Highland Europe looking up with new €463m funding
Tech investor Highland Europe has closed its third fund in six years, raising €463 million in 12 weeks to fund European software and internet-enabled businesses, taking the firm’s assets under management to €1.1 billion.
The investor has 29 active companies in its books, with combined revenues of €1.1 billion in 2017 and over 6,500 employees across Europe and the US.
The firm will continue to focus on rapidly growing software and companies that have reached sufficient scale to confirm the validity of their business model.
“Scaling the team and the organisation presents serious challenges and therefore we prioritise recruitment of management and board talent above all other value creation initiatives and work closely with founders to fashion changes that benefit everyone,” says Highland Europe partner and co-founder Fergal Mullen.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Mullen says that Highland doesn’t invest in the hype phase of any sector.
“We look at fintech all the time, but our criteria are very, very strict. If you don’t have a certain amount of revenue and you’re not demonstrating real capital efficiency, we’re not going to jump in just because fintech is hot.”
He singled out artificial intelligence (AI) in this sector, calling it “overhyped”. Gasp.
