g-f(2)127 THE BIG PICTURE OF THE DIGITAL AGE, TC, Emerging as an Eastern powerhouse, Earlybird Digital East Fund launches new $242M fund.

VIRAL KNOWLEDGE: The “genioux facts” knowledge news

Extra-condensed knowledge

• Earlybird Digital East Fund — a fund associated with Germany’s Earlybird VC, but operating separately — has launched a €200m ($242m) successor fund. 
• The fund’s focus will remain the same as before: a Seed and Series-A fund focusing on what’s known as ‘Emerging Europe’, in other words, countries stretching from the Baltics to Central and Eastern Europe, and Turkey. 
• The firm has also promoted Mehmet Atici, who’s been with the firm for eight years, to Partner. The new fund has made four investments so far: FintechOS, Payhawk, Picus, and Binalyze.
• The back-story to DEF is a fascinating tale of what happened to Europe in the last 15 years, as tech took off and Europeans returned from Silicon Valley.

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image

Condensed knowledge 

• Between 2014 and 2019, the fund invested in UiPath, Hazelcast, and Obilet. 
• UiPath has become a global leader in the area known as ‘Robotic Process Automation (RPA). 
• Hazelcast is a low latency data processing platform startup with Turkish roots. 
• Obilet is a marketplace focused for the massive Turkish intercity bus travel market. 
• DEF has also exited Vivense, Dolap, and EMbonds and in more recent times the fund has exited Vivense, the “Wayfair of Turkey” to Actera, the top local PE fund.
• The team had spectacular early success. Peak Games, Trendyol, YemekSepeti and GittiGidiyor are the four largest Turkish tech exits to date. 
• Digital East Fund was an investor in all of them. Peak games exited for $1.8 billion in cash to Zynga only last year.

Category 2: The Big Picture of the Digital Age

[genioux fact produced, deduced or extracted from TC]

Type of essential knowledge of this “genioux fact”: Essential Deduced and Extracted Knowledge (EDEK).

Type of validity of the "genioux fact". 

• Inherited from sources + Supported by the knowledge of one or more experts.

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Emerging as an Eastern powerhouse, Earlybird Digital East Fund launches new $242M fund, Mike Butcher, February 18, 2021, TechCrunch.com, TC. 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mike Butcher

Editor At Large

Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch.

As a writer, editor, interviewer, moderator and columnist in the tech media world he covers everything the smallest tech startups and the largest tech giants. Lately, he’s been writing a lot about Blockchain and Crypto.

Mike has been named one of the most influential people in European technology by various newspaper and magazines. He founded The Europas Awards, the non-profit Techfugees and has advised the UK government on tech startup policy. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism.