A stunning first quarter in venture capital funding was not restricted to the United States; Europe also had one hell of a start to the year.
According to data from Dealroom and Crunchbase News, an investor, and an analyst from PitchBook, European startups put together an impressive fundraising haul. The venture capital world kicked off its 2021 European investing cycle with enough activity to set the continent on the path that would crush yearly records.The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.
Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
Inside the data, there’s lots to unpack, including which sectors of European startups stood out in terms of capital raised, rising seed and late-stage deals, and dollar volume. We’ll also need to discuss exits — the Deliveroo IPO and its various woes was not the only transaction from the period worth understanding. As with our prior looks at AI startup fundraising and the United States’ own blistering start to the year, we’ll lean on multiple sources to ensure that we have a wide lens. And we’ll keep in mind that all venture capital data lags reality somewhat, as many deals from a particular period are not disclosed or discovered until long after they actually occurred. In this case, it makes the numbers all the more impressive. Let’s get into the data.