💰The ultimate map of the Polish funding ecosystem — 2023 summary

It’s been a year and a half since we last shared our map of the Polish funding ecosystem. As the 2023 is already over, it seems to be a great time to summarize the activity of both local and foreign funds on the Polish market during the last months.

As always, while writing that blog post we have two goals in mind. Firstly, we are curious about the recent trends and the number of funds that are actively seeking investments in our local market.

Secondly, we want to shine a spotlight on the funds that are investing in Poland, giving you — founders a better idea of who (besides Inovo) can be your next investor. If that’s something that you’re interested in — please find our updated map and Airtable database a couple of paragraphs below.

No new records in 2023

Both in 2021 and 2022 we’ve seen record activity on the Polish market. 2023 wasn’t as good. Both the global slowdown in the technology sector and the cyclical nature among Polish VC funds (large portion of them ended their investment cycle in 2023) contributed to a year in which we saw fewer investments made by fewer funds.

• We identified 51 foreign VC funds that invested in Polish startups in 2023 (-40% y/y and -46% vs 2021)
• We mapped 46 local VCs that provided equity financing this year (-25% y/y and -28% vs 2021)
• Since our last update, we saw the launch of only 3 new Polish VC funds — these are Avivo Capital, LSA Ventures and Radix Ventures.

*own research — only officially announced VC deals were included

… but the top-tier funds still have Poland on their radar

Although 2023 wasn’t the strongest year in terms of the activity level of foreign funds, we’ve still seen a couple of very interesting deals:

• ElevenLabs raised from Andreessen Horowitz
• Vue Storefront got backed by Felix Capital
• Fiat Republic partnered with Kraken Ventures, Fabric Ventures and Arca in a round co-led by Inovo
• Quesma raised from Heartcore Capital in a round co-led by Inovo

Here is who’s been active on the Polish market recently

To give founders a better visibility on who’s actively looking at the Polish market, once again we mapped the funds that have been recently active on the Polish scene.

• By “recently active” we mean those, who announced at least 1 investment in a Polish startup since the beggining of 2022.
• When it comes to Polish funds, we’ve excluded these, who communicated that they are no longer active and added these who raised the capital in 2023, but haven’t managed to make any investments yet.
• Are we missing your fund? Message Dawid and we’ll promptly fix it!

Here📗 you can find an Airtable with the full list of the funds💸

Predictions for the upcoming year

Despite data from the last year, we think 2024 will be good for the Polish tech scene.

Globally, we are slowly starting to see the tech sector rebound, with the Median New ARR growth among software companies being positive for the first time since Q1'22. Locally, there should be ~40 new funds launching in 2024, as the Polish Development Fund lauches the second edition of its programmes. These factors should lead to many more new names in the updated map we will publish next year.

We plan to contribute to the VC activity on the Polish market as well. Our goal for 2024 is to add at least 10 new startups to our portfolio and invest at least €13.5m. Are you raising a round? We should talk!

Inovo.vc backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–4m in startups from Poland and the CEE region.

For more information visit: inovo.vc