Dawn, one of Europe’s largest venture capital funds dedicated to B2B software and fintech, has closed the Dawn Capital Opportunities Fund at $125 million. The fund will enable the London-based firm to double down on investments in the most promising European tech companies in Dawn’s portfolio and elsewhere, with a specific focus on C-rounds and beyond.
The new fund, which is backed by institutional and family office investors, will enable Dawn to invest up to $70 million in European entrepreneurs that are building scalable, game-changing technology to solve the greatest tech challenges facing businesses today.
Europe is now increasingly the home of global tech category leaders which are turning down early M&A interest to focus on growth for longer. With the increased capital base, Dawn will stay relevant as a source of capital along the whole journey through to large M&A transactions and IPOs.
Dawn’s first two flagship earlier stage funds are both in the top 5% of global VC funds for their vintages. Dawn has backed some of Europe’s most successful technology founders of the past five years, from Peter Bauer and the team at Mimecast, which is today valued at $2.7bn, to Jacob de Geer, Magnus Nilsson and the team at iZettle, which exited to PayPal for $2.2bn. More recent investments include backing Felix Van de Maele and the team at Collibra, Belgium’s first unicorn, which is already in the new Opportunities Fund portfolio.
In addition to doubling down on its most successful investments to date, Dawn will also be looking to invest in other high-performing late-stage European tech companies to expand its portfolio.
Haakon Overli, General Partner at Dawn Capital, stated: “Europe has significant depth of tech talent, increasingly skilled entrepreneurs, and a growing back catalogue of success stories, many of which have been backed by Dawn. Our investors and the Dawn team felt real conviction around the concept of the Opportunities Fund as we were seeing exciting companies in our portfolio that want to run longer and be around as independent companies for years to come.”
He continued: “The new fund means we can support the next wave of success stories further through their journeys. We remain very grateful for the continuing support of our investors and are excited to continue working for our amazing founders who allowed us to reach this milestone.”
Dawn Capital was founded in 2007 by Norman Fiore and Haakon Overli, with Josh Bell promoted as a third General Partner in 2016. The rest of the highly talented team has grown with the opportunities in Europe, and now comprises over 10 people across 9 different nationalities, with many years of operating and investing experience. The Dawn Capital Opportunities Fund brings the firm’s total funds raised to $570 million making Dawn one of the largest VCs in Europe, and the largest specialist fund in the European ecosystem.
