Irish-founded venture capital company Tapestry VC has announced its third fund, raising $80 million (€70 million) to back repeat founders in Europe and North America.
Tapestry, which was started by Patrick Murphy alongside David Kelly in 2018, said the new fund is backed by previous investors such as Railpen, Molten Ventures and OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar, with new sovereign investor British Business Bank also supporting the fund.
The latter is the co-anchor of the fund, contributing $40 million to the total.
The latest fund is almost triple the size of previous vehicles.
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Murphy said Tapestry would begin making investments from the fund in the coming weeks, with about 30 companies set to benefit. That gives the fund more scope to make bigger investments.
“When we started back in 2018, they were half a million dollar cheques; now we are able to write $1-3 million cheques to help repeat founders get their companies off the ground and lead or co-lead their seed or pre-seed round,” said Murphy.
The company, which counts virtual events firm Hopin, tech brand Nothing and drone delivery outfit Manna among its investments, said it would invest across a range of sectors.
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“We see our focus as finding these repeat founders and seeing where they are working,” said Murphy. “Where we are seeing a lot of people going is the application layer of AI. And people are much happier now to start deep technology companies because there is a follow-on funding environment for those companies to raise Series Cs.”
The company is tapping into a “founder-led movement” in Europe.
“Today’s repeat founders represent a generation shaped by expensive experience,” said partner Audrey Miller. “They’ve already navigated the realities of building, scaling and exiting technology companies and, second time around, they want partners who have felt the same pressures.”
Tapestry has also opened a new office in London, with Murphy relocating from San Francisco.
“Fifty to 60 per cent of all our deals have been in Europe or in European founders,” said Murphy. “None of that is changing. We are just spending our time more here now, which is an acknowledgment of the ambition level of these founders to start these businesses here.”
