Prolific European venture capital firm Index Ventures has finalized raising a €500 million growth fund (roughly $700 million), its second such fund meant for later-stage investments.
The firm will tap the new fund to invest anything from €10 million to €50 million in ventures with proven business and revenue models located around the globe, but primarily companies based in Europe or U.S. companies with international ambitions, partners Saul Klein and Bernard Dallé tell me.
For the record, Index Ventures set aside a separate, dedicated pool of capital for early-stage investments (‘Index Seed’) back in early 2010 and will maintain this strategy going forward.
The first investment from the VC firm’s second growth fund (the first one, a €420 million, was raised back in 2008) has already been made, and announced; Index Ventures actually led Dropbox’s recent, high-profile $250 million round of financing.
Index Ventures has enjoyed a pretty decent few years in terms of deal flow, and has invested in plenty of companies spread all over Europe (SoundCloud in Germany, Adyen in The Netherlands, Ozon in Russia, Privalia in Spain, Erply in Estonia, and so on) and will continue to do so. The firm also says it intends to keep doubling down on London growth companies as it has been doing in the past – consider Index’s investments in Playfish, Last.fm, Lovefilm, AlertMe, Moo and more.
The company doesn’t shy away from backing U.S. companies either (see: Path, Dropbox, Flipboard, Lookout, and so on), and has even opened a San Francisco office in September.
But if the firm’s partners wanted to make one thing clear during our conference call today, it would be that the focus for Index Ventures remains squarely on backing Europe’s next digital giants.
Dallé and Klein pointed out to me that the VC firm has also had a couple of good exits this year, including selling portfolio companies like Cloud.com (Citrix), Lovefilm (Amazon) and Gluster (Red Hat), and a handful companies hitting the public markets (Betfair, RPX).
And now Index Ventures has another €500 million to invest in tech companies over the next few years.
Expect to hear about some of those investments here soon – we’ll also follow up with Index Ventures about its continued focus on London as Europe’s main tech hub very soon.