It has been a fantastic year here at Dawn, and we thought we would share some of the standout moments and milestones as 2024 draws to a close.
We were thrilled to invest in Onum, Flatpay and Bondaval and to double down on our investments in Cover Genius and Omi, while seeing existing portfolio companies go from strength to strength. Over the last 12 months, we have also welcomed eight new brilliant colleagues into the Dawn team, seen team members have their thoughts and insights published in the Financial Times, Sifted, TechCrunch and more, and settled into our new HQ in Soho, London.
We have hosted 64 events and talks for over 3,000 founders, operators and investors, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has joined us over the course of the year. We are incredibly grateful for your collaboration and support.
We feel truly privileged to be working with so many incredible founders based across Europe, and are incredibly grateful to our investors, advisors, and our wider community for your continued support. We wish everyone a restful festive break and look forward to another action-packed year in 2025!
January
- The year got off to a great start with four very well-deserved promotions and two fantastic new members joining the Dawn team. We were thrilled to welcome Jack as our Communications Lead and Jimena onto our investment team as VP. We also celebrated the promotion of Daniela to Principal, Nils to VP, Adina to Director of Legal, and Gamila to Talent Acquisition Lead. The internal promotions recognised each of our colleagues’ dedication and instrumental contributions to our operations. Learn about their journeys and successes in this blog, and check out this fun Q&A to discover more about Jimena and her investment areas.
- Ties, our data and AI strategy lead, saw his insights on how data-driven strategies are reshaping decision-making in venture published in the No Name VC newsletter. Ties highlighted the growing importance of leveraging data not just for analysis but as a dynamic tool for actionable insights, paving the way for smarter, more agile investments. To read more about Ties, his views on data, and his inspiring personal story, check out this blog here.
- Our Partner Dan and our investors Zoe and Skye published a deep dive exploring the opportunity emerging in targeting the diverse and underserved mid-market, particularly in the finance sector. They discussed how next-generation platforms could transform areas like accounting and procurement, and the challenges innovators face. If you missed it, here’s Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
February
- Avalon, our Director of Talent, and Chloe, our Portfolio and Talent Associate, hosted a panel discussion with industry leaders at Dawn HQ. The panel event, hosted in collaboration with our friends at Ravio and Balderton Capital, explored the question of ‘How to Build and Retain Great Teams in 2024, and featured Lorraine Metcalf (CPO, Quantexa), Ross Seychell (ex-CPO at Personio, Wise, and King), and Leah Sutton (Chief Portfolio Talent Officer, Balderton Capital). Like many to follow at Dawn HQ, the evening offered invaluable insights for People and Talent teams, alongside opportunities for networking, exchanging ideas, and enjoying drinks and canapés in great company. Ravio kindly shared a summary of the event here.
- The Dawn team expanded again when we welcomed Daniel Jhoolun as our Front of House Coordinator, An Nguyen as our new IR & Marketing Analyst, and Bridget Snow as our US Talent & Network Lead, Bridget Snow. Daniel and An have helped us expand our back-office and IR functions. Bridget is based in Boston and uses her extensive network in tech, VC, and beyond to help founders and leadership teams identify and recruit top-tier US talent across all levels and functions.
March
- “Developing promising talent is not a tax. It’s a privilege and — if you give it a go — you’ll find it a joy too.” Evgenia, our GP, penned a widely read op-ed for Sifted on the importance of giving talented female investors the mentorship and support they need to reach their potential. You can read the piece here.
April
- Mina, Daniela and Skye launched a three-part series exploring the opportunity ‘Industry 4.0’ presents. The series highlights the ongoing shift towards smart, automated factories and the resurgence of domestic manufacturing, with $196 billion invested in the US and over 500 mid-to-large factories constructed in Europe in recent years. The series set the tone for our continued focus on innovation in manufacturing throughout 2024. Read the first instalment here.
- We led a $28m Series A funding round into Onum. We are thrilled to be partnering with Pedro Castillo, Lucaṡ Varelǎ, and Pedro Tortosa as they pursue their mission to empower companies with complete control over their data. Onum is equipping businesses with the insights they need to tackle next-generation infrastructure challenges and seize emerging opportunities, and the company has an exceptional founding team, and an enormous addressable market. Read more about why we invested here.
- We led Flatpay’s €45m Series B funding round. Flatpay is one of the fastest-growing payments companies, and we are incredibly proud to be supporting Sander Janca-Jensen, Rasmus Busk, Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen, and Peter Lüth in their mission to bring transparency and accessibility to payments for SMEs. We keep a close eye on the space, having been very early backers of fellow Nordic fintechs, iZettle and Tink, and were immediately impressed by Flatpay’s stellar founding team, hyper-focused product, and extremely effective go-to-market approach. Read our investment story here.
- Avalon and Chloe hosted an event for female leaders in early-stage B2B SaaS, alongside Ayala Ples from Crane Venture Partners. The event focused on go to market strategies, and discussions covered effective ways to engage enterprise buyers during market uncertainty, and strategies to enhance collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Find out more here.
May
- Our GP, Norman, addressed the 2024 INSEAD Alumni Balance in Business Initiative Awards. Dawn is proud to be a founding partner of the awards, which celebrate companies championing gender-balanced workplaces and a fairer business environment, and showcase the FTSE350 and private organisations leading the charge for equality. Norman, Avalon and Jack are BiB Board and Executive team members, and we supported this year’s awards alongside Lloyds Banking Group, the Institute of Directors (IoD), and the FTSE Women Leaders Review. To find out more or get involved with BiB, see here https://balanceinbusiness.org/.
- We participated in Cover Genius’ Series E funding round. Cover Genius has grown into a global insurtech and we’re extremely happy to be continuing our partnership with Angus McDonald and the CG team as they scale to even greater heights. The company is now licensed or authorised in over 60 countries and across all 50 US States, and powers embedded protection for more than 30 million customers, working with some of the world’s largest digital businesses. Read more about the round and Cover Genius’ plans for AI deployment here.
- We hosted a panel and Q&A session with McKinsey, where industry leaders shared insights on driving successful sales strategies through RevOps and Sales Enablement. The discussion featured Andy Frost (Quantexa), Ahmed Hameed (Revolut), and Tom Richardson (Personio), moderated by Jennifer Stanley from McKinsey. We captured learnings from the event in this article.
- We made a significant investment into Bondaval, the leading B2B insurtech providing digitally-enabled payment default protection to some of the world’s largest businesses. As our Partner, Dan, and Nils explain in this why we invested Q&A piece, Bondaval is so impressive because its model combines innovation at the insurance product level with a technology platform that enables greater transparency and granularity in underwriting – a setup that allows them to protect underwriting performance. We are extremely excited to be supporting Bondaval’s tireless co-founders, Tom Powell (CEO) and Sam Damoussi (CRO), as the company further expands its product offering and continues to scale globally.
- We launched DawnTalks, our quarterly virtual gatherings for leaders across the Dawn portfolio. The initiative, led by Chloe, sees us host regular sessions led by a range of external experts and advisors on topics that are highly relevant to our founders and C-Suite leaders. DawnTalks sessions to date have covered a range of topics such as The EU AI Act and other regulatory developments, how to execute US expansion, employer branding, marketing strategies in this new era, and more. We share actionable insights after every session, and if you’re interested in contributing or learning more, please contact Chloe@dawncapital.com.
June
- We welcomed Emily Coughlan, our Senior Fund Accountant. Before joining us, Emily was a Senior Fund Accountant at Inflexion, where she managed accounting, tax reporting, fundraising, and deal support for the firm’s Partnership Capital strategy. She is working closely with our CFO, Alex, on Dawn’s finance function.
- We doubled down on the brilliant 3D design innovator, Omi. We led Omi’s €6 million seed round in 2022, and have worked with sibling co-founders, Hugo and Paul, as they secured hundreds of global brands as clients — including Clarins, Nestlé and Remy Cointreau — and expanded into the UK and across continental Europe. Omi is natively built at the nexus of two technological megatrends in 3D and generative AI, and the team is uniquely bringing these powerful technologies together to enable brands to automate the end-to-end production of high-quality, brand-aligned product imagery. The founders now have their sights set on the US, and we are proud to be supporting them as they scale. In June we doubled down on our investment in a pre-emptive €13 million Series A – Read more here.
July
- The Dawn team grew again, with Cameron Cominato joining as Portfolio and Finance Associate, and Moritz Stoll joining as Data Engineer. It has been fantastic to expand our data and finance teams at Dawn this year as part of our wider growth and development plans, and we feel extremely lucky to have such great talent on board.
- Our investors Shamillah, Nils, and Zoe interviewed the leaders of five pioneering AI Agents startups, then published a piece on the transformative potential of these agents in software development and beyond. The piece featured input from Ben Peters at Cogna, Anton Osika at Lovable, Dimitri Masin at Gradient Labs, Hasan Sukkar at 11x, Iván Martínez Toro at Zylon by PrivateGPT and Meryem Arik at TitanML. To find out more about how AI Agents are going to change working lives forever, check out the piece here.
- Evgenia explored Dawn’s strategy for becoming Europe’s leading specialist B2B software investor in a two part series for IMD. In the series, Evgenia discussed the importance of diversity in building a strong team, the advantages of a focused investment approach, and provided insights into our investments in standout companies like Dataiku and FlowX.AI—along with much more. You can listen to Part 1 and Part 2 now.
- Our Partner, Henry, shared an op-ed reflecting on the CrowdStrike outage, and what we can learn as software investors and creators. The cyber attack in July highlighted just how integral CrowdStrike’s software has become to our daily lives. A single botched update disrupted healthcare, grounded flights, and stalled businesses worldwide—despite affecting less than 1% of all Windows devices. In his piece, Henry explored what systems thinking changes might come out of the event, and what opportunities this presents for investors. Read the piece here.
- Ties spoke with Josipa Majic Predin at Forbes about Rolodex—our new data and AI platform for relationship intelligence. As data and AI continue to transform industries, venture capital may be next in line for a significant shift. Ties shared what we’re doing at Dawn in this area, alongside insights into the human element in AI and the future of the VC industry. Read the interview here.
August
- Our GP, Haakon, was featured in BNN Bloomberg on the topic of carried interest. In the piece, Haakon urged the UK Chancellor to distinguish between early-stage investors and those focused on leveraged buyouts of mature businesses when making policy. In the piece, he said: “The government is keen on AI and technology. It won’t be a big private equity fund that creates the next Google. It will be Dawn or Sequoia.”
September
- Evgenia was featured by Boardwave Leaders. In the interview for Boardwave, a community of Founders, CEOs, Chairs, Independent NEDs & their Investors from across Europe, Evgenia reflected on her journey to Dawn Capital, shared the key qualities she looks for in founders, and discussed the values that shape her approach to work. Read it here.
October
- Shamillah participated in two insightful fireside chats at Saastock alongside our friends at Earlybird and Balderton. Shamillah joined Laura Waldenstrom of Earlybird Venture Capital to uncover red flags for VCs, discussing common warning signs that deter investors and how founders can steer clear of them. For growth-stage startups gearing up for their next fundraising round, Shamillah and Carlotta Riganti of Balderton Capital provided expert tips on preparing effectively and making the next round a success.
November
- Our investors Daniela, Jimena, and Owen co-authored a deep dive into the exciting emerging companies finally giving Blue Collar industries the software they deserve. The trio examined why this market is gaining momentum, shared insights from European founders leading the charge, and emphasised why now is the perfect time for Europe’s construction workers and tradespeople to benefit from the software solutions they deserve. Read all about it here.
- Evgenia joined the ‘At the Cap Table’ podcast series at EUVC. In the podcast, Evgenia explored her work at Dawn, what it means to be a B2B software specialist, and her thoughts on navigating today’s exciting AI landscape.
- We were thrilled to see Dawn win the UK Tech Awards 2025 Tech Investor Award. We firmly see the recognition as a testament to the incredible founders, advisors, investors, and platform leaders we are privileged to work with, so thank you again all for making this possible.
December
- We brought together industry experts to discuss how to tackle some of the challenges facing product teams today. There were five panels throughout the day-long event, featuring: Sophie Krishnan, CEO of Lokalise; Patrick Wyatt, CPO at Varjo; Lindsey Jayne, Former CPO at The Financial Times; Valentin Vincendon, CPO at Copper; Matt Fenby-Taylor, CPO at Unobravo; Hao Zhou, VP Product / Growth at GoCardless; Shaun Shirazian, Former CPO at Pipedrive; Tony Grout, CPTO at Showpad; Tanya Cordrey, CPO at Motorway; Serge Kruppa, CTO at Sylvera; Nima Vali Rajabi, CEO & Co-founder of Magic Feedback; Mathieu Ayel, CPO at Synthase; and Mason Edwards VP Product & Commercial at Conjecture. You can read some of the key lessons shared by panellists,from how to stay focused on solving real customer pain points to embracing ‘the cycle’ of re-platforming, here.
- We hosted a fascinating AI Horizons: Pioneering the Next Wave of GenAI event. The event we hosted saw visionary founders Ben Peters (Cogna), Anton Osika (Lovable), and Dimitri Masin (Gradient Labs AI), share insights into the future of AI Agents, and what to expect from this fast-developing space in 2025 and beyond. Here are some lessons learned.
As we close out 2024, it’s clear this has been a year of incredible innovation, collaboration, and progress. From groundbreaking advancements in AI to the resilience and creativity shown by founders across the ecosystem, the pace of change has never been faster, or more exciting.
