UK-based Creator Fund, the pre-seed VC that finds and backs Europe’s scientific founders before they have a pitch deck, has closed its first European fund at $56m (£42m).
Creator Fund’s Scientific Founder programme is the engine behind its European deal flow. Each year, 40 venture fellows are selected and embedded across 30 universities in 10 countries. They are trained to identify scientific researchers with the potential to build, and to support them through the earliest stages of company formation. In Europe, the fund’s focus is on deep tech.
The new fund has made 11 investments already, including Ovo Labs, Latent Worlds, Anzen Industries and SPhotonix. Since 2019, Creator Fund has backed 62 companies and in the past six months, two of Creator Fund’s companies have surpassed $100m (£75m) in total funding.
KfW Capital and Export and Investment Fund of Denmark are two of the largest investors in the fund, which also includes Equation Capital, Basecamp (Phoenix Court), JIMCO and Allocator One. In total, 71 limited partners from 21 countries have committed to the fund.
“The world’s biggest problems are being solved in European university labs. The scientists working on them are extraordinary but for too long, they’ve been overlooked by venture capital, pushed towards academia rather than building companies,” says Jamie Macfarlane, founder and CEO of Creator Fund.
“That’s the gap we exist to fill. This fund means we can back more of them across Europe than ever before – and make sure the next generation of world-changing companies is built by the people who have invented the science.”
