Early Charm Ventures

  • DATABASE (530)

  • ARTICLES (455)

    • DATABASE (530)
    • ARTICLES (455)
  • Sort by
    • Relevance
    • Date

Creandum invests in early-stage technology firms in the consumer internet, software and hardware sectors. The firm has grown from having 10 startups in its portfolio and an advisory team scattered across Sweden in 2007, to being headquartered in Stockholm with offices in Berlin, San Francisco  and Guernsey and a total five funds raised worth over €700m. It's most recent fund raised €265m in 2019 and will ofcus on European startups. The company was the lead investor in more than a third of its almost 150 investments to date and was Spotify's first institutional investor. The most recent investments include in Spanish HR SaaS Factorial's €15m Series A round and in German tax assistant app Taxfix's US$65m Series C round. 

Mark Goldstein is an angel investor, fundraiser and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Bad Ass Advisors, a matchmaking service for startups and advisors, and also started 12 companies, including back office solutions provider BackOps. Goldstein is best-known for being the private investment manager of Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO, chairman and founder of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine. With his wife Kristen Koh Goldstein, he operates Marc Benioff's private investment vehicle Efficient Capacity, which invests in two to three early-stage startups a month. He is also an angel investor and participated in a funding round of Diamond Foundry, the first carbon-neutral producer of lab-grown diamonds.

Entrepreneur First is a global entrepreneur incubator program and early-startup investor. The incubator is an intensive six-month program for founders and aspiring entrepreneurs to help them develop ideas that can go into building their own companies. The program is held in six cities around the world: Bangalore; Berlin, London, Paris, Singapore and Toronto (Canada).Participants do not need to have a startup or a specific business idea to participate, and those who have established their own companies can seek partners or co-founders at the program. Roughly 40-50% of the cohort reach the “Launch” phase, where the participants have established their own companies and received investments from Entrepreneur First and potentially other VCs. Entrepreneur First can invest in a startup built by program participants in exchange for 10% equity. The exact amount invested varies: £80,000 for the European programs; S$75,000 for the Singapore and Bangalore programs; and C$100,000 for the Canada program.

Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based VC set up in 2005 that currently has more than $3bn of assets under management. It invests across the tech, aerospace and biotechnology sectors and has been an early backer of some of the most impactful tech companies including Airbnb, Facebook, and SpaceX. It has a key interest in solving major problems such as the opioid crisis in the US.Its recent investments include in the June 2021 $85m Series C round of Portuguese home physiotherapy tech solution SWORD Health, the world’s fastest-growing musculoskeletal solution, and in the July 2021 $80m Series C round of residential real estate platform Sundae. The company has managed over 80 exits including Facebook and Spotify and has made over 500 investments, leading approximately one-third of these. 

Based in San Francisco, the Mulago Foundation is a philanthropic foundation designed to carry on the life work of pediatrician Rainer Arnhold who died in 1993 while working in the mountains of Bolivia. He originally set up the Mulago Foundation in 1968, naming it after a hospital in Uganda. His Jewish family, bankers for generations, continued to support the foundation for impact investing across diverse sectors and geographies, with scalable solutions to alleviate poverty.It has invested in 61 companies to date. Successful ventures include: Kenya’s Komaza that raised $28m in its 2020 Series B and Myanmar’s Proximity Finance, a fintech for small-holder farmers that raised $14m in 2020. Komaza helps poor families turn dry land into small-scale, income-generating tree farms, benefiting more than 2m farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Born in 1973, Li graduated from the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China in 1997. After graduating, he worked as an IT journalist for China Youth Daily, where he interviewed tech giants such as Jack Ma. In early 2003, Li became chief editor of the IT section of web portal Sohu and then joined web portal NetEase as chief editor of its IT section later that year. In 2005, he resigned from NetEase and founded gaming portal Duowan. In 2008, Li founded YY Inc., a live streaming social media platform that went public on Nasdaq in 2012.

Beyond Investing is a Geneva-based firm investing in early-stage venture capital and equity growth startups mainly in European developed markets. With average investments of €200,000, the firm’s core investment strategy focuses on sustainability with an investment period lasting 5–10 years.The impact investor targets innovative startups involved in vegan, cruelty-free and plant-based alternatives; biotechnologies, foodtech, new materials, clothing and lifestyle sectors. Successful portfolio foodtechs include Mosa Meat, BlueNalu and Shiok Meats.With a team of vegan finance professionals in the US and Europe, Beyond Investing listed the first US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2019. The ETF tracks Beyond Investing’s US Vegan Climate Index which covers an index of 495 of the largest-capitalization companies in the US stock market. The ethical investment option aims to exclude stocks in companies with activities that are not aligned with its vegan-themed, cruelty-free and fossil-fuel-free investing ethos.

The British F1 racing driver and five-time FIA Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton has started to promote veganism and sustainable lifestyles, investing in several technology startups that develop solutions in that field.In 2019 he launched  Neat Meat, the British vegan fast casual chain, in collaboration with The Cream Group, UNICEF Ambassadors and early investor in Beyond Meat Tommaso Chiabra. More recently he participated in a Series D funding round backing NotCo, the first Chilean unicorn selling plant-based food and beverage products across Latin America and the US.Hamilton is actively fighting to promote sustainable and eco-friendly practices across industries. In 2019 he also pushed Mercedes-Benz to discuss the possibility of including animal-free interiors in their cars. On that he said: I want to be part of a system that is going to help heal the world and do something positive for the future.”

Famous techpreneur Li Yinan (b. 1970) is the former CTO of Baidu and former CEO of Wuxian Xunqi, a China Mobile subsidiary. After Li graduated from Huazhong University of Science & Technology with a master’s degree in Optics Engineering, he joined Huawei and was promoted to vice-president of its Central Research Department in just six months; in 1997 Li because the youngest vice-president at Huawei. In 2001, Li quit Huawei and started his own data communication company, Harbour Networks, which followed the same structure of Huawei and soon became its main competitor. In 2005, Harbour Networks lost in its intense battle with Huawei and was acquired by the larger player. Even though Li rejoined Huawei after the acquisition, he was never able to re-enter the core management team because of his damaged relationship with Ren Zhengfei, the founder and president of Huawei. In April 2015, Li founded his smart e-scooter company, NIU Smart Scooters. Li began investing in 2010 and joined GSR Ventures in 2011. Up to June 2015, Li had invested in more than 10 companies from the TMT sector. Li stood trial for insider trading in March 2016, according to news reports.

The Stanford Management Company (SMC) invests through the Merged Pool that oversees the majority of its investable assets. Its portfolio includes diverse equity-oriented strategies: domestic and foreign public equities (27%), real estate (8%), natural resources (7%) and private equity (30%). Private equity is maintained at 30% of the Merged Pool based on its risk-return criteria. The Merged Pool was valued at $29.6 bn as of June 30, 2019.The private equity division operates through selected external partners for early and later-stage investments. According to the university’s latest investment report, the SMC is working to improve its investment portfolio that has become over diversified during the last four years, making it difficult to maintain quality and drive superior returns. The number of active partners has been reduced to 75 including 37 new ones added in the last four years. The new partners have generated a net internal rate of return of 29.3% over the last four years.

P101, which stands for Programma 101, the first PC ever made in history, is an Italian VC focused on early-stage investments founded and headed by Managing Partner Andrea Di Camillo. As of January 2021, the firm has between €70m and €100m available for investments. The fund is backed by The European Investment Fund, the Italian Investment Fund SGR, and Azimut, an Italian asset manager operating since 1989 and parent company of Azimut Holding, listed on the Milan Stock Exchange (AZM.IM).Headquartered in Milan, P101 has invested in international startups through its two funds, P101 and P102. It usually co-invests maintaining a lead investor role. According to Di Camillo, the P102 fund has a higher investment ticket, ranging between €2m–5m, with the possibility of increasing to up to €10m in a single company. The firm also manages Ita500, a €40m fund established in partnership with Azimut in January 2020. With a 10-year term, Ita500 will co-invest with P101’s first and second funds in startups with revenues of up to €5m and SMEs with a turnover range of €5m–50m.

Mark Pincus is the US co-founder of online social game maker Zynga, known for the mobile app games Words With Friends, Mafia Wars and FarmVille. He is also the managing member and co-founder of VC firm Reinvent Capital and a prolific angel investor worth $1.6bn, with early investments in Facebook and Twitter. To date, Pincus has invested in more than 50 startups and managed numerous successful exits including the aforementioned social media giants. His most recent investments include participation in the April 2021 $10m Series A round of US gaming app Underdog Fantasy and in the April 2021 €23.1m Series B round of Finland’s Yousician, the world’s largest music edtech.

H&M’s first shop was founded 74 years ago in Sweden by Erling Persson under the name “Hennes”, Swedish for "hers" since the shop was selling only women's apparel. In 1968, Persson expanded into menswear by acquiring Swedish retailer Mauritz Widforss. Hence the rebranding of the company into Hennes & Mauritz (H&M). In 1974, H&M was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Since then, H&M has expanding internationally opening its first store in London and the rest of Europe and also to the US in early 2000.In 2008, the company also moved into the home furnishings segment and launched H&M Home stores worldwide. The fashion chain can now be found across Europe, the US, Asia and the Middle East. The group expanded further by acquiring fast-fashion brands like Weekday, Monki and Cheap Monday. In April 2021, H&M Group announced a collaboration with textile cleantech Infinited Fiber to launch proof-of-concept denim created wholly from regenerated textile waste as part of its commitment to use only recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030.

Based in New York City, Lerer Hippeau mainly invests in seed and early-stage startups based in the US. Founded in 2010 by managing partners Kenneth Lerer, Ben Lerer and Eric Hippeau, the VC operates several funds offering initial investments of $1m per startup. Kenneth Lerer is the co-founder of Huffington Post and longtime chairman of BuzzFeed. Hippeau was the CEO of Huffington Post and ex-managing partner of Softbank Capital that invested in Huffington Post.Its 400+ startups also get support for business growth by tapping into tech ecosystems like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Its 80+ exits include Giphy (GIF) that was acquired by Facebook and home-fitness studio Mirror acquired by Lululemon. However, the IPO by portfolio company Bed-in-a-box online retailer Casper was below market expectations. The loss-making e-commerce unicorn went public at $12 a share in February 2020, closing at $13.50 on its first day out, for a market capitalization of less than half the $1.1 billion Casper was valued at in a private funding round in 2019.

Future Positive Capital is a Paris-based VC with a second office in London. Its investments cover deep-technology companies applying AI, biotechnology, synthetic biology, as well as robotics. Co-funded in 2016 by ex-Index Ventures associate Sofia Hmich along with Alexandre Terrien and Michael Rosen; it has made 18 investments to date. In 2019 Future Positive raised over $57m pan-European impact investment fund, claiming that most European VCs are continuing to staying focused on sectors, such as consumer, fintech, and marketing, or web and mobile technologies. Future Positive’s belief is that there is instead, a long-tail of investment opportunities to back businesses that actually tackle “the world’s most pressing problems”.Through this fund, it will back throughout Seed and Series A stages, with the possibility to follow up on Series B investing between around €300,000 and €5m. Since then the company has backed startups in the like of BioBeats, an AI company focused on preventative mental health, cell-based startup Meatable, and more recently NotCo, the Chilean unicorn disrupting the food and beverage sector with AI-enabled plant-based products.The team counts on an extensive network of mentors, innovators, impact angel investors and entrepreneurs such as F1 pilots Nico Rosberg, the MD of Alibaba France Sebastien Badault, the Omid Ashtari the President of Citymapper amongst others.

Sorry, we couldn’t find any matches for“Early Charm Ventures”.

Your payment was not successful.

Please make sure you have entered your payment details correctly. Or try again in a few moments.

small logo

The discount code you entered is invalid

Please make sure you have entered your discount code correctly. Or try again in a few moments.

Download successful.

Your sample has been sent. Please check your email.

By accessing and using www.compasslist.com and all pages within the domain (the “Website”), You accept and agree to have read, understood, accepted and agreed to be bound by the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy in full. If you disagree with all or any part of these Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, please do not use or continue any further use of this website. You acknowledge that you are aware that this Website contains an archive of existing content as at 31 December 2021 and is not being actively managed. We are under no obligation to update the content on this Website and, accordingly, no new content or articles will be posted to the Website after 31 December 2021.