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Index Ventures: Good News for European Start-Ups

March 3rd, 2009

Index Ventures today announced the closing of a €350 million early-stage fund, Index Ventures V. Early stage? Wow! And early stage + Europe = Double Wow! How does Index Ventures raise such big funds for early-stage ventures when most investors are still trying to figure out if Treasury Bonds are too risky? In short, it is because it has already invested in some of Europe's biggest successes, most notably Skype, MySQL, and Last.fm. When you get those kinds of exits ($4.1 billion for Skype, $1 billion for MySQL, and $280 million for Last.fm), investors want to give you more money to try again.

Global Reach

Index Ventures is more global than your average VC. Look at its 100 investments and you will not find the usual Silicon Valley concentration. Just in the last 12 months:

We have provided links to the ventures operating in the web technology space (assuming readers will be less interested in the biotech and green ventures).

Congratulations, Index Ventures.

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Bernard Lunn is a guest author at ReadWriteWeb, after previously serving as Chief Operating Officer. Bernard is a serial entrepreneur and business adviser to start-ups. He is currently Co-Founder of CapitalMarkets.com and Editor Of SaaSInsights. Bernard is based in New York, was born in Berlin, has lived in and started companies in Asia and Europe as well as America; he is comfortable with globalization. He started in online publishing before the Internet (with Prestel in 1980!). You can reach Bernard Lunn at bernard dot lunn at gmail dot com.
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