In a Nutshell
- PFR Ventures, Poland’s Development Financial Institution, that provides capital to venture capital and private equity funds, has invested in 4 new early-stage VC funds, including 24Ventures, Digital Ocean Ventures Starter, Hard2beat, and Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder.
- The goal is to support innovative companies at the earliest stage of their development.
Central Europe’s largest fund manager developing the VC and PE market ecosystem in Poland
PFR Ventures is a public manager of funds of funds, a part of the Polish Development Fund (PFR). It invests in venture capital and private equity vehicles, together with private investors, business angels and corporations.
In 2023, 137 out of the 438 deals were investments involving PFR Ventures fund in Poland, contributing around 25% of the funding to innovative enterprises.
“PFR Ventures is the largest fund manager in Central and Eastern Europe, providing capital to over 80 VC and PE funds. They support Polish companies at various stage of development, from innovative seed projects to traditional companies already operating internationally. We use both EU funds and our own capital for financing. We plan to increase our involvement in this area and work on further developing the VC and PE market ecosystem in Poland,” says Piotr Matczuk, President of the Management Board at the Polish Development Fund.
Investing in four new VC funds
PFR Ventures has announced investments in four new early-stage VC funds: 24Ventures, Digital Ocean Ventures Starter, Hard2beat, and Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder with a focus on supporting early-stage innovative companies. The total capitalization of the funds exceeds PLN 250M (€58.4M), with PFR Ventures contributing PLN 200M (€46.7M).
The investment programs are backed by the Polish Development Fund’s budget and European Union capital, including European Funds for a Modern Economy.
Supporting the growth of Polish early-stage companies
All four funds will invest in companies until the end of 2029, and the divestment period will last an additional four years. The program provides capital for venture capital funds with an investment ticket of up to PLN 5M (approx. €1.16M).
“In the last few years almost 1K Polish companies raised pre-seed/seed funding. Some of them have already managed to attract new investors. This is a new wave of Polish entrepreneurs who started their business and didn’t have to worry about lack of funding as in previous years; there were almost 50+ active local VCs. I think this is one of the biggest challenges at the same time: for these companies to develop further and the opportunity, because never before has the Polish market had such a great batch of seed companies,” shared Maciej Ćwikiewicz, CEO of PFR Ventures, previously for The Recursive.
PFR supporting the following VCs
- Hard2beat Fund launched with 84M PLN capital (€19.7), with 23.4M PLN coming from 30 private investors and 56.5M PLN from PFR Ventures.
- The fund’s team also contributed an additional 4.1M PLN (€1M).
- The plan to invest in more than 20 companies at the pre-seed and seed stages.
- Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder VC II has launched with a capitalization of over 80M PLN (€18.76), utilizing funds from the PFR and private investors.
- The strategy is to invest in approximately 30 startups in areas such as AI, SaaS, Marketplace, CleanTech, EdTech, MedTech, and Cybersecurity, at the pre-seed and seed stages, ultimately exceeding PLN 100 million in capitalization.
- Digital Ocean Ventures Starter, a venture capital fund focusing on pre-seed FinTech and AI-driven Digital Transformation startups in Poland, has announced its second closing.
- The fund is raising an additional 1.8M PLN (€420K) in this round.
- This follows a successful first closing, where 36M PLN (€8.43M) was raised, including 29 million PLN (€6.8M) from PFR Ventures.
