The Kibo Ventures Year 2021 in Review

Strong conviction and patient capital are proving to work

1 IPO, 4 unicorns, many scale-ups, multiple exits, high conversion to Series B+ or exit, low loss ratio

One year ago, we published the 2020 year-end review. We thought it would be a hard to beat year in terms of activity, but 2021 has definitely been a hell of a ride.

Some high-level news before we enter into specific portfolio news:

  • Continuation Fund I. In a rare and very sophisticated transaction in the venture world, we completed the sale of Fund I’s remaining portfolio to Harbourvest, an $80bn global investment firm. The transaction generated both full liquidity and relevant returns to LPs in a 2012 vintage fund
  • New partners, new hires, new branding, new office. We announced well deserved promotions, increased the team and updated our brand. Our initial founding partnership structure has remained intact since inception and are proud to have one of the most stable teams in the industr
  • $175m in new funds. We launched two new vehicles, Fund III and Opp Fund I, with final closings completed before year-end. Raised from a diversified pool of institutional/private, international/domestic, existing/new LPs and adding 50+ relevant founders and operators. We have the right ingredients (capital, team, reputation and conviction) to continue backing ambitious European founders. We wrote about it here
  • Commitment to ESG. We have thought long and hard about what it means to invest and how we can play a part in leaving a positive mark. We have rewritten our investment policies incorporating ESG values because we truly believe it is important. We are committed as a fund to lead by example and we are excited about seeing our portfolio companies follow suit

Activity Around Portfolio

Kibo Ventures has presence in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, with a vast majority of our investments across Europe, but also a few in the US, Latam and Asia. We are not (yet) in London and we’re probably not the best ones at our own marketing. But we are very proud to have built in our short history, one of Europe’s most attractive early-stage portfolios, partnering with both second to none founders and Tier-1 VCs.

Highlights of 2021

Portfolio companies raised >$1.5bn during 2021, adding 3 new unicorns (brings current count to 5) to the family:

  • We saw our first portfolio company go public in Nasdaq. Flywire ($FLYW) has been amongst the best performers of all 2021 IPOs. We first invested in 2013, held 2/3 of our position at the time of the IPO and still own a relevant position — it’s very remarkable what Mike and all flymates have accomplished
  • JobandTalent, the largest job platform in Europe,has been recently valued at $2.35 billion, following Series E led by Kinnevik, with strong support from existing investors including Softbank, Atomico, DN, Infravia, Kibo Ventures and Quadrille. With an annual run-rate of over $1 billion and being EBITDA-positive, the Company keeps growing > 100% annually, has ca. 1.500 companies signed up to source workers via its platform and is expanding into new markets like the US. While becoming a category leader, it also aims at providing workers with job stability and benefits traditionally offered to long-temp workers
  • Devo is a cloud-native logging and security analytics company. Following its Series E, is now valued at $1.5 billion. The quality and vision of its management team, its unique technology and growth profile have attracted best-in-class software investors, including TCV, General Atlantic, Insight, Bessemer, Georgian and Eurazeo. Devo keeps growing at 100% annually, both in ARR and clients and has become the most valuable software company with Spanish origins
  • Additional activity at Tier is a testament of their excellence in execution and becoming a key European player in the sustainable mobility space. We’re proud to witness how Lawrence and the team are relentlessly changing mobility for good
  • We were the only Spain-based VC to participate in Sorare’s financing round, Europe’s largest Series B to-date (note: Sorare already a unicorn when we invested)

On top, there are several scale-ups in our portfolio that are performing extremely well and are on their way to knock, knock, knocking on unicorn’s door:

  • Paack, which just announced a $225m Series D,has beenconsistently growing achieving 20x top-line gorwth since 2018. Paack is delivering several million orders per month from 150 international clients, processing 10,000 parcels per hour, per site, as demand for convenient, timely, and more sustainable methods of delivery is becoming mainstream
  • Clarity, whichalso closed a $50m round led by Softbank,is becoming the sustainability & impact go-to-platform for asset managers, offering fully customizable ESG Risk & Impact portfolio analysis and reporting tools across multiple asset classes. So far, more than $30 trillion has been invested in major markets using some form of sustainability strategy. Clarity AI uses big data and machine learning to help clients customise analysis on 30,000 companies, 135,000 funds and 375 countries and local governments
  • Carto, is one of our initial investments in Fund I (same fund as Flywire or JobandTalent). Carto has defined the cloud native location intelligence category. Since Luis Sanz (CEO) joined the company three years ago and together with Javier de la Torre (founder & CSO), the company has focused on product and service offerings and moved towards the cloud. Now, with many organizations moving to the cloud, Carto enables an end-to-end analytics workflow on location data, directly on top of the major cloud data warehouses. The company recently announced a $61m Series C led by Insight Partners and Accel to continue building on this strategy
  • Defined.ai, is part of the AI revolution, through its leading online marketplace for buying and selling AI data, tools and models, and offers professional services to help deliver success in complex machine learning projects. Defined.ai has a powerful community of AI professionals building fair, accessible and ethical AI of the future
  • Exoticca,which offers long-haul packaged travel, and despite Deltas and Omicrons managed to close the year with record sales of €75M, representing 130% y-o-y growth and closed a $30m Series C. This has been another challenging year for the travel industry but the prospects ahead are much brighter. The company has continued investing heavily in tech and product, doubling the team to 200+
  • Odilo offers a unique platform to create personalized unlimited learning experiences. Combines unlimited access to the largest educational catalog in the world (3+ million titles), a customized Netflix-style platform that adapts to every learner’s needs and a complete BI system that allows for evidence-based learning certification. In 2021 Odilo reached $15M revenues (97% recurrent) with 72% gross margin and breakeven. Odilo has clients in 50+ countries

And we are proud to welcome new Tier-1 funds to lead the growth rounds of these companies including the likes of TCV, Softbank, Kinnevik, Insight, General Atlantic, Eurazeo, Infravia…a very high % of our companies not only raise Series B+, but do it from very relevant investors.

In a recent detailed post by El Referente, Kibo Ventures ranks top as the investor with most number of unicorns and soonicorns in Spain. In all of them (with the exception of Belvo, in Series B as Fund III was still not active), we’ve been early backers.

Our founders also completed a number of exits during 2021, including the acquisition of Bipi by Renault Group or the acquisition of Billin by TeamSystem, and several others are in the making.

So, all in all, a very exciting and busy 2021 and a very promising future.

Patient Capital is Proving to Work

While funding rounds are many times needed to execute business plans, grow faster, provide liquidity to initial investors…can also sometimes be a vanity metric without much return, other than marketing or on-paper uplifts in valuations.

What’s really relevant is what companies do with proceeds raised. And thus, the strength and performance of the underlying business — to achieve both, investors need to allow time for management to implement the strategy and crystalize value.

Despite being early-stage investors, we are patient capital (from early-stage to IPO is a true statement in our case), developing strong relationships with founders and growth VCs and holding on to our shares until the very end, which ultimately allows us to generate outsized returns (ie >45x with Flywire).

The table above exemplifies this strategy.

What’s Next?

  • We have already invested in 9 new companies out of Fund III (initial check sizes between €1–5 million) and are working closely with a very exciting pipeline of founders. We will invest in a total of 20–25 companies from this fund, so still early days
  • Several portfolio companies are negotiating LOIs, which could result in relevant exits and liquidity to our LPs in the coming months. These transactions will continue building the ecosystem and liquidity will flow back into new ventures
  • We keep thinking and exploring new business opportunities — Opp Fund II is next in line, but are working on more initiatives
  • We are also looking forward to recovering full normality without travel restrictions — there are many networking ideas that would love to implement

For a healthy and peaceful 2022! Don’t hesitate to contact any of us at www.kiboventures.com

Javier Torremocha

Founding Partner Kibo Ventures. Passion for start-ups. Passion for Coronado, CA. Family. Cocktails lover.

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