Spain and Portugal are vibrant European tech ecosystems, with many new startups and funding rounds announced in both countries. Barcelona-based Plus Partners was recently launched with the aim of closing a fund of $30-50 million; Yellow is a new venture capital firm launched with a €30 million fund; and Spanish venture capital firm Kfund has raised $75 million.
Today, another Spanish firm, All Iron Ventures, is rebranding. It will now be known as Acurio Ventures, and is closing its third fund of $166 million (€150 million), which will only make “follow-on” investments and will not lead deals.
The company, previously known as Acurio, was founded in 2018 and has backed European tech startups including Seedtag, Jobandtalent, Lingokids, Preply, Refurbed and Lookiero. Acurio was co-founded by Ander Michelena, who sold his previous startup Ticketbis to eBay in 2016 for €16.5 million.
LPs in the new fund include undisclosed U.S. university endowments, pension funds, corporations, about 35 family offices, insurance companies and technology executives.
The new fund has already made around 20 investments and is based on a holistic, non-sector, pan-European investment philosophy. The fund has assets under management of around 300 million euros.
Michelena told TechCrunch that the follow-on fund plans to take a 3% to 10% stake, which he believes will give the firm more flexibility in accessing companies, managing its follow-on investment reserve and executing exits.
“In the last 12 months we've probably been one of the most active venture capital firms in Europe, making 20 investments,” he said. “We think the market is at an inflection point and valuations have bottomed, so we're looking to take advantage of that opportunity. The recovery will be slow, so that's where we wanted to be aggressive. It was time to step on the gas.”
Michelena noted that the firm's portfolio construction differs from others: “We work with 50 companies per fund, rather than the typical 20.” […] We basically review the portfolio on a quarterly basis and decide how much to follow up on.”
He said another big advantage of the model is that it allows companies to make early distributions to paid up capital (DPI), one of the key financial metrics VC funds use to evaluate investment performance.
“We can exit at each round and don't have to wait until the end of the life of the fund, so in that sense it's a slightly different approach to regular venture capital,” he said.
The firm has a team of 12 people based in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and London, and partners include Michelena, Diego Recondo, Hugo Maldomingo and Kate Cornell.
The company is tapping into its Basque origins in its new name, Acurio Ventures, inspired by Juan de Acurio, one of the 12 sailors who returned from the circumnavigation expedition led by Magellan and Elcano five centuries ago.
According to Dealroom's report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the combined enterprise value of Spanish startups will exceed €100 billion in 2023. The report also revealed that venture investment in Spanish startups held up last year, with €2.2 billion raised across around 850 funding rounds.
The annual “State of Technology in Europe” report for 2023 found that the Spanish ecosystem is fourth overall in Europe and had the highest number of startup funding deals last year.
Earlier this year, Madrid-based venture capital firm Seaya closed its Madrid-based “Article 9” €300 million climate technology fund, Seaya Andromeda.
Additionally, the European Investment Bank's venture capital arm backed a new Spanish fund this year that aims to invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in growth-stage technology startups.