LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Atomico, the growth stage international investment firm founded by Niklas Zennström, the co-founder of Skype, today announced the closing of its third and most recent fund at $476m, with the following blog post:
Great companies can come from anywhere -- announcing Atomico III, our $476m fund to help them scale
Great companies can come from anywhere. Talent, ambition and success know no borders. And no matter where they start out, these days great companies can also scale internationally from anywhere. As we’ve seen recently, the very best are becoming global leaders and doing so faster than ever.
That doesn’t make it easy. Technology has simplified many things, but when it comes to expanding internationally, the business and cultural challenges remain hard -- most people underestimate just how hard. But it’s vital to building lasting success at scale.
We founded Atomico in 2006 to help entrepreneurs -- primarily those outside Silicon Valley -- to meet this challenge, and we’re pleased to say we have now closed our third and most recent fund, Atomico III, at $476m, three times the size of our previous fund and oversubscribed. We’ve met a lot of institutional investors who share our excitement at the global opportunity and Atomico III’s investors, alongside the general partners, come from across Asia, the US and Europe, including the EIF.
With Atomico III we’re building a concentrated portfolio of technology based growth companies that are looking to scale their businesses, again primarily outside Silicon Valley. We look for companies led by brilliant entrepreneurs which have a hit product, underpinned by excellent technology, with impressive growth. We look for companies with the potential to become an international category winner. And, crucially, we look for companies which can attack and transform large industries, both domestically and globally.
We look for these characteristics because that’s where we see the biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs -- and because, with our experience building mass-market, international companies at Skype and elsewhere, that’s where we can provide the most practical help.
Many key people from the initial global team behind Skype are now at Atomico. Our international expansion team helps our portfolio companies to scale across Europe and into large emerging markets like China, Japan, Brazil, Turkey and now Korea, where we have experienced people on the ground. And we also help founders with other skills that may not be native to them but which are critical to get right in a growing business, like talent.
Of course, each company is unique, and as entrepreneurs ourselves we know that founders need different types of help at different times. When they want us to solve a challenge, we roll our sleeves up and provide practical, heavy-lifting help with everything from international expansion to finding the very best talent. When the founders need space, space is what they get. The founders come first.
Our excitement about our work with entrepreneurs grows and grows every time one of our friends and portfolio companies succeeds. In the past few weeks, we’ve been delighted to see our friends at Supercell and the Climate Corporation both celebrate $1B+ deals, and every day we’re fired up to help the many other companies we work with from Finland (Rovio), the UK (Hailo), Sweden (Klarna), and Russia (OneTwoTrip) to Brazil (Connect Parts) and the US (Fab).
With Atomico III now closed, we can’t wait to work with even more founders who have the ambition, drive and potential to build world-leading technology companies -- no matter where they come from.
Niklas Zennström, CEO and Founding Partner at Atomico, said: “Great companies can come from anywhere. Ten years ago people thought you had to be in Silicon Valley to build a global technology business. That is no longer the case. We see entrepreneurs from all over the world achieving global success faster than ever before and across every sector of the global economy.
Our new fund is aimed squarely at this opportunity. We will help entrepreneurs, primarily outside Silicon Valley, disrupt established industries and grow the next generation of global businesses wherever they are.”
Matthias Ummenhofer, Head of Venture Capital at the European Investment Fund, said: “Great Venture Investors can come from anywhere too and Atomico is the best proof that this can also happen in Europe. The Atomico team is setting global standards and together with its portfolio companies has brought Europe back on the radar of international Venture Investors and corporates. We are proud to be part of the journey!”