Tapestry's latest fund of $80m is nearly three times the size of its predecessor.
The backer of smartphone disruptor Nothing has raised an $80m fund, nearly three times bigger than its predecessor, as it looks to invest in repeat founders across both sides of the Atlantic, which it says are going through a boom.
The London and San Francisco-based Tapestry VC, founded in 2018, typically invests in immigrant founders.
Its new $80m Fund III has captured a $40m investment from new investor, the British Business Bank. Other investors in the fund include Revolut investor Molten Ventures, pension fund manager Ralipen and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar.
Friar has invested in previous Tapestry funds and is a mentor figure of Tapestry founder Patrick Murphy, who is relocating from San Francisco to London to head up the fund.
Its predecessor, Fund II, was $30m in size. On the challenges of raising the latest fund, Murphy pointed to repeat investors coming on board, saying “it was a pretty straightforward process”.
On the increased size of the fund, Murphy said: “Ultimately, seed rounds are getting bigger. We have built our business from scratch.
“You need to earn the right to be a bigger investment firm. And so we were writing half a million dollar checks in our first fund, a million dollar checks in our second fund and now we are investing up to three million dollars leading and co-leading seed rounds.”
He says the European repeat founder landscape is in the midst of a “super cycle”, pointing to ballooning employee figures of repeat founders. The figures show that repeat founder-led startups employ over two million people across 23,000 companies.
Tapestry’s portfolio includes investing in Nothing’s seed round, backing video conference startup Hopin at Seed before its $7.75bn valuation (whose star fell after Covid) and backing Fin AI before its $3.6B acquisition by Salesforce.
On opening its first London office, he says: ”I was spending more and more time in London. And as the European ecosystem has become more and more mature, especially around repeat founders, I now spend the majority of time here.
“We are now focused on being here most of the time, and then helping those companies expand to the US.”
Tapestry’s investment strategy is sector-agnostic spanning software, AI, cybersecurity, fintech, autonomy and deep technology at Seed and Pre-Seed stage.
It says it specialises in working with founders before there’s even a company or formal process in place, supporting product direction, hiring, fundraising and more. It expects to make around a dozen investments a year.