One of Europe's brightest young investors has just raised her second fund in under a year to take on Silicon Valley
- Blossom Capital founder Ophelia Brown closed her second fund in less than 12 months to help scale European and US tech companies.
- Blossom Capital has raised $185 million from institutional investors, taking its total funding to $270 million.
- Previous investments in the fund's portfolio include Duffel, Checkout.com, and Tines.
- "Blossom is like a startup, we've had to convince people of the strategy," Brown told Business Insider in an interview. "We believe in the market opportunity, investors have backed us and we have done exactly what we said we'd do."
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One of Europe's most highly regarded young investors has raised a second fund, less than 12 months after she raised her first.
Blossom Capital, founded by former general partner at LocalGlobe and principal at Index Ventures Ophelia Brown, has raised an additional $185 million. That takes her total funds to $270 million. Blossom's original $85 million raise was previously touted as the fastest first-time funding by a female-founded venture capital firm.
The European tech system had a strong 2019 (attracting $34 billion of VC funding) and 2020 is off to a strong start, as US investors increasingly target European startups.
"Blossom is like a startup, we've had to convince people of the strategy," Brown told Business Insider in an interview. "We believe in the market opportunity, investors have backed us and we have done exactly what we said we'd do."
Investors in the round weren't named but Brown indicated that the round was led by existing investors with all but one from the US. Aside from Brown, Blossom Capital's partners include former Index investor Imran Ghory, and former Deliveroo CTO Mike Brown.
In 2019 Blossom invested in European tech startups including travel tech company Duffel, Irish cybersecurity company Tines, and payments processor Checkout.com.
Venture capital funds don't tend to give open information about their returns and performance but Blossom proclaims that it's in the top 5% of funds in the US and EU. That's according to private investment benchmark data from Cambridge Associates and Preqin, cited in Blossom Capital's release. This is despite the fact that Blossom only invests in five companies a year.
"There is a clear, fundamental shift in Europe which gives rise to our belief in early-stage startups," Brown added. "Founders want to work with us because of our links to the US and our unique proposition."
Brown appeared on Business Insider's Tech 100 2019, a list of the 100 most influential people in UK tech, at number four.