We partner up with Draper Esprit to provide €1bn+ to European entrepreneurs

An Update from the Earlybird Digital West Team

Today, we officially announce the strategic partnership with Draper Esprit to back European entrepreneurs from seed up to growth stages.

Two teams, complementary focus areas and one belief: A strong and genuine partnership to empower European entrepreneurs

We have known the team at Draper Esprit for many years and we share the same belief that European entrepreneurs have the ability to build significant global businesses of the future. In our opinion, this can only be reached through a competitive access to funding provided by respectively large pools of capital that enable investments across all development stages of a company. Driven by this fact, two very complementary partners decided to build a strong partnership based on trust and our aspiration to help promising tech startups in Europe with excellent teams and highly scalable business models by sharing deal flow, investment resources, expertise to co‐invest and providing globally competitive amounts of capital. Nevertheless, our Earlybird Digital West and the Draper Esprit team will continue to manage their respective funds and portfolios independently.

“We will be able to help European entrepreneurs scale their global ambitions even higher”

We have built a leading VC position in continental Europe, and Draper Esprit has an exceptionally strong position in the UK, Ireland and increasingly across Europe. Aside from that, we have the backing from mostly institutional private investors while Draper Esprit has managed very successfully to access public capital markets, funds which we can co‐invest alongside. Furthermore Earlybird invests predominantly in seed and early stages whereas Draper Esprit focuses on later and growth stages. All those facts create a truly complementary partnership!

Simon Cook, CEO and co‐founder of Draper Esprit, added in his official statement: “We have worked with the Earlybird partners as co‐investors and industry members for many years and have huge respect for the leading VC position they have built in Germany and across continental Europe. With our resources combined as genuine partners we will be able to help European entrepreneurs scale their global ambitions even higher […]”.

One of the most active venture capital partnerships in Europe

We are looking forward to working very closely with our highly regarded partners at Draper Esprit, even though our team will continue to operate independently from its existing offices in Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Istanbul. The Draper Esprit team will continue to operate from its existing offices in London, Dublin, Paris and Cambridge.

Our strategic partnership creates one of the most active venture capital partnerships in Europe deploying up to €200m a year from seed/early stage to late/growth stage technology companies. Our anticipated goal is to make 20–25 new deals a year by combining various pools of capital into the equivalent of a €1.3bn+ pool of venture capital and an active portfolio of, in aggregate, more than 100 high growth companies across Europe in our portfolios — one of Europe’s largest.

We are happy to welcome the Draper Esprit team as our new partners and look forward to productively working together in the future!

Your Earlybird Digital West Team.

For more information just check out our website www.earlybird.com or www.draperesprit.com