Market One Capital — 2021 recap
Written by Ela Obrebowska and Marcin Kurek
It has been an exceptionally good year for Market One Capital!
When the pandemic broke out in 2020, the VC market held its breath. Many heralded a collapse in the economy. Meanwhile, it turned out that Covid not only accelerated tremendously digitalization and adoption of e-commerce. Covid also changed significantly consumer behaviour and employee expectations what created new categories on the market. Has this influenced our investment decisions and the performance of our companies? Of course! Stay with us to learn how.
Looking back on 2021
● 2 of the companies we invested in before at early stage got unicorn status (TIER Mobility and JOKR)
● ‘unicorn’ status for JOKR in 8 months since the start of operations making it the fastest European unicorn ever!
● biggest ever €40M Series B for a Polish company (Packhelp)
● 7 new investments and 11 follow-on rounds
● over 1b EUR of follow-on financing into our portfolio companies
● Award ‚Capitalist of the Year 2021’ (in all financial categories) at The Polish Capital Conference organized by Forbes.
The market is accelerating
This year we strongly focused on streamlining the deal sourcing and the investment process itself.
The Venture Capital market is becoming more and more competitive every year, and individual investment rounds are closing faster than ever. If we want to invest in the best projects, we not only need to see them as early as possible but also to proceed with lightning speed.
Three years since launch, we are an incredibly fast-paced machine, scanning 8,000 companies a year — that’s 25–30 a day! In 2021 we have invested in 7 new companies, 2 of which are not announced yet.
New members of MOC Family!
In order to achieve a high speed of operations without driving risk to the level of roulette, it is not enough to quickly analyze one company — we need to know its market environment in advance, have experience with similar business models, developed opinion about market forces and the dynamics of changes in a given industry. We watched the changes and the emergence of new categories on the market. Much of it is related to Covid and the change of human behaviour. This is how we selected 5 out of 7 of our new investments. Let’s take a look at new members of our MOC family:
- Jokr — quick commerce platform offering grocery shopping with 15-minute delivery based on the dark store network. The company was founded in April 2021 and already operates mainly in South America, North America and Europe.
- Mindgram — a mental health and wellbeing platform providing comprehensive and holistic solution suited for B2Bs. Employees receive individual psychological care as well as participate in workshops to learn stress management skills such as relaxation techniques.
- Kitch — a platform where restaurants can manage their delivery orders, both through their own websites as well as through 3rd party delivery apps. It operates in Portugal and Spain.
- Silverbird — a UK-based neo-bank, which targets SMEs operating in cross-border trade, offering multi-currency accounts, currency exchange, transfers and more. Onboarding and customer service is done entirely online.
- Convious — an omnichannel SaaS platform to manage venues and customer journey in the out-of-home entertainment industry.
- stealth mode — B2B marketplace in the food industry
- stealth mode — B2B marketplace in the agriculture industry
Portfolio performance highlights
Tier Mobility gained double unicorn status after a recent $200M Series D round from Softbank and Mubadala, among others. It then acquired the bike-sharing company Nextbike, becoming the largest micromobility provider in Europe with a fleet of 250 thousand vehicles in over 400 cities.
Jokr scored an impressive $170M Series A round from Tiger Global, Softbank and Balderton, among others, which it raised just 3 months after our seed round entry. Five months later the company took in $260M in Series B, led by GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and Tiger Global Management, joining the unicorn club with a valuation of $1.2B.
Packhelp, the European leader in custom packaging, raised €40M in Series B funding from InfraVia Growth, PortfoLion, FJ Labs and the European Investment Bank, among others. This is the biggest Series B round that Polish market has seen so far.
Genial.ly raised an awesome $20M in Series B led by 645 Ventures and Owl Ventures.
Naturally, Market One Capital participated in all of the above rounds.
In addition, follow-on funding rounds were raised by 6 more companies. To date, our companies have raised a total of over EUR 1 billion in follow-on financing.
Culmination of the year and plans for 2022.
The old year says goodbye with unexpected but very pleasant surprises, which we accept with a large dose of humility. Market One Capital was honoured to receive an award‚ Capitalist of the Year 2021’ (in all financial categories) at The Polish Capital Conference organized by Forbes.
What is more, we have been recognized as the most mentioned VC in 2021 according to PFR Ventures!
While there is room for several more new investments in the MOC I portfolio, a lot of exciting things await us next year. Among other things, we plan to launch MOC II to support more awesome and ambitious founders.
