Frontline Ventures announces €70m fund to support European founders with global ambition

Frontline Ventures has announced Frontline Seed fund III. The new fund will bring Frontline’s total funds under management to €250million and arrives only ten months after the launch of Frontline X, a growth-stage fund for US to Europe expansion.

Frontline is the venture firm for globally ambitious B2B companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Frontline Seed speeds up ideas at inception across Europe. Frontline X is a growth-stage fund, for fast and frictionless US-Europe expansion.

Frontline Seed has been an active investor across Europe for the past nine years, investing in early-stage B2B tech and helping European founders expand to the US market. The team has backed a series of successful companies in Seed Funds I and II, including Logentries (acquired by Rapid7), Orchestrate (acquired by CenturyLink), and Pointy, acquired by Google in 2020.

Since 2012, 70% of Frontline’s seed portfolio companies have raised capital from many top-tier US venture capital funds. Seed Fund III will continue to search for globally ambitious entrepreneurs across Europe.

Speaking on the launch of the new fund, partner William McQuillan said, “When we looked at the data back in 2012 – at the very start of Frontline – it was painfully clear that European entrepreneurs lacked the infrastructure and support to build a global business out of Europe. Today, Europe rightfully finds itself on top-tier US investors’ target list, but global expansion remains an important challenge to solve. As a team, we’ve pooled all of our experience and resources into helping our founders cross the Atlantic. Seed Fund III will be an extension of our work – to help founders get off the ground – and go global.”

Seed Fund III includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), and AIB as investors – all of which have backed prior Frontline funds. It also includes ten exited software entrepreneurs from across Europe and the US.

The fund comes at an exciting time for US-Europe venture, as US giants are engaging more actively in Europe. In May of 2020, Frontline invested in Irish HQ’d company Evervault alongside Kleiner Perkins, Index, and Sequoia.

Speaking on the Europe-US dynamic, McQuillan added: “The US accounts for 52% of the global software market, and Europe accounts for a further 26%. To become the global category winner companies of all stages need to compete and win, in both. Our job is to facilitate their growth by adding more than capital alone. Having both a Seed and a Growth strategy aimed at expanding across both sides of the Atlantic, gives us a unique perspective into the fundamentals building of a global business.”

Frontline counts active advisors and LPs in executive roles at dozens of US companies that have successfully navigated expansion, including Slack, Cloudflare, Dropbox, Stripe, Segment, Looker, Indeed, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Workday. The transatlantic experience of the Frontline partners at companies such as Google, Twitter, SurveyMonkey, Airtable, and Yammer has been crucial in supporting entrepreneurs’ global growth.

In March of 2020, Frontline announced a $70m US-based growth-stage fund, Frontline X, geared at helping best in class US SaaS businesses with fast and frictionless US-Europe expansion. To date, Frontline X has invested in; the Series B of TripActions (a company that has gone on to raise from Andreessen Horowitz and was recently valued at $5 billion valuation); People.ai’s $100 million Series C together with Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz, and ICONIQ; and Clearbanc’s $50 million Series B with Emergence and Highland.