Icebreaker.vc has completed the final closing of their second fund at €100 million, and also raised a separate €20 million Opportunity Fund that will be used to continue investing in their Fund 1 portfolio companies.
The teams backed in Icebreaker’s first fund over 2017-2019 have so far turned €6 million of initial investment tickets into €63 million in follow-on funding led by later stage investors. That amount is growing on a monthly and sometimes even weekly basis. The latest highlights have been Flowhaven raising around €13.2 million from Sapphire Sport and GFC, Sellforte raising around €3.9 million from Sonae IM and Bonnier Ventures and Osgenic raising €5 million with Springvest.
“We keep meeting strong, amazing teams with deep insights into the problems they are solving, and a vision of the future they want to be part of building. Partnering with them very early and working hard to build a solid ground for fast growth together has shown strong results. With the new €100M fund we continue with the same focus; no stage is too early for us to invest and we want to support founders from the day they start thinking about founding a company. Our community supports founders even before they know what they want to build or have a team,” said Partner Riku Seppälä.
“The most important thing for us is how well we can support early teams. So far, 64% of our angel stage teams and 65% of pre-seed stage teams have succeeded in raising a successful “3×3” follow-on funding round within 24 months,” Seppälä continued.
Icebreaker wants to be the best at supporting companies from 0 to Seed, meaning angel- and pre-seed stage companies. Icebreaker has broad investment scope, focusing on strong domain-expert founding teams with complementary skills (or helping build those), strong technology and global markets. “The paths are quite different, but strong teams are able to create the future and capitalize on changes in the market,” Seppälä commented.
Icebreaker has created what they call “portfolio development practice”, its cornerstones being their systems for Founder Development, Hiring, Growth Program and how they support in planning and strategy. Icebreaker collaborates internally, sharing knowledge and learning from mistakes and successes. In addition to the investment team Icebreaker has a core operational growth team, and they aim to connect with the best external parties for specific topics in hiring, branding, law, etc.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
