FOV Ventures launches to provide specialist fund in Europe to invest in early-stage founders building the Metaverse

In Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality News

March 15, 2022 – FOV Ventures, a new specialist VC fund to invest in early-stage founders at the forefront of the Metaverse, has recently announced the first close of EUR €16.5m of its target EUR €25m fund. The fund will invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies across Europe, leveraging the industry expertise of its founding partners and its active ‘Edge Network’, a community of leaders in the field helping to scout new deals and support the fund’s portfolio.

FOV Ventures stated that it will make initial investments of between EUR €250-500k in up to 25 companies across pre-seed and seed, and as a specialist fund is willing to back founders right from the start of their journeys. Categories of current interest for the fund include identity, avatars, commerce, entertainment & social, future of work as well as creator tools & infrastructure.

The two Founding Partners of FOV Ventures are: 

Dave Haynes – formerly part of the investment team at Seedcamp and most recently led HTC’s USD $100m Vive X fund in EMEA. Haynes was also part of the founding team of SoundCloud.

Petri Rajahalme – previously Managing Director at Nordic XR Startups (NXS) where he led eight investments into XR companies in the Nordics. Rajahalme was also Chairman of the Board at Immersal, where he led the successful exit of its AR-cloud business to Hexagon AB in 2021.

The duo have made several more angel investments together into Metaverse related startups whilst raising the fund, including ReadyPlayerMe, the cross-game avatar platform for the Metaverse, and The Dematerialised, a Web3 marketplace for authenticated virtual goods.

Dave Haynes, Founding Partner of FOV Ventures, commented: “We believe the Metaverse represents a trillion-dollar opportunity over the next decade, fundamentally changing the way we play, socialize and shop, but also the way we work and collaborate. We’ll also need new tools for creators to build this new reality. As with previous evolutions on the Internet, we believe the Metaverse will unleash a new generation of billion-dollar companies. Our mission is to identify, fund and support those companies.”

Petri Rajahalme, Founding Partner of FOV Ventures, said, “Given the recent excitement and huge potential of the Metaverse, we’ve seen an influx of talent and interest. For the past five years, Dave and I have had front-row seats and have built a strong network by being very active in the ecosystem. We believe we add a lot of value to the startups we invest in through our combined expertise as well as our ‘Edge Network’, which gives founders added support, as well as introducing us to new startups.”

According to FOV Ventures, its ‘Edge Network’ is a global community supporting the fund and its portfolio companies, as well as scouting potential investments. Individuals in the network include leaders from XR companies such as Meta, Epic, Google and Snap, as well as technical experts and exited founders. Examples include Matt Miesnieks, founder of spatial mapping startup 6D.ai, a company acquired by Niantic, and Jussi Mäkinen, CMO of Finnish mixed reality headset maker Varjo. The FOV Ventures states that its Edge Network community is still being expanded with more to be announced in the coming months.

For more information on FOV Ventures and its Metaverse fund, please click here.

Image credit: FOV Ventures