Fundraising? Find your next investor here 🕵️♀️
A database of every VC that has invested into European edtech
You might think that European edtech founders have it tough. Investors have been traditionally sceptical of education, and when they do invest it is usually in the US and Asia.
Don’t be fooled. There is significant interest from venture capital in Europe, too. More than 500 VCs have invested in European edtech since 2010, and in 2018, the amount invested was over $1bn. Local generalist investors such as Kindred Capital, Octopus Ventures and Local Globe are participating, as well as prominent US-based investors like Benchmark, Founders Fund and Bessemer Venture Partners.
However, unless you’ve tracked every edtech investment in the past decade, constructing a long-list of investors can be a challenge. How do you identify which investors are open to investing in education, invest at your stage, and are active in Europe?
We have built a free tool to serve exactly this purpose — we call it the Investor Identifier. A database of every VC that has put money into an EU-based edtech startup since 2010. Find the investors that are the best fit for you, your business and your round.
To find your next investor, click here.
Fundraising is often a time-consuming process that takes a founder away from the day-to-day running of their business. We hope this tool makes the fundraising process more efficient, particularly at the initial stage of your campaign. More information on the Investor Identifier can be found below. Enjoy, and do tell us what you think of it.
📍Key Information
- Stage classification:
- Pre-seed < $1m
- Seed = $1–4m
- Series A = $4–15m
- Series B+ > $15m - Stage is only a reflection of the edtech deals an investor has done and we have captured, it does not take into account other deals they have participated in or what they self-report.
- Click on ‘bit.ly/founderintro’ to request an intro to a founder in their portfolio.
- The database is best viewed on desktop, not mobile.
👩🔬 Method
- We record every deal where an investment has been made into a Europe-based edtech company, including which investors participated.
- To compile this information on an ongoing basis we review over 200 sources.
- The Investor Identifier is updated every month. The update includes data from the month previous. I.e., at the end of July, we upload information for June.
- We classify pre-seed, seed, Series A, series B+ by the size of the round, not how it is originally reported. Whilst this is crude, it is the most efficient way to tag investors consistently.
- We have categorised all rounds above $15m as ‘Series B+’. This is because beyond $15m the round size is less of a predictor of which particular round has been raised.
- The ‘stage’ tag is automatically generated based on the size of rounds the investor participated in. It is not reflective of all their investments, so they might also invest at other stages. e.g if Investor X invested in 2 edtech companies at seed stage, but a number of non-edtech companies at Series A, we would only be reporting that they have participated in seed rounds.
- Our definition of education is broad and the edges can get fuzzy. For example, where exactly do corporate learning tools end and productivity tools begin? Whilst companies that are unambiguously education-focused are covered by the database well, where there is more ambiguity, perhaps only the most prominent examples will be included. We therefore advise that you take the aggregate funding numbers with a pinch of salt.
- If a company pivots or closes down, we do not remove the company or investment event, so expect to see some broken links and a few companies that are no longer active in education.
- We’ve included Israeli startups in the database to recognise the close connections between Israel and the European tech scene.
- Amounts have been converted into dollars for the sake of consistency.
🤝 Amendments / Feedback
This is a work in progress. If you find an error, your company has not been included, or you have suggestions on how to improve the tool, please email shinaz.navas@emerge.education or comment here.
