In a Nutshell
- Sofia-based BrightCap Ventures has completed the first close of its new fund, targeting €60М.
- The new capital will be invested in founders from Southeastern Europe to help them scale into Western European and US markets.
- The ticket size will be between €0.4M to €3M, aimed at pre-seed and seed stages.
Get the Details
BrightCap’s Fund I portfolio has achieved 5 successful exits out of 22 investments. It has raised over $150M in follow-on capital.
Their investments include storage collaboration platform LucidLink, which recently raised a $75M Series C, the IT infrastructure automation company Pliant, which was recently acquired by IBM, earlier this year, as well as the pioneer in scalable AI for 3D spatial data Enview, acquired by Matterport.
The fund will prioritize three key sectors: Future of Work, Digital Health, and Fintech.
Why It Matters
BrightCap’s current aim is to cover a larger geographic area, support with bigger investments and participate in more follow-on rounds, shared representative’s for The Recursive.
According to their words, “the tech talent is world-class and founders are more efficient with the capital they raise”. McKinsey study shows that Eastern and Southern European B2B startups, in particular, enjoy the highest rates of efficiency as they surpass US startups with 5 times more revenue per equity funding.
An interesting fact is that BrightCap II is a VC with a female majority among its General Partners. Diana Stefanova joins the team as a full time partner after 16 years at VMware.
The fund combines public capital from the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF), managed by the EIF, as well as more than 30% private capital from new and existing individual and corporate investors.
In Their Own Words
“We are thrilled to continue partnering with incredible entrepreneurs in our region and from the diaspora. The first few investments from Fund II are already in the closing stages and we cannot wait to share what we’ve been working on once they are finalized,” shared Elina Halatcheva.
Georgi Mitov added: “BrightCap II is an exciting new step for us – larger scale fund with a wider scope and even greater ambitions than our first. At the same time, our philosophy of working with deeply technical founders with domain expertise and global reach from day one hasn’t changed. It keeps us grounded in the AI era where opportunities seem everywhere, but lasting technology winners can be built by few.”
“The tech industry is facing a pivotal moment. With BrightCap II, we have the opportunity to capture the next generation of category-defining companies from our region and nurture them to success. I look forward to bringing my tech enterprise experience in support of SEE startups to scale their businesses and reach global markets,” concludes Diana Stefanova.
