The Sofia-based pre-seed and seed venture capital firm Eleven Ventures makes the final closing of its Eleven III €60M fund. The news comes only three months after the announcement for the first closing at the end of October 2021.
The size of the fund is tenfold the size of its previous fund, thus allowing Eleven Ventures to expand its investment focus to regional markets. Eleven Fund III is backed by many of the previous public and private investors, including the European Investment Fund (EIF), and over 60 individual investors, entrepreneurs, and executives with international experience. Besides being capital contributors, the Limited Partners of the fund will add value to portfolio companies by offering them follow-on funding, mentoring, support, and network access.
“We’re trying to inspire the local entrepreneurial community to look beyond the region’s ecosystem and have more daring aspirations. It is incredible to see that the once early-stage founders, currently running mature businesses, are becoming investors in our fund and now supporting the next generation of up-and-coming entrepreneurs to help them become even more successful. The hope is that, by doing so, every subsequent success will be a bit bigger than the one before. Eventually, it will be a factory for successful growth,” Ivalyo Simov, founding partner at Eleven Ventures, comments in the press release.
Strategy, Target Verticals, and positioning in the regional VC ecosystem
Here is a summary of “All you need to know about Eleven III Fund” if a SEE founder.
- The new fund will stretch beyond the local ecosystem and will eye tech pre-seed and seed startups from the whole SEE ecosystem.
- The investment term of the fund is 4-5 years, while its lifecycle is 10 years.
- Five target technology verticals – Fintech, Healthcare, Future of Food, Future of Work, and Ecomtech (e-commerce technology). With such an investment focus, Eleven Fund III differentiates from other regional early-stage funds that are usually industry agnostic.
- Ticket sizes will reach up to €1M and there will be more opportunities for follow-on rounds (between €2.5M and €3M).
- The percentage of equity may also increase to 15% from the previous 10-12%.
The investments of Eleven Fund III
Throughout 2021, Eleven Ventures made seven investments, all of which were financed by the new fund. These were the rounds of the Romanian e-fulfillment startup Frisbo, the digital marketing platform ProductLead, the agency-client workflow platform SuperOkay, the Greek molecular diagnostics device Biopix, the Bulgarian agile financial budgeting tool PlanDelta, the softs skills VR training startup Metasim, and the AI app for neurodiverse individuals BeMe.
In a previous interview for The Recursive, Simov has shared that the main deal flow is expected to come from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece. The goal of Eleven III is to make around 7- 8 investments per year.
