Our Portfolio Company BLOCKMATE Secures 1.5 million Euro Investment! DEPO Is on Board as a Follow-on
Providing analytical insights into the world of digital assets and becoming a bridge between the cryptocurrency and traditional finance worlds is the goal of the Czech-Slovak startup Blockmate. They are developing a new generation of solutions for secure and consolidated financial services. They have now secured an investment totaling 1.5 million euros (approximately 36 million Czech korunas) from seven investors. The largest portion, amounting to 760,000 euros, will come from Seed Starter of Česká a Slovenská spořitelna. Among other investors are investment funds Tensor Ventures, DEPO Ventures, Token Ventures, BADideas.fund, ZAKA Ventures, and Diaspora Ventures. This investment marks a significant milestone for the company, enabling them to continue connecting cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and traditional finance.
Why investing in startups could be the key to success during an economic downturn
During market downturns, the best investment opportunities arise. This applies to both stocks and investing in technological startups. In times of crisis and high inflation, leaving money lying in accounts is not advisable. Those who start investing now will have greater profits in the future.
KB SmartSolutions launches cooperation with DEPO Ventures
Banks and financial technology start-ups (in other words fintechs) represent two different worlds. They have different DNA, speak the different language, and the partnership between them may not be easy. However, it can bring many benefits. Not only for both parties involved, but mainly for the client. KB SmartSolutions, the member of the Komerční banka Group, and the investment company DEPO Ventures currently launch their cooperation. Its main goal is the search for promising start-ups, mainly thanks to the expansion of the joint field of activity. Start-ups with smart solutions that could potentially complement the current portfolio of Komerční banka, under the wings of KB SmartSolutions, will be searched for not only in the Czech Republic, but also beyond its borders, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. The partners also want to jointly support the local start-up ecosystem and strengthen the position of start-ups in the region. Mutual support will also take place in the areas of sponsorship and networking.
What do the results of the survey say about Business Angels in the Czech Republic?
Although angel investing is not yet widespread in the Czech Republic, Czechs are still among the most skilled investors in startups. Their strategies have generally been successful so far. Almost nine out of ten investors were able to make a profit on their investment, with nearly 12% making more than ten times their investment. Two-fifths of investors consider investing in startups more profitable than other forms of investment. These are the findings of a survey conducted by investment group DEPO Ventures, which is building a unique syndicate of angel investors in addition to angel funds. The survey was also conducted in partnership with the law firm Havel & Partners and the agency CzechInvest. The aim of this fourth annual survey was to map the environment of angel investing in the Czech Republic.
DEPO Latest News | October 2022
As we approach the end of the year, we wanted to take a moment to thank all our investors, co-investors, partners, founders and others for your support and engagement. It has been an exciting and eventful year for DEPO. We have achieved many milestones and reached some important goals with 12 investments as DEPO Ventures and 7 syndicates as DEPO Angels. We continue and aim higher with the third €20 million fund for another 40 early-stage startups from the CEE region and Baltics. Take a look at our investments for the last quarter.
Tapline, a digital finance platform has announced a pre-seed funding of €31.7 million euro
Fasanara Capital, the UK-based alternative asset management company, is providing debt funding of €30m. The €1.7m equity round is led by the Czech VC firm, V-Sharp Venture Studio, alongside Antler, Black Pearls VC, 365 fintech, Depo Ventures, Impetus Capital, and several business angels investing in the round. The funding will allow the Berlin-based team to tap into the exponentially growing SaaS market, where global transaction volumes are set to reach €720 billion in 2028. The investment will also be used to enhance the Tapline solution and hire key individuals around marketing and product.
Tatum receives $41.5 million funding to growth of a unique blockchain development platform
Tatum, the company drastically simplifying blockchain applications development, today announced it has received $41.5 million in funding to accelerate marketing, educational efforts, and community building for slashing the complexity and time-to-market of creating blockchain-based applications critical to digital finance and Web 3.0. The investment augments the company’s previous financing and includes Evolution Equity Partners as lead, as well as Octopus Ventures, 3VC, Tensor Ventures, Depo Ventures, Leadblock Fund, Circle, and the founders of Bitpanda.
DEPO Ventures opens the largest angel fund in the CEE region
There is a huge amount of money in the startup world. Investments are often made in millions of euros, and the value of companies can quickly exceed a number 20 times larger. Before technology startup founders can get to this stage, they need a large amount of investment capital, which they have trouble getting from investors in the early stages. The investment group DEPO Ventures is now launching its third angel fund, one of the few to focus on investing in early-stage startups. It wants to bring together angel investors who can help startup founders further their development. At the same time, allow them to invest in a much more systematic way. The new fund will become the largest angel fund in Central Europe.
DEPO Ventures invests in data automation. Swedish-Czech startup Forloop raised 875k euros.
No successful company today can do without rapid adaptation to the constantly changing market conditions. Finding out the behavior of the target group, new trends, and competitors, all of this can be crucial for the further development of a company. The problem with data is that its processing is often very slow, difficult, and most importantly manual. In addition, many companies do not use this additional data at all and rely only on their internal data. To handle this problem, the Czech-Swedish startup Forloop.ai has created a platform to automate work with external data, which has been proven to speed up the work of data analysts while generally saving time and resources. The startup has now raised around 875 thousand EUR from Czech and foreign investors, including the angel fund DEPO Ventures. The funding will be used to improve the product, grow the number of users and expand into the US.
Tatum, StartupYard and DEPO Ventures are launching a unique acceleration program
App development for blockchain-based tech is often long and tedious. The founders are often unaware of how exactly to continue with their project in order to make monetary gains from it. Seeing this issue, the developer platform Tatum joined forces with the startup accelerator StartupYard launching the unique Tatum Blockchain Accelerator. The program is built in a way to enable founders to easy development of their company from scratch. What do the founders get out of the service besides that? All-year acceleration includes investment, mentoring from experienced experts, access to the Tatum platform, and contacts from the blockchain and web3 world.