36 new companies, Hopin reaches $1Bn+ valuation in record time and we launch Seedcamp V at £78m

No one could have guessed that we would begin the decade working remotely, social distancing and swimming in hand sanitiser but one thing that came as no surprise, and for which we couldn’t be prouder, is the strength and resilience of the Seedcamp Nation. 

We started out 2020 on a high with the acquisition of Pointy by Google. Soon after, the world changed in ways we could have never predicted and, like everyone else, we had to quickly adapt. In April, we broke down how we took our investment process fully online and we round out 2020 with 36 new investments in European startups radically transforming the way we live, interact and buy. In February we talked publically for the first time about our investment in Hopin, who in November became the fastest-ever European company to scale to a $1bn+ valuation. That same month we closed a heavily over-subscribed Fund V at £78M and released the deck we used to go out and raise it. And in December, Reshma and Carlos yet again made it onto the Midas List alongside the 25 most influential VCs in Europe and Romanian-founded portfolio company, UiPath, confidentially filed for IPO.

This year our team has worked from across five continents and we’ve added some fantastic new additions to the Seedcamp Nation who, in spite of us only managing to all get together once in person, already feel like integral members of the family. We are also incredibly excited by the most recent and tiniest addition to Seedcamp – Evelyn Coco Wilson – who stole the show in her penguin onesie at our team Christmas bash. Tom and Emily, we couldn’t be happier for you both and we have no doubt you’ll have her pitching for investment soon enough!

For us this year has been about adaptability, collaboration, resilience, humour and kindness – both to ourselves and to each other. So, to the 77 new founders in the Seedcamp Nation, 116 LPs in Fund V, the exceptional mentors and investors who gave 265 hours of their time and expertise to our companies through Office Hours, the 5,000+ startups who submitted their deck for review and the 3,000+ jobs created by our companies this year, we thank you deeply.

From all of us at Seedcamp we wish you a peaceful and happy holiday period and, though it likely feels somewhat different this year, we hope there can still be cause for celebration. Here’s a snapshot of what went down at (virtual) Seedcamp in 2020.

Portfolio Highlights

• UiPath raised a $225m Series E round to become the first European cloud decacorn and confirms confidential filing of IPO paperwork
• Hopin raised $125m Series B to break the European record for time elapsed from inception to unicorn status
• Transferwise hits $5bn valuation after secondary share sale
• Revolut raised $500m (and $80m extension) at $5.5bn valuation
• Ezra raised $18m Series A to help you detect cancer early
• Harbr raised $38.5m Series A to bring data exchange to every enterprise
• WaveVR raised $30m to give superstars a virtual arena to perform for their fans
• Uncapped raised $26m to provide young businesses another option for financing
• Primer raised a £3.2m Seed and a £14m Series A in the space of 6 months to supercharge merchants payment stacks
• Skew raised a $5m funding round alongside the launch of the Skew Trading platform
• Digital Risks raised a $10.4m Series A followed by a further investment of £8.5m 
• Pointy acquired by Google for $163m
• Reply.ai were acquired by Kustomer who were then subsequently acquired by Facebook for $1B
• TaxScouts raised a £5m Series A to fuel their expansion to Europe
• Griffin raised £6.5m to build the “one stop shop” Banking-as-a-service platform
• THIS hit the £1.5m mark on crowdfunding platform in record time before closing out their raise at £4.476m on the Seedrs platform

New to the Nation 

• Agamon Health – Improving clinical performance by unlocking the value of critical data trapped within unstructured medical reports
• Certifaction – Restoring trust in the digital world by creating instantly verifiable information on the blockchain
• Flowrite – AI powered writing on the web
• Gaia – Democratising access to fertility care
• Habitual – A unique combination of digital therapeutics and nutritional treatment that reverses chronic disease
• Humanity – Subscription platform enabling you to live a healthier, longer life
• MedAll – The medical career passport
• MeiliSearch – Next generation search API
• MindLabs – A live mental health platform
• Orchest – End-to-end, open source machine learning platform
• Paid – Automation and collaboration software to simplify enterprise procurement
• Peer Medical – Helping you access real treatment histories from cancer patients
• Primer – Supercharging payments through a unified API
• QuestDB – Open-source, SQL relational database designed to process time-series data, faster
• Riff – Synchronous voice chat for remote teams
• Rosita – AI-based Longevity coach, specifically built for seniors
• tl;dv – Meeting productivity tool for remote-first teams
• Weavr – Cloud-based collaboration platform for building digital payment flows

And many many more but a number of our companies are in stealth mode, keep your eyes peeled in 2021!

Content

The power of the nation lies in the expertise we have across a broad range of industries and functions, and we’ve made sure to share it all with you. This year we’ve been giving insights into VC fundraising, speaking with top tier investors on our podcast and hearing from the best operators in marketing and product. 

• Tom writes about how we  invest at Founder-Market fit
• Carlos describes how to make those tough decisions when opinion is split between your founding team
• Natasha discusses the do’s and don’ts of marketing in a global crisis
• Marketing Summit had speakers from top organizations, scale ups and portfolio companies such as Revolut, THIS & Dreamdata join us for our annual Marketing Summit. Check out Day 1 and Day 2 here (shoutout to tl;dv for the slick embedded videos enabling easy digestion of the material)
• This year we launched our first ever People summit, co-led by the Seedcamp Team and Ben Gateley, CEO of portfolio company CharlieHR. Read more about how to build a system that is resistant to breaking at scale here
• Carlos wrote about our approach to partner deal attribution, how to give effective feedback as an investor and much more on his blog. Make sure to check it out!

This Much I Know

• Carlos was joined by Johnny Bourfarhat and Venture Partner Devin Hunt for a special live deep dive into how to interact and learn in an online-only world 
• Tom & Carlos teamed up for the Legal Hour Series which covers everything you need to know and consider as an early stage founder. Check out Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 here.
• An all star line up as Carlos teamed up with Target Global, Blossom Capital, Balderton Capital & Crane VC to discuss fundraising during a turbulent time
• Harry Nelis from Accel join Carlos to discuss IPO strategy, the right founder-VC relationship and KAYAK