In our new article series, we introduce the most exciting venture capital firms that are open for LP investments to our family office network. The article belongs to our exclusive single-family office guidebook, where we give guidance on the most relevant topics for newly established and already existing family investment vehicles.
In this article, we talked to Cogito Capital Partners, a venture capital fund focused on B2B markets and on the pre-scaling stage. This company, run by very experienced venture capitalists, aims to invest in late stages in companies that have already a well-developed product and some sales track record, and are looking for scaling their product worldwide.
Familyofficehub.io (FO): Briefly describe your focus: in which kind of startups are you investing, where is your geographical focus, what’s your average ticket size?
Cogito Capital: Our first fund is focused on B2B technology startups in fintech, enterprise software, MedTech, and mobility/IoT. We invest in “post-product / pre-scaling” companies that already have a working product/service, their first customers, and who need support in scaling their business (we invest in late Series-A and Series-B stages).
Our focus is on European companies, operating in Central and Eastern Europe, but with a clear global market potential, whom we support in expanding internationally, with the focus on the US market.
Our minimum investment size is EUR 2M.
FO: What are exciting companies in your portfolio – and why?
Cogito Capital: In our first 18 months we have made four investments so far and we expect to close the fifth one before the end of the year. Our current portfolio includes:
- MarketFinance. A market leader in Europe in providing invoice financing and loans to small and medium-sized businesses (over GBP 3 bn in transaction volume)
- Finom. A neo-bank for SMEs providing a unique suite of financial management and accounting solutions to European small and medium-sized businesses in a single mobile app-based service
- Applica. It offers an AI-based platform for contextual extraction of information from unstructured (e.g. contracts) or semi-structured (e.g. invoices, receipts, forms) text sources. Gartner named them a “Cool Vendor of 2020 in Natural Language Processing”
- HomeDoctor. A market leader in Poland in telemedicine consultations, doctor home visits, and home delivery of prescription medications, aiming to become a regional leader
- Our upcoming investment is in a 5G software company that is at the forefront of innovation in the 5G small cell management area.
FO: Why should a family office invest in Cogito Capital as LP?
Cogito Capital: Cogito Fund I is uniquely positioned to address the capital availability gap at the growth stage in CEE. The CEE region has many active seed-stage funds, but very few funds that focus on the later stage. Our other distinction is that we operate out of offices both in Europe (Warsaw) and the US (NY) which enables us to support our portfolio companies in their expansion to the US market and to provide exposure to US investors. The Cogito team is comprised of experienced venture capitalists who have historically generated solid returns to their investors in their previous funds (our investment track record prior to Cogito Fund I is 5.3x times money, including a unicorn exit).
FO: Are you also open to investments from European family offices?
Cogito Capital: We are open to investments from European family offices and most of our investors are from Europe. Our investors have the right to co-invest in target companies alongside the Fund. The final closing of the Fund is scheduled for March 2021.
FO: Thanks for your time!
Headquarters: Warsaw, Poland.
Website: Cogito Capital Partners
