There is good news for start-ups this Monday. Index Ventures, a EU based firm has launched a new fund focusing on early stage deals, and plans to invest in twenty companies over the coming 24 months. Aside from the positive indicator that money is being raised in order to invest in new companies and that we’re seeing signs of life from the VC sector, what really differentiates this move by Index Ventures is its strong focus on the startup, and it’s approach to investment in them.
What this means is that the partners of the firm will take an active stake in the start-ups by joining their boards, this is a shift away from the status-quo of larger firms whose partners typically don’t engage the startup team due to time constraints or otherwise.
Index Ventures new seed fund is exactly what needs to happen in the VC industry. VC’s need to take a more hands on approach in their invested firms to ensure a greater success to failure ratio, and at the same time, they need to fill the gap in early stage capital that is lacking in many European markets. Some of Index Ventures prior investments are MySQL, Skype, Playfish and RightScale.
In more financing news, the Guaridan has reported that Luke Johnson, the man who brought Pizza Express to market in the 1990’s has acquired a 27{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686} stake in the Beer & Partners angel investment network.
As a whole, good indicators, and again it seems that those who will lead the world out of its current slump will once again be entrepreneurs.
