This week Felix Plapperer is officially joining the ranks of Europe’s solo GPs, as his VC firm, BOOOM, announces a final close of its first fund at €17m.
The Berlin-based fund will invest in European B2B software startups at pre-seed and seed, with a particular focus on supply chain and procurement tech startups.
If you’re thinking that sounds familiar, it is — this is far from the only B2B SaaS-focused solo GP fund in Europe — but BOOOM has a twist. The three founders of German logistics unicorn sennder — David Nothacker, Julius Köhler and Nicolaus Schefenacker — “co-initiated the fund” and have committed to mentor all of its portfolio companies, Plapperer tells Sifted.
The details
BOOOM will write cheques of €100k-€400k in around 30 companies. Like many solo GP funds, it won’t seek to lead deals.
Investors in the fund include partners from well-known VC firms Accel, Index and Creandum, along with a handful of institutional investors and founders of tech companies including Celonis, King, Flix and sennder.
The sennder founders will no longer invest as individual angel investors following their commitment to BOOOM. They’ll also mentor portfolio founders for the 12 months following an investment, with each founder likely working with two to three companies at a time.
“While some founders prefer to be in touch on an ad-hoc basis, other teams like to have a bi-weekly check-in with a standing agenda,” says Plapperer. “Some are more focused on discussing questions around hiring, board management or culture while others prefer to exchange thoughts around professional development and growth as a CEO or as an individual.”
BOOOM is also building a community of scaleup founders and operators to advise portfolio companies on domain-specific topics, like tech, product and go-to-market.
The fund has so far invested in 11 companies, including Timberhub, a timber trade marketplace, Ankar AI, an AI licensing and infringement detection tool and Spread AI, which creates digital twins of engineering products in the automotive and aerospace sectors.
Plapperer was previously a partner at Berlin-based VC SquareOne. Before that, he worked at startup factory Rocket Internet and consultancy Boston Consulting Group.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/solo-gp-booom-e17m-fund-news/
