Sofia-based venture capital firm LAUNCHub Ventures has announced the second closing of its new, CEE-oriented fund.
IFC, part of the World Bank, has committed €15M and will co-invest in LAUNCHub Ventures portfolio companies up to another €15M. In addition to IFC, the VC firm has attracted supplementary commitments from private individuals from Bulgaria and the SEE region.
“We are particularly excited to have the support of a large community of founders and entrepreneurs” adds Stephane Gantchev, partner at LAUNCHub Ventures. “We’ve attracted as investors more than 20 successful founders from Bulgaria and the region who have committed €5M+ in this new fund, and a large part of them are successful founders who have formerly raised funding from LAUNCHub Ventures. This is a great sign of recognition and mutual respect, and we are happy to continue to collaborate together.”
With these latest capital commitments, LAUNCHub Ventures’s third fund has now almost reached its original target size of €70M. Part of the money will be allocated for first-time investments in 25 Seed/ Series A startups from Central and Eastern Europe, with the rest being reserved for follow-on rounds in portfolio companies. The standard ticket size is between €500K and €2M.
Several companies with roots in Eastern Europe have already benefited from the new fund. These count Greek ferry booking platform FerryHopper, Romanian fintech digital infrastructure provider FintechOS, Latvian developer of robotic cameras for real estate Giraffe360, and online community automation startup Orbiit, which has a Bulgarian co-founder.
LAUNCHub Ventures’ previous investments have also generated good traction in 2021 – the first half of the year counts two exits, two Series B rounds of portfolio companies and more big news to be announced soon. Find out more about these deals on the links below.
US-Bulgarian OKR platform Gtmhub closes a $30M Series B round
LeanIX acquires SaaS management provider with Slovenian roots
