Notion Capital, a London-based venture capital firm, launched a $120m (£77m) investment fund on Thursday in a bid to boost European software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.
Under the scheme, which could grow to $150m by the end of the year, Notion will invest in entrepreneurs across the continent building business-to-business (B2B) cloud software, covering customer relations, enterprise resources and human capital among other areas.
Stephen Chandler, managing partner at Notion, wrote on the firm’s blog: "Our strategy remains to only invest in what we know and we think this gives us a strong advantage in the market for both evaluating and supporting companies.
"We aim to identify emerging entrepreneurial talent in Europe and help them build global category leaders. There are tremendous opportunities in this part of the world and the market remains undersupplied with high quality capital. This new fund helps us change that."
According to the research firm Gartner, a quarter of global IT spending on public cloud in how in Europe, totalling some $37bn.
Yet figures from Notion revealed that only 5% of the investment in the firm’s areas of focus went to European companies, equating to $1.2bn.
"This highlights the opportunity and I believe Notion is uniquely positioned in Europe to help these founders build category-leading businesses, leveraging both native European and international markets," Chandler said.
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Once the current fund closes at Notion the company will have more than $300m funds under management, which the firm claims will make it the biggest B2B Saas fund in Europe.
However European investors will still have to compete with the booming market for tech investment in the US, which is seeing many technology start-ups valued in excess of $1bn.
