The Spanish venture capital manager, Samaipata, has obtained commitments amounting to 107 million euros at the end of the subscription period for its second fund, Samaipata II, which represents an oversubscription of 7 million euros (the forecast was 100 million euros).
It should be noted that 65% of the capital has been subscribed by international institutional investors, which shows the trust placed in the manager by a wide segment of international investment. With this new fund, led by Jose del Barrio, co-founder of La Nevera Roja, and Eduardo Díez-Hochleitner, President of MásMóvil, Samaipata increases its assets under management to more than 150 million euros.
“Thanks to this second fund, almost four times greater than the first, we have more capacity to continue supporting the best entrepreneurs in Europe and to be able to accompany them throughout the different stages of development of their project with up to 15 million euros per company . Spain continues to be a key market for Samaipata, and the market potential is enormous”Says José del Barrio, founding partner of Samaipata.
Samaipata II is the manager’s second vehicle, after the launch of the 29 million euro Samaipata I in 2016. This inaugural fund your investment period ended a few months ago and has already reported successful divestments to its investors, such as the sale of Deporvillage to JD Sports (announced last June) or that of the French company FoodChéri to Sodexo in 2018.
These divestments have allowed investors to return the vast majority of their contributions to Samaipata I when there are still 13 active companies in the portfolio (the fund is in the 95th percentile of VC funds globally for its addition in terms of distributed capital) . Some of them have recently starred in investment rounds signed by top international investors, such as Colvin, Matera, Spotahome or Streamloots.
First investments already made
Regarding the new fund, Samaipata has already made eight investments: three in Spain, three in France, one in the UK and one in Germany. Among the most prominent public investments are Big blue (management platform fulfillment for e-commerce brands), Fintecture (B2B account-to-account or A2A payment platform) or Retraced (platform that helps fashion brands to make their supply chain more transparent and sustainable).
Samaipata II plans to build a portfolio of 30 startups in early stages (seed and pre-seed) for amounts between 500,000 and 3,000,000 euros. More than 60% of the fund will be reserved for follow-on investments in capital increases of the most promising companies in the portfolio, with the possibility of investing up to 15 million euros per company. From a geographical point of view, Spain will represent approximately between 30% and 50% of the investment in a pan-European portfolio, followed by the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
The investment thesis of this second fund is geared towards early stage digital platforms across Europe. Samaipata seeks to invest in business models with the potential to generate network effects at scale, as the main pillar of long-term value creation, without specifications regarding the sector and the business model (B2B or B2C).
In parallel, Samaipata has strengthened its investment and operations teams in recent months, with incorporations in various geographies. By the end of the year the team expects to have 16 professionals distributed mainly between Madrid, Paris, London and Berlin, in line with its philosophy of a remote company and with their feet on the ground.
Finally, and as a fundamental pillar of its new fund, Samaipata has launched The Hive, a platform of experts distributed around the world to support the entrepreneurs in their portfolio with advice, services and content to cover critical aspects such as attracting talent and capital, scalability or data management, among others.
