50 new companies, £4Bn+ in follow-on funding, and two Seedcamp companies list publicly
It feels like a daunting task to reflect back on what has arguably been the busiest in our 14-year history at Seedcamp. 2021 has been a year of incredible highs, with some amazing successes and reasons to celebrate across our core team and portfolio companies. We’d be remiss to overlook that — with all the highs — it’s also been a challenging year; both globally and for many of us personally. So, we start this year’s reflection with a much-needed and massive Thank You to everyone who has contributed to making this crazy year one of our best yet.
It’s no secret that pace has been the name of the game this year. With so much talk of inflated rounds, bubbles, and bull markets, we’ve remained firm in our core belief: that exceptional talent can come from anywhere and focused on investing and supporting those founders we believe are building the businesses that will help shape the future we want to be a part of. It’s been no mean feat! This year, we’ve invested in 50 new pre-seed and seed-stage companies building everything from the technology to simplify borderless transactions for commerce across Africa to contextual search tools to help improve workplace knowledge.
And while we’ve increased our pace of investment, we’ve also doubled down on the support we provide to our portfolio companies once they become part of the Seedcamp Nation, building our core team and extended network of experts. What’s also been amazing to see is the Seedcamp flywheel truly come into its own this last year. We’ve had employees at portfolio companies become EiRs. We’ve had experts from companies such as Hopin, Pleo, Elliptic, and Revolut share their expertise and wisdom with our early-stage companies through our mentorship programme and workshops. We’ve had portfolio founders co-invest alongside us in new rounds. And, we’ve invested in people who’ve come through our mentor network. All this is just a snapshot of what has gone on behind the scenes this year and reflects why we remain steadfast in our belief that the Seedcamp Nation truly is a founder’s unfair advantage.
This year our portfolio collectively raised £4Bn+, 2x more than all other Seedcamp years combined
This year has been one of many firsts for us. In April, we celebrated our first company to go public as Romanian-founded UiPath listed on NYSE. That momentous occasion was followed just a few months later as Wise, one of the most well-known and well-loved FinTech companies in Europe and, increasingly, globally, became the first technology company to list on the London Stock Exchange.
An eye-watering stat for 2021 is that this year our portfolio collectively raised £4Bn+, which is 2x more than all other Seedcamp years combined. The unicorn count continued as Sorare, Pleo, and wefox all joined the fold, and the pace of follow-on rounds reached truly unparalleled heights, with Hopin raising a Series C and D in a matter of five months and Revolut hitting a $33Bn+ valuation. Other standout rounds came from Grover, Primer, Synthesia, Rossum and Ramp.
If you’ll indulge us, and as people who tend to be pretty rubbish at celebrating our own wins as there is ‘always more to do’, we have to take a moment to appreciate so much of the amazing recognition that came this year. Reshma and Carlos were awarded MBEs for their service to technology and then won GP Bullhound’s Investor of the Year, where we also were celebrated as Seed Fund of the Year. And we rounded things off with Reshma and Carlos making it onto the Midas List for the 4th year in a row.
There are many faces and people that make Seedcamp what it is today. As we enter our 15th year, we remember that we couldn’t have done any of this without the exceptional support and ambitious work of our founders, LPs, Venture Partners, EiRs, mentors, and everyone involved in the Seedcamp Nation. We wish everyone the happiest and healthiest of holidays and cannot wait for what’s in store for 2022.
Portfolio Highlights
- UiPath IPO: A monumental moment for European Tech and for Seedcamp
- Wise goes Public: A direct win for the European ecosystem
- Grover raises $1B to (further) grow its consumer electronics subscription business
- Revolut raises $800M at $33B valuation
- Sorare raises largest European Series B at $680M for its fantasy sports NFT game
- Hopin raises their $450M Series D at $7.75B valuation in less than 2 years
- WeFox, the digital insurer offering personalized insurance products, raises $650M Series C at $3B Valuation
- Crypto payments infrastructure startup Ramp raises $53m on the back of impressive growth
- Pleo picks up $200M at a $4.7B valuation to build the next generation of business expense management
- Rossum raises largest European Series A at $100M to reinvent B2B document communication
- Elliptic raises $60M Series C to make crypto safer for financial institutions
- Primer raises $50M Series B at $425M valuation in less than 2 years
- Synthesia raises $50M to leverage synthetic avatars for corporate training and more
- Vyne raises $15.5M seed round to grow its merchant-focused open banking solutions
- Peppy, a B2B health platform for menopause fertility, raises $10M Series A
- Appwrite raises $10M Seed to build the world’s largest open-source end-to-end backend server
- Agtech startup Gardin raises $10.8m for crop monitoring sensors
- Vinterior raises £8M Series A to become Europe’s leading vintage marketplace for home decor
- Sylvera announces $7.8M Seed raise to bring clarity to carbon offset markets
- Klasha raises $2.4M Seed to build technology infrastructure for cross-border commerce in Africa
A snapshot of the 50 startups who joined the Seedcamp Nation in 2021
- Blobr: Making it easy for product teams to manage APIs
- Cerbos: Authorization as a Service platform
- Dala: Contextual search tool for workplace knowledge
- Flowrite: AI-powered writing on the web
- Full Speed Automation: Next-generation manufacturing software for industry 4.0
- Futures Factory: Empowering creatives in the sneakers industry
- HelloFlow: No-code digital client onboarding solution
- Klasha: Simplifying borderless payments for commerce in Africa
- Liveblocks: Creating performant and reliable collaborative experiences
- Pixie: Practice management software for small accountancies
- Protagonist: A collaboration space for people and organizations working in the purpose economy.
- Rollee: The gateway for reliable employment and income data.
- Sikoia: Unified data platform for financial services
- SorareData: One-stop shop for all Sorare stats
- Treecard: The payment card that reforests the planet with your everyday spending
- Yavin: A one stop shop instore payment solution for European merchants
- Zinc: Automated reference and background checking
Seedcamp Podcast
As ever, we’ve had the pleasure to talk to some exceptional people across all parts of the tech community, including founders, VCs, and thought leaders. Here are some of our favourite episodes from 2021:
- Building for the future of work with Moonfire’s Mattias Ljungman and Humaans’ Giovanni Luperti
- Azeem Azhar on How Accelerating Technology is Transforming our World
- Building out an international organisation with Boundless HQ CEO, Dee Coakley
- The power of consumers and the future of sustainable materials
- Carlos Espinal² on the Business of Restructuring and Transformation
- Scaling for Success — Andrew Bartlow on High Growth Startups