The June edition of the Catalyst Romania Newsletter
As we reach the midpoint of 2024, we are excited to share updates on our latest activities and insights from our team. This month, we’re particularly pleased to highlight our portfolio companies and the event organized by Catalyst Romania in collaboration with 3TS Capital Partners, which took place on May 28 and 29. Stay tuned for more news on our investments!
🚀 Catalyst Romania sells its remaining shares in SmartBill to The Norwegian Group Visma Bucharest 🚀
Catalyst Romania Fund I has just announced the sale of its remaining shares in Smartbill, the leading Romanian provider of invoicing, inventory and accounting cloud services with over 110,000 SME customers, to the Norwegian Group Visma. This is another successful exit story from the Catalyst Romanian Fund I portfolio, following other exits such as Green Horse Games being sold to Miniclip, a Tencent subsidiary, or Vector Watch being sold to FitBit, who later made an exit to Google. Catalyst Romania Fund I was the first early-stage venture capital Fund in Romania and was financed through EIF’s JEREMIE program (the JEREMIE Romania initiative) that invested more than €12m in 10 well-known Romanian tech companies in recent years, including Vola.ro, AvocatNet.ro, 123FormBuilder, Simartis, SmartDreamers or OmniConvert.
SmartBill was founded in 2006 by Ioana and Radu Hasan and Mircea Căpățînă. The Company launched its invoicing software in 2011 and released its first cloud invoicing product in 2014. In February 2016 Catalyst Romania led an €1.1m financing round, providing capital for the Company to continue its product development and add features like multiuser access for one account, new mobile functionalities, integrations with other applications and tools – all these while maintaining the highest security level for its customers. Over time, SmartBill grew into the clear leader of its vertical in Romania, owner of the most used e-invoicing software in the country.
SmartBill grew almost 20 times since the initial Catalyst investment, with annual increases of revenues of 30 to 60 percent, becoming the market leader in financial and accounting solutions in Romania. As of March 2024, over 6.5 million documents are issued monthly through the platform, and their value exceeds €35 billion per year. For 2024, the company estimates a 60% increase in turnover and expects to exceed the threshold of 150,000 customers.
“I was privileged to be a part of the SmartBill success story, assisting the founders with advice already some years before our investment through Catalyst Romania Fund I was done, together with Gecad Ventures as co-investors. It is great to see where the Company is now and I am confident SmartBill can continue to grow much more in the years to come, but as Fund investors, we need to exit our companies at a certain moment, given the limited lifetime of such an investment structure,” said Marius Ghenea, Managing Partner, Catalyst Romania.
📈 SeedBlink set to transform tech equity ownership in Europe with all-in-one equity management and investment platform 📈
SeedBlink, the equity and investment company, announces the launch of its all-in-one equity management and investment platform. The solution enables European technology startups and stakeholders to seamlessly access, manage, and trade equity – through a unique combination of tech infrastructure, financial services, and network coverage.
With a proven track record of success since its inception in 2020, SeedBlink has solidified its position as a key player in the European technology investment and equity management space, continually introducing innovative solutions that empower startups to accelerate their growth at every stage of development.
Through a data-informed, AI-powered approach, SeedBlink’s unified, all-in-one equity management and investment platform features four key services:
- SeedBlink Equity: A comprehensive module including cap table management, locally relevant employee stock option plans, simulations, stakeholder governance, and portfolio management among other services, that collectively help companies manage equity efficiently and transparently, and make educated, strategic equity decisions.
- SeedBlink Ventures: Accelerates the fundraising journey for top-tier tech startups through professional guidance, tools, investment vehicles, and introductions to the right VCs and investors network.
- SeedBlink Syndicates: Enables angel investors and founders to pool and deploy capital within their own networks, fostering collaborative investment opportunities.
- SeedBlink Secondaries: Facilitates equity trading, offers early liquidity for vested shares, and supports portfolio diversification strategies.
This launch also marks a significant milestone – one year since the introduction of SeedBlink’s equity management solution, Nimity, now SeedBlink Equity – adding to the success of four years of community and VC-backed investments, all important steps towards an all-in-one platform with synergy benefits. With a robust roadmap of advanced functionality and services around equity management and diverse investment vehicles, SeedBlink is poised to meet the needs of technology companies throughout their growth journey.
🎤 ROPEA Conference: “Private Equity for Driving Growth” 🎤
ROPEA’s Annual Conference, “Private Equity for Driving Growth”, which took place on the 4th of June, had featured three panels, exploring key aspects of private equity and venture capital.
The first panel, “LP Perspectives: Market Challenges and Opportunities,” provided insights from Limited Partners into their perspectives on the current state and future trends, particularly within the Romanian and broader European contexts. The second and third panels, “From Local Players to Global Champions: Success Stories in PE Companies” and “Accelerating Growth in VC-Backed Companies“, have uniquely featured fund managers and entrepreneurs alike. During these two sessions, they delved into case studies and success stories, presenting strategies and best practices that have driven successful investments by local PE and VC funds in Romanian companies.
The VC panel “Accelerating Growth in VC-Backed Companies” at ROPEA’s “Private Equity for Driving Growth” moderated by Elena Vrabie, Country Lead in Romania at The Recursive. Four dynamic duos of VC fund managers and portfolio company leaders were in the spotlight and shared their joint success stories and strategies for achieving accelerated growth. Among them was Alin Stanciu, Partner Catalyst Romania, together with Andrei Dudoiu, the Founder of SeedBlink.
”In 2021, we made our first investment from our second fund in SeedBlink. We chose this investment primarily because it was an impact investment—SeedBlink helps develop the startup ecosystem, which in turn provides us with a larger pool for future investments. We decided to invest after the founders had already brought Radu Georgescu and Carmen Sebe on board as shareholders. We trusted the team because they had a vision that has since developed a series of new products. Over the past ten years, we have invested in and held a portfolio of 20 companies.”, said Alin.
”Our relationship with Catalyst is based on trust. Additionally, when talking about Catalyst Romania, it’s part of a larger group, which presented an opportunity for our future growth. SeedBlink was known as an investment platform. Recently, we have repositioned ourselves as an “all-in-one equity platform” for tech companies. It’s a new and developing market. We collaborate with many VC funds across Europe and understand that startups need funding. We view Catalyst as a consultant. In recent years, the market has been highly volatile, and we have needed their support. They have connections in the US and Europe, and we have been able to benefit from that.”, declared Andrei.
✨ Tech Spring: the annual Catalyst Romania and 3TS event ✨
At the end of May, the Catalyst Romania team, in close collaboration with 3TS Capital Partners, organized the Bucharest Tech Spring event. This initiative brought together professionals from various fields and investors, providing them with the opportunity to explore the latest trends and innovations in the industry. Through captivating presentations, networking sessions, and interactive discussions, Bucharest Tech Spring provided a conducive framework for the exchange of ideas and the stimulation of collaboration among participants. This event underscored the importance of the investment community in Bucharest and highlighted its ongoing potential for growth and development in the global technological landscape.
As part of the ”Exits, Mergers and Acquisitions – 2024 outlook“ panel, three distinguished deal makers shared their view on the current state of the nation. Radu Cristian Dumitrescu (Partner in Charge Financial Advisory, Deloitte Romania) covered the local market, whereas Berend Yntema (Managing Partner, Clairfield International) and Falk Müller-Veerse (Partner & Head of DACH, Bryan, Garnier & Co) shared their regional CEE as well as DACH view.
Key topics discussed by the panel ranged from current financing/exit dynamics between buyers and sellers to valuation trends and how the respective investor profiles and their criteria for deal making changed over the last 12-24 months. An active audience in the room specifically asked the panel for their view on non-financial investment criteria, such as ESG, diversity, market risk etc. and how that my differ across the regions.
Overall it seemed as if the Romanian environment is driven by certain sector specific trends in consumer goods, business services and technology, which make up the bulk of the market. For CEE and DACH key messages included that (1) deal making activity is slightly picking up again (after a sluggish year 2023), (2) seller and buyer expectations on valuation are narrowing and (3) deals in the region are driven largely by locally active players (strategic and financial investors) and large US buyers looking for market expansion in CEE almost vanished completely. Reasons for the latter include the recession in Germany and geopolitical developments in the wider eastern European region which resulted in vanishing appetite of US investors.
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