Captivating growth of Change Ventures Fund II made a mark in the seed fund history of Baltic States. After closing the final seed round with €49M, it came to a point of being the largest one around. Holding many unicorns in its nest, Change Ventures happens to promise a huge gate for the next start-ups.
According to the recent report, Change Ventures completed its mission successfully in the Baltics. The most hardworking one in terms of startups per capita is taking the lead which is more than in Europe and Israel.
As to the startups and unicorns per capita, Baltics carries the same record at Europe’s best. Estonia passes Israel by producing more startups per capita. In total, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are good enough to compete with the U.K.. Apparently, the Baltic states cleared the way to the leadership by catching up so fast.
Change Venture’s proper proud
Change Venture acknowledges the partner investors as proud of the success. The European Investment Fund which Change Ventures show as their tower of strength is the largest LP around Europe. The European Investment Fund enhances SMEs’ access to finance with the help of top-notch financial instruments. They are also partly fed by Baltic Innovation Fund, with a significant amount of capital that is meant to be given back with interest. The BIF commitment enables them to back up the tech companies in terms of their growth and to provide employment opportunities in the region.
There are many other investors and founders besides those. By those, it is referred to CCO of Vinted Mantas Mikuckasi, CEO of Printify James Berdigans, CEO of Oberlo Andrius Šlimas, Co-founder of KiloHealth Tadas Langaitis, CEO of Lightyear Martin Sokk, CEO of Salv Taavi Tamkivi, CTO of Argyle Audrius Zujus, Director of Engineering of Twilio Ģirts Graudiņš, as well as an angel investor and founder of Cooler Future Moaffak Ahmed, angel investor Rita Sakus and CEO of Httpool Aļoša Jenko.
Among many other VC fund managers including Spectrum Equity’s Victor Parker and Guzel Gumerova, former GP of Speedinvest’s FinTech fund, Storm Ventures GPs Tae Hea Nahm and Ryan Floyd, Silicon Valley’s one of the biggest names Tim Draper also made commitments to the fund.
They are growing with the team
To meet the expectation coming from the cumulative growth in fund size, Change Ventures hired new front-liners. Kärt Siilats with her 15 year-experience in finance services as a partner and Gabrielė Poteliūnaitė as Senior Associate are members of the team for a while. This is an exciting new for Change Ventures and many feminists since they are the first venture fund in the region to shake hands with a female partner. The team has already been experiencing to have the largest presence of women.
As a team, they play a crucial part in the region, especially in many sectors Veriff, INZMO, Planet42 and Nordigen are some of FinTech/RegTech as a part of their portfolio. As to retail and e-commerce, it includes Printify, Outvio, Eurora, Algori. Fyma, Timbeter, Aerones, Gelatex, Giraffe360 and Asya are in their portfolio as a representation of DeepTech/AI startups. As for Consumer and Edtech, there are Humansapp, Dogo, 99math, and Memby. They are constantly enlarging the list reaching out the large markets across the globe.
Future Investments
Now keeping the well-known, top-of-the-class investors company and giving the best support to both the new-irons and now experienced unicorns, Change Ventures promises a hidden guarantee under its wings. Previously, they joined the journeys of many while backing up them to be fully grown including IVP, Accel, Index Ventures, Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Storm Ventures, Eight Roads, Seedcamp, Hoxton Ventures, Notion Capital and more.
