Frontline’s 2021 in Review

Hello folks and congrats on making it to 2022! Things have been far from quiet here at Frontline despite a year that required resilience from everyone. We continued to thrive together as our team and the opportunities of the European market keep growing. Here’s a look at what we got up to in 2021 and where we’re headed in 2022.

We raised our €75M Seed Fund III

At the very start of Frontline back in 2012, it was painfully clear that European entrepreneurs lacked the infrastructure and support to build a global business out of Europe. Today, Europe rightfully finds itself on top-tier US investors’ target list, but global expansion remains a challenge.

Frontline closed its third seed fund in early 2021 to help companies solve that expansion challenge. And what timing, because 2021 was quite the year!

Frontline Seed welcomed 28 new companies

We continue to be amazed at the wealth of high quality companies coming across our desks, and we invested into 28 of them at pre-seed and seed. Companies came from every corner of Europe, including the Netherlands, France, Germany, Norway, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Croatia, and Portugal. We can’t wait to welcome our first Liechtensteinian startup in 2022!

We’ve kept our B2B focus, investing into themes we’re excited about for the future:

• Revolutionising labs, the lifeblood of scientific breakthroughs (Inniti, Overwatch Research)
• Bringing traditionally physical assets into the digital era (Shackle, Flexcar)
• Designing and manufacturing sustainable alternatives, from meat to chemicals (Symplicity, Dudechem)
• Solving tax and KYC questions for digital asset owners (Violet and more)
• Offering better financial products, infrastructure, and processes (Insify, Elucidate, Appital)
• Making data into a business superpower (Weld, Slight Tech, Conduktor)
• Creating tools for modern work (Humaans, Levro, Unleash, Akeero)

While we still have much further to go as a firm and as an industry, we’re proud to report that 23% of Seed III’s investments have a female founder, up from 6% in 2016 and compared to an average of just 9% for Europe overall. We’d love to see these numbers change, and we’re working on a number of fronts, including becoming certified to Diversity VC’s highest standard as a fund to continue to improve our own accountability and push our peers for change.

Frontline Growth’s portfolio reached a combined $20B in value

In 2020, we launched Frontline Growth, a $70m growth-stage fund to help CEO’s with European expansion. Focused on US based, IPO-track software businesses, we saw an opportunity to deliver value by bringing our unique operating expertise to help companies accelerate growth from the US into Europe.

Research from Frontline Growth principal Jamie showed that a well executed European expansion strategy can lift IPO valuation by up to 55% and yet, even the best global businesses often made mistakes in the execution of this very significant inflection point.

Frontline Growth’s leaders Stephen (early exec at Twitter and Google) and Brennan (former exec at Airtable, SurveyMonkey, Yammer and Google) experienced those challenges firsthand, having navigated the US to Europe expansion journey from a senior operator’s perspective. Their message to US entrepreneurs is simple; we will co-invest into your business and by taking our cheque, you will have unrivaled experience expanding into Europe, from developing your go-to-market strategy, to hiring world-class talent and attacking the right markets at the right time. With such a unique offering, the portfolio already includes amazing companies such as Greenhouse, TripActions, People.ai, Clearco, Qualio, Lattice, and Attentive, and in 2021 we were excited to welcome multiple new investments, including DroneDeploy, Kandji, Forethought, and Lob.

We’ve now co-invested alongside leading VC firms including Sequoia, Coatue, Emergence, Andreessen, Benchmark, Iconiq and Lightspeed. And we’re particularly proud to work with incredible founders, whose companies now represent a combined value of nearly $20B.

Frontline Seed’s portfolio raised a collective $500M in a red-hot European market

2021 saw Europe join the tech conversation in a big way, and we saw the effects at Frontline. We know we’re not alone in this, but taking stock of our stats has really shown a step change in pace. In our 2018 wrap up, we boasted about a 4–6 week timeline from inbox to term sheet….times have changed!

• Our quickest turnaround from first meeting to term sheet was 24 hours.
• Our quickest exit from a new position was 35 days.
• The quickest portfolio company Series A funding was 5 months after the seed round closed.
• Our biggest seed to Series A mark up was 7x.
• Our seed portfolio raised $500m in follow-on funding, led by funds including Accel, Blossom, Tiger, Molten, Hedosophia, Highland and NEA, amongst others. We are lucky to have co-invested alongside each of you and look forward to deeper future partnerships.
• Boxever’s customer data platform was acquired by Sitecore in February 2021 as they recognized it for its innovative technology and strong business fundamentals.
• And it would be unrealistic to shout about the good without acknowledging the less good. We’ve said goodbye to two companies in our portfolio as they wind down operations. The highs and lows are all part of the joy of startups.

And importantly, we welcomed 4 new team members!

2021 was a big year for our small team of humans. We welcomed Zoë Chambers joining as Partner and celebrated Finn Murphy’s promotion to Partner, both on the Frontline Seed team. If anyone wants to bring their dogs along to a pitch, you’ll have a very compliant audience in Zoë & Finn.

We’ve packed out our London office with Lauren Kang joining the Seed team from the sunny climes of LA and Ruth Sheridan joining the Growth team. We’ve welcomed the fantastic David Clarke as a Venture Partner, whose time as Workday’s CTO is proving hugely beneficial to us all. And we’re hiring for a Marketing Associate if you or someone you know would like to be our next new addition!

Like the rest of the world, we’ve faced our share of challenges in 2021. We’re extremely proud of the resilience the team has shown (and we have truly loved the small snippets of time together in real life). Not to be put off by intermittent lock-downs, needing 14 excel spreadsheets to travel, and making 65 individual transactions happen in 12 short months, the team achieved some brilliant individual feats including coming together to make a highly edible pasta.

• Lauren mentored founders across 5 different accelerators, predominantly from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Elaine supported The Ideas Academy, dedicated to backing social enterprise projects in Ireland.
• And Kate oversaw a real commitment to disability inclusion at Frontline as well as in her committee role and subsequent launch of the disAbility Legal Network to promote equal opportunities within the Irish legal industry.

We’re grateful for our 2021 and excited to be back in 2022, hungry to meet fantastic entrepreneurs (if that’s you, please say hello), and, of course, to host an even harder pub quiz. Hoping to share an in-person hug next time we meet!

🧡 Team Frontline 🧡