Back in the heady days of 2021, Heartcore Capital planned to focus on consumer technology with a $200 million fund. Fast-forward to 2024, and its latest fund will now ‘leaven the bread’ of that thesis, with a fresh $180 million (€170M) to go broader and more generalist than that earlier thesis.
Some 17-years into the game, Heartcore’s Fund V will continue to be an early-stage found, and now counts companies like Boozt, Neo4j, Peakon, Tink, GetYourGuide, TravelPerk and Podimo, in its portfolio.
Aiming to be the first institutional money into startups, it is also ranked the 9th best VC globally in the HEC Paris-Dow Jones VC ranking.
Jimmy Nielsen, partner and co-founder told TechCrunch over a call: “Basically, this fund is broader [than the last fund]… We did a lot of consumer at the tail-end of fund three and the beginning of fund four. The pendulum swung to the question of ‘where does technology really pick up’? So this fund is more generalistic in focus, more focused on productivity, software, infrastructure.”
That includes more of a focus on the compute stack, synthetic biology, productivity/AI, software infrastructure, travel and climate tech. They plan to make 25-30 early-stage investments with Fund V and have so far put money into LLM compute infrastructure, database software, software for carbon capture and consumer travel.
LPs in the fund include repeat investor Industriens Pension. It also has a smaller, dedicated, Web3 three fund.
“We had pretty much all existing LPS re-up,” said Nielsen. “We have had a really nice run in the last years on DPI. So in the last eight years, on average, every time we draw one euro, we have returned 1.6 and if you accumulate that, that stacks-up in terms of fund return.”
He also thinks the EU market will “warm up” next year: “We’re seeing more M&A now and there’s something happening, for sure, with IPOs next year. The real question is, what are we Europeans doing on the IPO side, right? Are we all going to drive towards the US or not?”
The firm now now has €800 million cumulative committed capital with offices in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin and Paris.
Emil Eifrem, CEO & co-founder, Neo4j added in a statement: “Heartcore was the first fund to believe in us 15 years ago and have remained on our board through all financing rounds, all the way to a multi-billion-dollar company.”
