Flint Capital announced the final closing of its third VC fund for early-stage startups and a later-stage fund, securing a total of $160 million. The funds were raised from IT entrepreneurs who favor the fund’s stable venture profits in high-multiplier industries over increasingly risky alternative assets and entrusted a record amount to Flint Capital. This capital will assist early-stage European and Israeli startups in target industries, including Cybersecurity, Digital Health, Fintech, Enterprise SaaS, and B2C, in entering the U.S. market.
Flint Capital previously successfully closed two funds. This first one shows a top-quartile IRR around 25% and has three unicorns in its portfolio: Socure (valued at $4.5 billion), WalkMe (acquired by SAP), and Flo (#1 Women Health App). Additionally, it invested in companies with notable exits, such as CyberX (acquired by Microsoft), Voca.ai (acquired by Snap), and MatchCo (acquired by Shiseido).
This third fund will continue the fund’s investment thesis, centering around investing in early-stage startups with mature founders like Nokod Security, Mika Games, and Blinq.io. And Flint Capital plans to fund about 25 companies, with 12 deals already completed.
Another notable area of investment is Israeli pre-seed VC funds and accelerators. This will enable Flint Capital to identify promising new startups and select those with high potential for further consideration without the need of investing directly in them. This addition of the Opportunity Fund enables Flint Capital to provide additional funding to portfolio companies as they scale and move on to their next stage.
Flint Capital was launched in 2013 by Dmitry Smirnov, who had independently raised $40 million for the first fund. And given that a venture fund with a single founder can easily hit a ceiling, Smirnov was joined by two partners who brought new knowledge, skills, and network: Andrew Gershfeld, a former entrepreneur in the B2C space who knows both sides of the coin, and Sergey Gribov, who comes from the tech industry and has an excellent understanding of B2B, enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity.
Flint Capital actively works with founders from its portfolio companies to deal with the challenges that newcomers face when settling in a new country, like the lack of a support network, problems finding talent and partners, and limited market knowledge.
KEY QUOTES:
“While funds raised less than $20 billion in the first quarter of this year — the lowest amount since 2011 — we raised 1,5 times more than we did before. With the first fund’s TVPI at 4.6 and the second one on the rise and already in the profit zone, many investors in the initial funds not only chose to continue their investment but increased their contributions. Among the new investors, there are also founders of our portfolio companies, people we supported on their path to a successful exit.”
- Dmitry Smirnov, partner at Flint Capital
“Working with almost 70 portfolio companies, we noticed an increasing demand for a longer investment cycle and created a late-stage “Opportunity” fund for companies in which Flint Capital had successfully invested earlier. This will allow us to actively support our portfolio companies throughout their full startup life cycle.”
- Sergey Gribov, partner at Flint Capital
