If you are planning to start a business in a tech-related industry, you must know that a new investment fund is available for start-ups activating in Europe and Israel. The venture capital company Accel has recently launched a 500 million dollars investment fund that targets start-ups in the tech zone, from across Europe and Israel.
Accel is well-known in the tech business, for investing in companies such as Facebook, Spotify and Dropbox.
Who can apply for funding?
The projects that are being targeted by the investors should focus on fields such as SaaS (software -as- a-service) and FinTech (financial services dedicated software) or marketplace and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Other areas of interest for Accel are open source software, virtual reality products or video technology. However, the representatives of the investment fund argue that any new business with growth potential from the tech industry will have a chance to gain a round of funding from Accel, either a seed or a later-stage one.
The geographical areas targeted by Accel investment team include Southern and Northern Europe, but also Russia.
Up to this time, Accel has invested in start-ups from 19 countries, with an average investment of about 15 million dollars in the lifespan of a start-up. Consequently, the 500 million dollars fund could help more than 30 start-ups to develop their business.
The Accel fund, with its headquarters in London, has around $2.5 billion under management, while its investment team has generated over $15 billion in exit market value only in 2015.
Besides the investment fund lauched by Accel, there are also some other recently launched funds, amongst which there is Index Ventures, with a total budget of about 550 million dollars and Lakestar, with around 400 million dollars available for investments.