Polish Inovo VC Launches €100M fund for CEE Startups
• Polish Inovo VC announced its third fund worth €100M and over 50 percent of capital already committed
• The third fund will provide early-stage funding, with first ticket ranging from €500K up €4M
• Inovo looks to invest in a total of 20 to 30 companies from Poland and the CEE
Inovo’s third fund will continue the company’s mission of identifying and nurturing outstanding founders of tech companies from Central and Eastern Europe and supporting them in conquering international markets.
The fund aims to invest in a total of 20-30 companies, with a single investment ticket ranging from €500K up to €4M, from pre-seed to Series B rounds.
The first fund, in its exit phase, has already seen a 3x return of allocated capital, while the second fund is still active, but only takes parts in the follow-on funding rounds of its existing investments, the VC said in a press release.
The team led by partners Tomasz Swieboda, Michał Rokosz, and Maciej Małysz has already backed over 30 companies, out of which six already have a valuation of over €100M.
Inovo VC already participated in investment rounds led by notable funds, like a16z, Google’s Gradient Ventures, Insight Partners, Point Nine, or Tiger Global Management.
“We are looking for companies conquering global markets that can grow to $100 million in revenue in just a few years. We have managed to become a fund of choice for Polish founders and we want to replicate that in the other CEE countries, as we already see we can be as helpful to those founders as we are to the ones from Poland,” Michał Rokosz, Partner at Inovo VC said in a statement.
What makes Inovo interested in CEE startups?
Sixty percent of Inovo’s capital will be invested in Polish tech startups, and the remaining forty percent in companies from other countries of the CEE region. With this, Inovo VC looks to play a significant role in the development of the Polish startup ecosystem.
Polish venture capital investments have seen a growth of 22.6x from 2018 to 2021, reaching a total value of €792M last year. The total value of VC investments in the first six months of 2022 in Poland is €448M, with 93 transactions involving 111 funds, according to the reports from PFR Ventures.
“Over the last 7 years we’ve seen the region growing at an exceptional pace, which results in the rise of the number of funding rounds and in an even faster rise of startup valuations at every stage of their development. We are sure that the CEE region will raise at least ten new unicorns in the upcoming 5 years. With our new fund we want to help make that happen,” says Tomasz Swieboda, partner at Inovo VC.
The fund is also interested to invest in startups from Western Balkans countries, Inovo VC tells The Recursive.
“We have a geo focus, invest in startups all over Central and Eastern Europe, and founders from this region who are building startups anywhere in the world. The CEE region includes the following countries: Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Latvia, Kosovo, Estonia, Montenegro,” Inovo VC points out.
There is also an increasing interest from international investors in CEE-founded companies, Maciej Małysz added.
“Two third of our portfolio companies managed to raise follow-on rounds with top-tier international VCs. We want to strengthen the links between the CEE region and the global VC ecosystem even more. So far, we have co-invested with over 70 international funds and we are convinced this number will grow at a fast pace,” Małysz said.
Inovo VC’s current portfolio includes companies such as AllSet –a pick-up or dine-in food marketplace operating in the US market, Archbee – a developers’ collaboration tool, Booksy – a SaaS-enabled marketplace for beauty services, Infermedica – an AI-powered technology for preliminary medical diagnosis and triage, Packhelp – a custom-made packaging producer, Preply – a global language learning marketplace, connecting tutors with students, Spacelift – a Terraform-compatible CI/CD platform for infra-as-code, Tidio – live chat, chatbot and mailing solutions for micro-businesses, and Zowie – a self-learning AI chatbot automating customer service for enterprise clients.
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