Earlier this year, Europe saw a new early-stage investment firm enter the scene, with London-based Connect Ventures raising an initial 16 million euros for its first fund (target size roughly 43 million euros).
At launch, Connect Ventures had two partners: Pietro Bezza (an Italy-born serial entrepreneur, angel investor and Seedcamp mentor) and Bill Earner (originally from the United States, a former startup tinkerer and previously an investment manager at Amadeus Capital Partners).
Today, Connect Ventures is announcing that it is adding another American refugee, Sitar Teli, as its third partner. Teli was previously at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, an early investor in companies like SoundCloud, MegaZebra and Secretsales.
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Connect Ventures focuses on seed and A-round investments in the areas of consumer Internet, mobile and Web infrastructure, wherever opportunities emerge across Europe.
Its investment size ranges from £150,000 ($240,000) to £1.5 million ($2.4 million).
The firm is today also announcing its fourth investment to date, having backed London-based Citymapper, a startup that says it wants to ‘revolutionize urban personal transportation planning’.
Led by founder Azmat Yusuf, the company has built the Busmapper and Citymapper apps for iOS. Connect would not say how much it invested in the startup.
As for Teli, she tells me that she wanted to do something ‘entrepreneurial in venture capital’ after seven years at Doughty Hanson, and was actually considering starting up a firm of her own. When she got to know Connect Ventures better, though, she felt it was exactly the VC firm that she would try to design if it were up to her – hence her interest in joining them as partner instead.
She’s a very sharp and well-connected lady, so it’ll be interesting to see how she fares at Connect Ventures.
The UK VC firm’s previous early-stage investments include Secretsales and Berlin-based Facebook commerce startup Ondango and Space Ape Games.
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