European Seed Funding to end 2020 with a bang 💥
A bit of a 'Funding Frenzy' this December, with lots of large seed rounds across the continent.
🎄Merry Christmas! 🎄
This will probably be the last edition before festivities begin, so please have a safe and happy holiday, wherever you are.
Looking through the data this week, it seems that European early-stage funding has begun to return to ‘normal’ levels.
I stopped publishing weekly editions during the pandemic as there weren’t enough deals to report on, but recent volumes have really bounced back (so maybe another edition next week).
Over Christmas, I will have a dig into the data, but seemingly Seed rounds are trending larger. In today’s edition, you’ll see the smallest round of around $500k with the largest reaching over $11m - a bit of a spread.
Aside from UK, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine and Sweden, there were lots of other great rounds announced across France, Finland and Spain - but we can only cover so many.
Enjoy reading, and please be sure to spread the word!
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Raised: $6.6m (Seed)
Description: Agora recently emerged from Stealth, launching the AGORA app which allows beauty fans to monetise their talent by creating and sharing video content that links directly to products from their favourite beauty brands.
Investors: Draper Espirit, Lakestar and Angel Capital Management.
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Description: Quell, part of YC20, delivers a virtual fitness world offering a unique experience of intense workout while gaming to achieve fitness goals.
Investors: Khosla Ventures, Tencent Holdings, Naval Ravikant, Heartcore Capital, JamJar Investments, Social Impact Capital and others.
Raised: $2.6m (Seed)
Description: Cosmos Video is a virtual venue platform that allows people to work, hang out and socialize together, in a Haribo-hotel/Club Penguin-esque manner. Techcrunch has more here.
Investors: LocalGlobe, Entrepreneur First as well as Angels from AngelList and Citymapper.
Raised: $2.3m (Seed)
Description: Contingent is an enterprise supplier risk and resilience platform. They offer users the ability to collect, manage and monitor their supplier data.
Investors: Seedcamp, Connect Ventures and others.
Raised: $1m (Pre-Seed)
Description: Dorm are building a new education system for the passion economy, beginning with an audio learning app that aggregates and curates the world's podcasting content.
Investors: RLC Ventures, Plug and Play, Social Starts, The Fund, Playfair Capital and others.
Raised: $500k (Pre-Seed)
Description: Crowd Data Systems (CDS) offers a new approach to treasury management.
Investors: RLC Ventures, Force Over Mass and Ascension Ventures.
🇩🇪 Germany
Raised: $11m (Seed)
Description: Wonder is an online virtual platform, with a bit of a twist on the traditional format. Guests can see who is speaking to whom and they move their avatars around with their mouse. To join a conversation, they move closer. To leave it, they move away.
Investors: EQT Ventures and BlueYard Capital.
Raised: $2.5m (Seed)
Description: Arthur is an Enterprise VR solution set in a virtual office setting that enables teams to meet, collaborate and work. Check out the video on their website.
Investors: Draper Associates
🇹🇷 Turkey
Raised: $6m (Seed)
Description: Bigger Games is a Casual Games studio based in Istanbul. The company was founded by three former team members of Peak Games, the game developer acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion in 2020.
Investors: Index Ventures, David Helgason (Founder of Unity), Play Ventures and others.
🇺🇦 Ukraine
Raised: $5.5m (Seed)
Description: Reface is an AI-powered app where people can swap faces in the videos, GIFs and images in just a few seconds.
Investors: Andreesen Horowitz and TQ Ventures.
🇸🇪 Sweden
Raised: $3.6m (Seed)
Description: Curb Food is a Curb Food is a delivery-first dark kitchen provider. Sifted has more here.
Investors: EQT Ventures.