Talis today announces the first closing of its third and largest €164 million early-stage fund, focused on helping founders build disruptive, category-defining and enduring businesses. Led by equal partners Matus Maar, Thomas Williams and Kirill Tashilov, Talis was established on the fundamental belief that venture capital is a service business. A high-conviction, thesis-driven firm, Talis partners with just a handful of founders each year, committing substantial time in supporting every aspect of company building.
The new funds have allowed Talis to partner with three founding teams, including London-based credit security platform Bondaval and San Francisco-based carbon-negative textile company, Rubi Laboratories. It will continue to lead Seed & Series A rounds in Tech Infrastructure, Climate & Synbio, and Consumer Internet companies across UK, Europe and US.
Matus Maar, Managing Partner at Talis, says, “The tech industry is undergoing a moment of transformation, yet history’s proven well-supported visionaries and entrepreneurs flourish in such disruptive times as discontinuity drives opportunity. Talis’ latest fund – plus our absolute dedication to building deep relationships with those we invest in from the earliest stages – marks an important moment in finding the next generation of companies who’ll be category-definers of the future.”
Talis has invested over £250 million since its launch in 2012. Talis embraces the unconventional, investing with high conviction at Seed & Series A across UK, Europe and the US. Working hand in hand with extraordinary founders, they help build category-defining companies including Darktrace, Onfido, Ynsect, Pricefx, Seqera Labs, PortalOne, and Howl.
Kirill Tashilov, General Partner at Talis, says: “At Talis, we invest when we see the outlines of sustainable competitive advantage and potential for path dependence. As a result, we think more like biologists than physicists – we think of economic webs and complex adaptive systems more than we do of simple value chains. It enables us to identify the potential dominant teams and companies early in their journeys and help them build enduring businesses.”
Thomas Williams, General Partner at Talis, adds: “At Talis, we take a different approach to the fiscal recklessness and linear thinking that’s caused many in the last decade to ignore the core principles of company building and value creation. We know progress is cumulative in science and engineering but cyclical in finance and this time is no different – there is no such thing as good time or bad time to start a company, there are trade-offs. We are extremely excited to announce our new fund as we continue to partner with founders at the earliest stages of company building.”
Two-thirds of the partnership joined the firm as analysts, including Kirill Tashilov, who led Talis investments in firms including PortalOne, Seqera Labs, IMMO and Laced, and who has been made General Partner for the new fund. The investment team also includes Cecilia Manduca, recently promoted to Principal, Andre Libeaux as Associate and Ayman Fadil as Analyst.
