In a nutshell:
- Czech Purple Ventures is launching a second fund, estimated at €40M.
- They will focus on startups from the CEE region with teams in the EU.
- The ticket size will be from €250K to 750K.
Their background story:
Purple Ventures’ Fund I was launched in 2018, in the amount of €15M. Purple Ventures is focused on backing startups in the pre-seed and seed stage.
Purple Ventures has supported over twenty companies in six years. A few of them are CEE startups such as Hedepy, Tatum, Choice and Kardi AI.
The second fund will be opened to external investors, unlike the first one. Their strategy involves investing in emerging segments such as Digital Health, SaaS, EnergyTech, Creator Economy, Security, EduTech, or E-commerce. Deep Tech or IoT are also of interest as co-investments. Purple Ventures will invest the first €14M this year, while the rest is going to be collected within the next two years.
According to the investors, the current economic cycle presents an opportunity to invest in innovative startups with potentially healthy returns within 5 to 7 years. Moreover, CEE is among the world’s top engineering hubs, reliable to fuel tech growth. With the newly established fund, Purple Ventures will continue offering guidance to the startup founders, acting as mentors and advisors. The first exits are planned after 2028.
In their own words:
“In the past six years, we have been able to identify a number of interesting companies. But we can clearly see that the potential of the market is many times greater and that with the help of external finance we can achieve many more interesting opportunities,” shared co-founder and managing partner of Purple Ventures, Jan Staněk.