Closing its second fund, DutchFounders is making more than €62 million available for early-stage marketplaces and so-called marketplace enablers to fuel a growing European sector.
Based in Amsterdam, DutchFounders specialise in companies and marketplace with strong network effects. Since launching in 2018, the fund has helped boost 16 companies and has almost €100 million assets under management.
Founded by experienced entrepreneurs behind the likes of WeTransfer, Treatwell and Just Eat, the DutchFounders has backed the likes of digital freight forwarder Shypple and employee benefit platform YourCampus. This new fund comes just 1.5 years after the first fund, marking the extent of up-and-coming talent in European marketplaces.
The Amsterdam-based VC noticed that many supply chains and B2B business operations remained offline. Especially in the B2B domain, many people still relied on legacy-like systems and analogue processes to manage their logistics or procurement. Now, DutchFounders has set out to back founders building marketplaces that truly disrupt these processes or companies that completely rethink supply chains.
Laurens Groenendijk, founding partner at the fund commented that they are looking for companies that are “rerouting supply and demand whilst displacing the middleman”
Over 70% of the fund is earmarked for European companies with the fund particularly seeking out marketplaces that facilitate and embed more significant parts of the value chain, such as payments and logistics. That includes technologies that enable frictionless transactions, such as fintech solutions or web3 applications.
The DutchFounders team comes with extensive entrepreneurial expertise. Therefore, the fund offers more than funding – it also offers access to profound knowledge. The founders have all seen the ups and downs of running a business and alongside funding can support with PR, sustainability, HR and product support, becoming the 1-stop-shop for founders in the pre-seed and seed stage.
Laurens Groenendijk said: “We know from experience what it’s like to deal with many different stakeholders and overcome early-stage growth pains. Starting a company is easy; building a company is something else. We believe in intense mentoring, from ideation to your series A, that’s why we invest early on and go all-in. We might be unorthodox, but we truly understand the playing field.”
