Polish VC market activity in Q3 21 summary

PFR Ventures, together with Inovo Venture Partners, has prepared a quarterly report summarizing transactions on the Polish venture capital (VC) market. The data shows that in the third quarter of 2021, 105 funds have invested in 110 companies. They raised ca. EUR 127 m from investors.

In Q2 2021, EUR 127 million flowed through the Polish VC market. This is the total amount of capital that Polish and foreign funds have invested in innovative domestic companies. This also means, that in the first three quarters of 2021, Polish startups have raised EUR 386 million (PLN 1.76 billion) – over 40% more than in the whole year 2019. 

Aleksander Mokrzycki, vice president at PFR Ventures, said:
The third quarter of 2021 will be remembered for the significant increase of late-stage rounds. It’s a positive trend that we hope will continue in the following months. The average value of Series A over the last couple of years is EUR 4 million. A single company can raise as much as EUR 10-20 million. With more late-stage rounds we also see an increase of median and average value of a single transaction for the whole market.

Tomasz Swieboda, partner at Inovo Venture Partners, said:
2021 will be a record-breaking year. After just three quarters, we are certain about that. Without taking the outliers into the account, the total value of transactions crossed EUR 320 m, comparing to EUR 277 m in 2020. Q3 was one of the best quarters for the market and we expect Q4 to be even better, with announcements of the upcoming investments of a significant value, circulating on the market. Including our portfolio companies. We might also see an official confirmation of the first Polish unicorn.

61% of the financing was public-private capital, and the share of international funds in the total value of transactions was 29%. At the same time, 84 out of 110 transactions were based on public-private capital. Polish venture capital funds participated in 102 financing rounds. 

Out of 110 transactions, VC funds from the portfolio of PFR Ventures, participated in 47, accounting for almost 50% of all the capital raised by Polish innovative companies. The funds of the National Center for Research and Development carried out 30 transactions (7% of the overall value) transactions and played an important role in the early-stage segment (pre-seed and seed). The fifteen largest financing rounds accounted for 65% of the total value in Q3 2021.

During the third quarter of 2021, SoftBank Vision Fund II, invested in eObuwie, a subsidiary of publicly listed CCC, buying convertible bonds for EUR 110 million. Due to the extraordinary nature of the transaction and the ownership structure of eObuwie, this investment hasn’t been included in the statistics.

One of the biggest funding rounds in Q3 2021 have been raised by Proteon Pharmaceuticals and Vue Storefront. The former company has been raised EUR 21 m from international VC funds, an industry investor, a Polish VC fund Montis Capital and Polish Development Fund. The latter has raised EUR 17 m from Creandum, Earlybird, Paua Ventures and Movens Capital.