Early stage VC firm Nauta Capital, which has offices in London, UK, Barcelona, Spain and Boston in the US, has closed out a 2016 fund raising — capping it..
Early stage VC firm Nauta Capital , which has offices in London, UK, Barcelona, Spain and Boston in the US, has closed out a 2016 fund raising — capping it off at $170 million.
The firm has already closed eight investments with this fund, which had a first closing at $70M, with a further $100M added in parallel — now closing oversubscribed vs the original target for the fund of around $120M, according to general partner Carles Ferrer. (Its prior funds were $55M raised in 2006, and $115M in 2010.)
Nauta has a focus on what it describes as “capital-efficient Series A software propositions”: aka startups that take a leaner approach to taking on funding vs money-gobbling wannabe unicorns. Its areas of tech interest include b2b software, digital media and “enabling technologies” for mobile and the Internet — with an overall focus on large markets with “limited previous technology impact”.
“We believe the VC model has been lately too centered around the Unicorn concept, that is too many times return-unrelated,” Ferrer tells TechCrunch. “Too many companies are pushed to grow more and more but too early, and for that, raise too much money, again too early. Many of them don’t have enough evidence from the market to know if they should be spending so much money.
“If it happens to be too early, that company may end up wasting so much money and energy and having a conflict between equity raised, valuation, and its performance. This too often results in good companies that are actually severely damaged by a poor funding strategies.”
Ferrer argues that the risk for startups raising too much too soon can be especially “delicate” in the b2b sector — describing the firm’s philosophy for startups here being “lean for a good while is beautiful”.
