New list ranks ‘unicorn hunters’ on how early they invested in successful startups

After a record-breaking year of venture capital investment, in which $138.6B was invested in tech companies across EMEA, Dealroom has released its annual list of venture capital firms, ranked not only by how successful firms are but also by how early firms were to invest in the most up and coming technology and software businesses.

London-founded VC firms rank in the top 10 of the Dealroom Investor Ranking of leading unicorn hunters, across seed and Series A investments – indicating their ability to spot so-called ‘unicorns’ early. Seed investor LocalGlobe ranks highest in both the overall EMEA list and the seed investor list, narrowly beating Seedcamp. Whilst Accel beats Index Ventures to take the top spot in the list of Series A investment firms. 

Overall LocalGlobe, Accel, and Index Ventures take the top three spots for investing across EMEA, including Israel. Along with Seedcamp, these four firms have a collective 101 unicorns across their portfolio, including firms like UiPath, Ankorstore, Wise and Sorare. The firms which feature in the top 10 of the Dealroom Investor Ranking made 406 investments at an early stage, revealing the rate of investment in what turned out to be a record year for European tech. 

Dealroom’s ranking of leading early-stage investors in EMEA is intended to help founders find the venture capital investors that will best help them to grow their startups, at each stage of their growth. It is also intended to help the once opaque world of venture capital investing become more transparent. Unlike other lists, which require individual investors to submit their own data, this ranking is compiled entirely from Dealroom’s objective universe of data. 

For the first time, firms, rather than individual investors, are being measured on their ability to spot potential stars at seed stage – rather than the size of investment made – which means firms are being compared on a level playing field. This means that large funds, that can write big cheques, do not have an in-built advantage. 

Yoram Wijngaarde, founder of Dealroom said: “In 2021 global funds doubled down on European tech and invested tens of millions of dollars here. But a handful of European seed stage investors were early to spot the startups that are now going global, having invested in them years ago.”

“We wanted to provide founders with data that could show them which were the best investors to turn to raise a seed stage – the ones that were most likely to help them achieve their ambition.”

“By weighting our ranking of investors by the stage that they invested in Europe’s most successful companies, we are trying to create a level-playing field between the giant funds that have been pushing into this market and the smaller funds that have been alive to the opportunity in EMEA for some time. This is a world-first in creating an objective ranking of how investors find the most promising companies early.”