2022: A Year in Review at Day One Capital
2022 was an unusual year due to well-known external factors such as the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, stock market correction, and high inflation, to name a few. However, the investment levels in Europe only slightly missed the record highs of 2021 and doubled compared to 2020.
At Day One Capital we had an exciting time as we started to focus on not only making new investments but helping our existing portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds. It was a successful year on both fronts, as 6 of our portfolio companies raised a follow-on round — and we invested in 3 new companies. Another highlights were the two exits from our seed fund in the second half of the year.
Portfolio highlights
We invested in 3 new companies in 2022, which grew our portfolio to 18 active portfolio companies. They are spread across 10 countries in the CEE region. We took the lead role in all three new investments.
In June, we led Webshippy’s EUR 4 million Series A round. They own the whole process of the e-commerce experience after clicking the “buy” button by providing highly efficient and automated services via their proprietary Warehouse Management and Fulfillment software, dark store infrastructure and dropshipping marketplace.
By the end of the summer, we closed Turbine AI’s USD 3 million pre-series A round, which was quickly followed by a USD 15 million Series A round completed in November. Turbine’s platform, the Simulated Cell™, is able to uncover novel biological insights across both new and known targets. This allows them to provide a fresh biological context, define responsive patient populations and design drug combination approaches that diminish resistance — faster and with increased efficiency.
In November, we led the EUR 1,25 million Seed round of Volteum, run by four ambitious founders who recently graduated from Techstars. They aim to help EV Fleet operators to manage and plan their routes and energy needs, thus speeding up the transition to electric vehicles.
As our portfolio started to mature, we had 6 follow-on rounds, including Recart, Spaceflow, Material Exchange, Miros, Party.space and Orqa.
The most notable might be Material Exchange’s EUR 25 million Series A round led by Molten Ventures in Q1. We expect to see more follow-on rounds like this in 2023.
We had a busy summer: besides the two new investments, we also had a successful exit, as Sunrise Medical, the world leader in advanced assistive mobility solutions, acquired NOW Technologies.
In late Autumn, we reached a major milestone in the history of Day One Capital, when Stellantis announced the acquisition of AImotive, a self-driving car software company. The deal is the largest exit since 2010 in the Hungarian start-up scene. We have supported AImotive since 2015 as the first institutional investor (They were called ADASWorks back then.)
Day One Community
Beyond investments and exits, we aim to be a platform supporting our founders in any way we can. In this spirit, we organized our first and second Founders Club gatherings this year, each with close to a hundred guests. These events served as an excellent opportunity for the founders to take a break from their everyday duties and meet with their peers tackling similar challenges.
With our active portfolio of 20 companies, we conducted our second Salary Survey to give a strong benchmark regarding team structure and compensation. You can find the publicly available version here.
In summary, 2022 was a challenging but gratifying year for Day One Capital. We couldn’t be more proud of our portfolio founders for managing the market turbulence and bringing home excellent results every month, quarter and year. We are pleased to be on this journey with them.
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