By Douglas Busvine
BERLIN (Reuters) - British tech investor Notion Capital has raised $150 million for its fourth venture fund dedicated to European start-ups offering software as a service, bringing total assets under management to more than half a billion dollars.
The fund launch comes as Notion marks its 10th year of investing in cloud-based software firms that have the potential to shake up industries by offering online services that are easy to use and can be quickly scaled.
Notion invests in companies that have received initial support from individual investors and are in need of 'post-seed' funding. They typically have $1 million in annual revenues.
"We then look to take them on the $1 million to $100 million journey," Managing Partner and Co-founder Stephen Chandler told Reuters in an interview.
Notion has achieved returns approaching three times on its first fund and investments it has sold on include marketing firm NewVoiceMedia, acquired by Vonage a year ago for $350 million.
That doesn't include investments that the fund still holds, such as invoicing platform Tradeshift, in which Notion invested $7 million in 2011.
Tradeshift raised $250 million in a Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) Principal Strategic Investments in May 2018, and is on course to float on the stock market within the next couple of years, said Chandler.
A more typical exit route for Notion would be to a trade or strategic investor, meaning it doesn't face the wide difference in valuations on private and public equity markets that have hit big U.S. tech IPOs of late.
Notion, which describes itself as Europe's largest dedicated financier of business-to-business software firms, was itself set up by alumni of cloud-based security provider MessageLabs, sold to Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC) in 2008 for $700 million.
Backers of its fourth fund include British Patient Capital, Texas A&M University Endowment and S-Cubed Capital, as well as founders of firms including MoneySupermarket, Moonpig, Ocado (LON:OCDO), Play.com, TAG, FeelUnique and others.
One name missing from the roster is the European Investment Fund, which had previously supported Notion but was unable to agree terms to address Britain's planned exit from the European Union.
Chandler, who expressed dismay at the political uncertainty around Brexit, said Notion would continue to invest in continental Europe and hoped to work again in future with the European Investment Fund.