If as an entrepreneur you look up to the world's largest homogeneous market, the US, exceptions aside, all American VCs investing in Europe (a dozen) have more or less active offices in Europe and they tend to be more late stage (even beyond growth capital). Note there are also quite a few European investors having US and Asian operations.
London-based investors tend to be more late stage oriented as a result of their growing older and bigger (small tickets take more resources and tend to bring out less), but also of the industry evolution (more mature, which means bigger investment "tickets" to optimize capital efficiency in terms of team size, deal size, profitability and risk...). It is a strong sign that Atlas and 3i, after Apax many years ago, announced their withdrawal from VC / early stage / Europe and generally speaking, European VCs face major difficulties to raise funds with institutional investors going for other asset classes with better risk-return profiles than Venture Capital in Europe. From a certain angle, if London is Europe's main financial place for financial markets and public equity, Paris is more the place, if not for Private Equity, for Venture Capital. 2011-2013: several new early stage funds in the UK, more local though.
Stages. Since 2010, we observe a collapse in early stage financing, from institutional investors. That is a great opportunity that several "entrepreneurs funds" have clearly sized, a large "market pull" or "breach" in which they have rushed and can make great bargains, often in exchange of getting more involved operationally as well. The French market has resisted better to this capital flow out of early stages, thanks to its various tax incentive schemes ("FCPI", "FIP", "CIR" and loi TEPA) acting as an efficient counter-cycle tool of great if not vital importance for a selection of a few hundreds entrepreneurs... In 2013 in France the FNA (Fonds National d'Amorçage) is financing several VC teams to increase their share of seed investments, which in turn should increase the proportion of early stage investments. "France is the last VC market active in Europe!" - a London based fundraiser |
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