Blossom Capital, a London-based venture capital firm led by former Index Ventures principal Ophelia Brown, has raised €75 million. These funds were from leading institutional investors and prominent technology entrepreneurs like Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev, Zendesk founder Mikkel Svane, DST Global managing partner Tom Stafford, and Union Square Ventures partner Andrew Weissman.
Blossom will especially focus on investing in Europe-based consumer and enterprise startups at the Series A level at the $5-$10 million range. Some of Blossom’s partners were executives at companies such as Facebook, Klarna, and Deliveroo.
The partners also include Louise Samet (former Klarna group product manager), Mike Hudack (former Deliveroo CTO and Dir. of Product Management at Facebook), and Imran Ghory (former investment team leader at Index Ventures). So far, Blossom has invested in Duffel, Fat Llama, Frontify, and Sqreen.
Photo: Ophelia Brown / Credit: Blossom Capital
“We founded Blossom to offer Europe’s leading entrepreneurs a new top-tier VC fund that understands exactly what it takes to scale an early stage company into a global category leader,” said Brown in a statement. “The European ecosystem has changed dramatically over the last decade; we believe that mission-driven entrepreneurs today want investors who match their ambitions and can help them reach goals far beyond what they thought possible. Too often founders have felt they need to go to the West Coast to raise their Series A — with our unique Silicon Valley ties and deep networks, we’ve set up Blossom to help change that.”
Bloom is not considered a “female-focused fund” so it is inviting any background or gender to work with them. And Blossom will be holding dedicated office hours for female founders in order to ensure that women receive equality of airtime. Brown also set up a networking and mentoring group called Ambitious Ladies in Tech (ALT) in order to alleviate gender imbalance across the industry.
“Blossom’s new fund provides early-stage founders in Europe with the opportunity to partner with a local investor that can guide them through the operational support needed to turn their visions into reality,” added Sequoia partner Alfred Lin. “The Blossom team is filling a longstanding gap in the European market and has the expertise to help the boldest outlier companies scale internationally. With our own recent investments in European-based companies such as Tourlane and Graphcore, we’re increasingly excited by the ambition and talent in Europe. We look forward to potentially co-investing with Blossom in the future, as we continue to support founders from idea to IPO and beyond.”
Former Uber head of expansion and enterprise Candice Lo was previously named a co-founder and partner at Blossom Capital. However, Lo reportedly left the venture firm to spend more time with family according to TechCrunch.
