11 new portfolio companies in 1 year — Summary of 2023 at Inovo.vc
A record year
This year at Inovo.vc was super intense but also quite successful for many reasons:
- We just closed €100m+ Fund III
- We invested €13.5m in 11 new startups (just this year!)
- 5 portfolio companies raised follow-on rounds at our previous Fund II
- We had 2 cohorts of Founders Club (local acceleration program)
- We organized 9 meetings for Founder Wannabes (500+ participants!)
The new beginning — €100m Inovo III
We announced fundraising of our Fund III back in 2022. The target was €100m, so ~2x size of our previous Fund II, and more than 10x of our first Fund. We are happy to announce that the target was overdelivered. Many thanks for the trust to our investors!
Who invested in us?
- The European Investment Fund (EIF);
- International Finance Corporation (IFC);
- Poland’s PFR Ventures;
- and private investors, including many successful founders, who committed over €55m.
What are our investment plans?
- The fund will be split 50/50 for new investments and follow-ons;
- We will add 25–30 portfolio companies between 2023 and 2026;
- We will invest €10m-20m a year with tickets up to €4m;
- Our core scope is Seed stage across Central and Eastern Europe (diaspora included).
Fund III — 11 new portfolio companies in 1 year
We invested €13.5m in total, with tickets ranging from €100k to €3m.
At the moment of writing this, 7 deals are publicly announced:
- Embla, an online weight loss clinic. We co-led their €10m Series A.
- Evidose, effectiveness trials for supplements. We co-led their €0.5m Pre-Seed.
- Fiat Republic, a bridge between banks and crypto platforms. We joined their €6m Seed extension.
- LiveKid, a vertical SaaS for kindergartens. We led their €3m round.
- Mindly, a mental health marketplace. We led their €2m Seed round.
- Pupilmed, a pet health platform. We co-led their Pre-Seed round.
- Quesma, a database migration tool. We co-led their €2m Pre-Seed.
+4 investments yet to be announced :)
Fund II — 5 out of 20 portfolio companies raised Follow-ons this year.
- This brings our Follow-on rate to 70%.
- The award for the biggest Follow-on round in our portfolio goes to Preply, a live tutors platform from Ukraine. They announced $120M Series C to double down on AI.
- We are also very proud of AI Clearing, a SaaS for construction progress monitoring. Their $14m Series A was led by New York-based VC Prudence. Notably, 5 out of 20 largest construction companies globally use AI Clearing!
- The third announced Follow-on was raised by Index Health, a US-based online clinic for chronic diseases. The company recently crossed $2m ARR and raised a $3m Seed extension. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for the world’s most advanced medical company!
- The 2 remaining Follow-ons have not been announced yet.
The Acceleration is imminent — Founders Club
What happens if we:
- pick 5–8 great founders at the (pre)idea stage;
- facilitate 6 in-person mastermind meetings over 3 months during which they can give feedback to each other;
- share with these people our network of experts, investors, and other founders that we invested in?
After 2 cohorts, we welcomed 2 new portfolio companies: Evidose (Kacper & Anna participated in the first cohort) as well as Quesma (Jacek joined the second cohort, we recommend his story of finding out what kind of business to start).
The program will be continued next year. If you are interested in joining the next cohort — follow Tomek on LinkedIn!
Find your co-founder at Founder Wannabes!
One of the startups challenges we noticed some time ago in Poland is how to find your perfect co-founder. Some teams are created naturally, but sometimes, you need to look further than your closest network. We were always striving to connect the dots and we introduced founders of, for example, our portfolio company Spacelift to each other. We wanted to make this at scale and the idea for Founder Wannabes was born: a monthly in-person meeting in Warsaw during which you can find your match.
Since the beginning of this year:
- we organized 9 meetings with total of 500+ participants;
- we know at least 3 startups founded by people who met at Founder Wannabes for the first time (one covered by Forbes);
- we invested in 2 startups that participated in Founder Wannabes.
Each meeting has its own purpose and focus, for example:
- Learning how to validate your business ideas;
- Learning how to do your first sales;
- Understanding how VCs look at business ideas.
Do you want to join the next Founder Wannabes? Follow David on LinkedIn, he’ll be announcing it soon!
The next year resolution
Our plan for 2024 is to add 10 new startups to our portfolio and invest at least €13.5m. Are you raising a round? We should talk!
