While many early-stage VC funds might look to make a few dozen investments annually, Playfair has kept things fairly trim throughout its history, committing to no more than eight investments each year while ringfencing some of its capital for a handful of follow-on investments. Those investments were from Playfair’s inaugural fund, which wasn’t focused on any particular “stage” of company.īut Playfair transitioned into more of a pre-seed firm with its second fund, announced in 2019, a focus that it’s maintaining for its new £57 million ($70 million) third fund, which it announced today. In its 10-year history, Playfair has invested in around 100 companies, including well-established unicorns such as Stripe and Mapillary, a startup that exited to Facebook back in 2020. And this is something that London-based generalist VC firm Playfair Capital knows all about, given its focus on backing super young startups that have yet to make much of a ripple in their respective industries.
This is particularly true at the very early pre-seed stage, where companies might barely have a functioning product to shout about. Early-stage investments inherently have a higher risk of failing, but these risks also come with potentially higher rewards: getting in at the ground floor of a startup’s journey gives VCs more negotiation clout.
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