2021: A Year in Review at Day One Capital
2021 was a record year for the European VC scene, and the CEE region also saw some records shattered. According to the latest Atomico report, the CEE region in 2021 was on a pace to attract 2.3x more investments than it did in 2019, the prior all-time high year.
We at Day One Capital also had a record year, as we significantly expanded our footprint across the region and had the privilege to meet and start supporting some exceptional founders along their journey. With all these new records, 2021 may seem like an easy year, but we should not forget about the challenges and difficulties we all face — even today. At Day One Capital, we feel incredibly grateful to be able to support our entrepreneurs, who are the real changemakers.
Let’s dive into last year’s results and replay some of our notable highlights!
Investment Highlights
Our portfolio grew significantly last year, and currently consists of 20 active companies in 10 countries across the CEE region. The Day One team invested in eight new companies during last year: we closed 50% of the deals in the last third of 2021, a great example of accelerating market velocities. Speaking of such market velocities, we also tried to cope with the new reality of tight decision-making windows, earning our team a new record of conducting a whole investment decision process from first meet to term sheet in just under a week. Each of these eight companies come from different countries of the broader CEE region, out of which four countries ( Estonia, Ukraine, Turkey, North Macedonia) were novel investment territories for our current Fund. Besides the investments, we had the privilege to join forces with new co-investors.
In our first Estonian investment, Tera Ventures led the seed round of Find.Fashion, a visual search company, aiming to disrupt how we browse and shop using our mobile phones.
We led the pre-seed round of Howitzer, a young and ambitious team from North Macedonia, bringing a fresh and highly effective approach to direct marketing. They recognize Reddit as a powerful alternative for reaching people based on their interests to the ever saturated Facebook-Google duopoly.
We invested with 500 Istanbul in Synnada.ai, a company that delivers a self-contained ML model that discovers anomalies from a complex data stream, helps users generate accurate alerts and continuously monitors the health of these alerts by learning from user feedback.
In the summer, we concluded our first investment in Ukraine alongside with TA Ventures. Our new portfolio company Party.Space is deeply involved in the Web3 space.
The following map summarizes our investment activities more visually:
The summer saw our first exit when Swiss Post acquired a majority stake in Tresorit, a Hungarian-Swiss company, which offers encrypted, cloud-based file sharing and collaboration services.
Another highlight of the Day One portfolio is Animoca Brands, where we became shareholders following the acquisition of our former portfolio company GAMEE by Amioca Brands in 2020. Animoca Brands is not only an early advocate of NFTs and blockchain based games, but it is also a major investor in the Web3 space holding significant stake in companies like Sandbox, Opensea and Sky Mavis (maker of Axie Infinity). Since the GAMEE deal, the company went on to raise over $ 200 M in two funding rounds, with the latest round being at a valuation of $ 2.2B+
On a more personal note
2021 brought two great people aboard: Milan, who comes from a Consulting and Finance background, joined in early April as an Associate. Sári joined in early September as a Project Manager, and she comes from a Venture Capital and Innovation Management background. By the way, we keep growing, looking for our newest team member to join Day One Capital.
2021 also gave birth to Day One’s very own Medium publication, where you are currently reading this post and can read other interesting articles from our Team about our recent investments. We plan to roll out even more exciting content soon from now on, so be sure to follow us and stay tuned.
All in all, 2021 was a very challenging year with compelling market dynamics and great opportunities, and we cannot be more excited to find out what 2022 holds for us and for the CEE startup ecosystem.
