into the South Eastern region.
From Eastonia and Poland all the way down to Greece and Turkey, investors such as Inovo, Credo, LauncHUB, Vitosha, Venture Friends, Marathon VC, are all looking for early-stage startups.
Last year, LAUNCHub Ventures headed towards the 70 million for its new fund, and that's when the gun was fired. A $30 million fund was raised by the company. When Venture Friends in Athens raised a 100 million dollar fund.
After 15 years, what happened to Western European VCs started to happen to Central and Eastern VCs. For heaven's sake, they have their tech mediaecosystem now.
500 Istanbul, formerly a fund associated with 500 Global in San Franciso, has launched a 70 million euro fund and is now called 500 Emerging Europe.
Turkey, Central Europe, and the Baltics will be included in the fund. Pre-seed and seed rounds with first tickets as high as 2m will be invested by the fund. Additional investments in CEE and Baltics are in the works, as the fund has made 14 investments over the last year.
500 Istanbul started with a $10.5 million fund and invested in 40 companies from Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine and Poland. A software training platform out of Hungary is one of the investments.
It says its portfolio companies have raised more than one billion dollars in follow-on funding.
In an interview with me, General Partner Enis Hulli said that they compete with UK funds that do pan- European investing because they love doing $1 million checks at idea stage to top tier founders. We have an American brand and network, global offices in 20 locations, portfolio in 70 countries.
As the past fades, having US connections are less interesting as other VCs in the region will make their own connections.
It is possible that 500 Emerging Europe will have to drop the "500" from its name in the near future.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
