Market One Capital’s 2022 recap

Another year behind us. What a year it was! During the past twelve months, we kept on investing in marketplaces and network effects platforms. We focused on early-stage startups and continually supported our portfolio companies, where there was a lot going on. In the meantime, we also announced a new fund, MOC II, which made quite a splash in late October.

What are our biggest achievements of the past year?

MOC II announcement with a total capitalization of €80 million

The last few months have been intense for us, however, this is not only because we launched the new fund, but mainly because MOC II already invested in three startups — More Growth and two that are still in stealth mode.

At MOC II, we continue our investment strategy, as it has worked very well for us so far and dovetails with our strengths. We plan to support 30 startups, mainly in the area of B2B / B2C marketplace and network effects, which are among the cornerstones of the technology sector. We particularly want to focus on companies from our region, Central and Eastern Europe, although in general our interest is placed more broadly on European startups.

We invest at the earliest stage possible — pre-seed and seed, from €200K to as much as €2M. We also plan follow-on investments up to Series B round, by which we can allocate up to a maximum of €8 million in a single company.

We are the best fund in CEE according to Dealroom 2022 Investor Rank

Nothing is a better reflection of a fund’s success than the great performance of its portfolio companies. We are extremely pleased that — through the lens of the outstanding performance of the startups we support — our work has been recognized by Dealroom, which named Market One Capital the best VC fund in Central and Eastern Europe. The Dealroom 2022 Investor Rank, published in May, is a substantial reward for our team, but also — and most importantly — for our portfolio, to which we owe this success.

And while we’re talking about portfolio companies…

Seven new investments…

In 2022, our portfolio companies raised a total of nearly €130 million. Among our new investments were:

• Quiver, a UK-based startup building infrastructure for e-commerce providing last-mile delivery to the end consumer.
• Connect Earth, a UK-based platform that works with climate data and builds infrastructure for products to facilitate the fight against climate change.
• Pathway, a French deep-tech software platform for building reactive applications that process data in real-time.
• More Growth, a Polish company that creates brands and online products to help users take care of their health and personal development.

Three other investments are still in stealth mode.

…and 14 follow-on investments

The past year was also a busy one in terms of investments in companies we had already supported. Some of our most interesting follow-on rounds included:

• Symmetrical.ai, which raised €18.5 million in a Series A round, closing one of the largest investments at this stage in Poland. Target Global was the lead investor in the round, and the company itself — as one of five Polish startups — made it to a list created by Sifted of worth-watching technology startups from CEE.
• Mindgram, which raised €7 million in the Seed round — one of the largest rounds at this level in Poland. Credo Ventures was the lead investor in the round, which was joined by PortfoLion and Nunatak Capital.
• Vosbor, which closed the Seed round with $7 million raised from investors such as Lux Capital, FJ Labs, 7percent Ventures, Athos Capital, and Nucleus Capital. The funds weren’t the only ones to invest in the company — global agricultural commodity trading leaders Chris Mahoney, former CEO of Glencore Agriculture, and Soren Schroder, former CEO of Bunge, backed the startup and joined its team.
• Welcome Pickups, whose story is highly inspiring. Before the pandemic, the company was operating in more than 60 locations being one of the largest platforms offering personalized transportation in travel. Lockdown completely froze the business for almost two years and resulted in a team reduction of more than 90 percent. At the same time, Welcome Pickups’ founders set their sights on optimizing operations. As a result, now with almost double the size of the team, the company covers 100 locations achieving revenues tens of percent higher than in 2019. This was recognized by Flashpoint and Venture Friends, from whom the company raised €5.3 million.

Success of TIER, the largest micromobility solutions provider

As we have mentioned more than once, the success of the companies we support makes us as happy as if it were our own success. That’s why in our 2022 recap we want to additionally mention TIER Mobility, which acquired Spin, an operator of shared bikes and electric scooters owned by Ford, and thus entered the North American market. With the purchase of the company and its 50,000 vehicles, TIER has expanded its reach to more than 520 locations in 21 countries, and the total fleet size of 300,000 vehicles has made TIER the largest provider of shared multimodal transportation solutions.