Draper Esprit targets £75m-worth of investment in seed funds across Europe

Venture Capital firm Draper Esprit announced on Monday a strategy targeting up to £75m worth of investment in top seed funds across Europe over the next five years, less than a week after its funds had committed £17m into three new Europe-based digital technology businesses.

The AIM-listed company said that it had committed to invest in the latest funds of both Seedcamp and Episode1 Ventures, which it said were "widely recognised" as two of the UK's leading seed fund platforms and looking into three others.

That, Draper said, would complement its core strategy of investing up to approximately £100m a year in technology businesses across the group's funds, with investment from the company's own balance sheet representing approximately £60m per year.

News regarding investment in the seed funds, came only six days after Draper revealed that funds under its management had recently committed £17m into three new Europe-based digital technology businesses- Ieso Digital Health; insurtech company Premfina; and live entertainment word-of-mouth sales software Verve.

Aligning Draper closer with the seed fund ecosystem meant the company was now able to provide growth capital to the best companies and of unlocking the strong performance of Europe's "highest quality" seed funds, to the benefit of the plc shareholders, the company said.

Draper was already an investor in leading crowdfunding companies, Crowdcube and Seedrs.

Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit, spoke of the benefits of partnering with the seed funds for entrepreneurs and investors.

"By partnering with the best seed funds, we can help them scale up their series A and B funding rounds more quickly, which in turn will accelerate growth for the most ambitious entrepreneurs.

"We have a number of pools of capital to back leading entrepreneurs and to deploy across the different funding life cycles of fast growing technology companies. External investors both institutional and private can use our evergreen listed venture capital model to access, on a pooled basis, the top seed funding platforms, screened and picked by our experienced team. This gives them exposure to a very important asset class on a pooled portfolio approach.

"Post Brexit it is imperative that UK investors continue to have access to the best early stage investment opportunities and having established itself as a leading hub for technology entrepreneurs from all over the world, the UK needs to keep supporting all stages of venture funding."