Jurgen Ingels launches a 150 million euro fund.

Smartfin Capital, the investment group built around Jurgen Ingels, launches a second fund. With a capital of 150 million euro, double as much as the initial fund, it will be solid enough to support larger participations.

Last year, Jurgen Ingels already noticed that the pull of the first Smartfin Capital became too limited. The required capital to participate in ventures has increased over the years. This shows in some numbers that Jurgen brings up: “An A-series funding of a European startup figured an average of 3,2 million euro in 2014, whereas this has grown to 6,4 million today. For a B-series, this grew from 7,1 million euro to 17,5 million, and for a C-series from 13 to 30 million euro. We have the ambition to play in that last league, the European top, without necessarily having to cooperate with other funds.”

And so Smartfin Capital birthed a new 150 million euro fund. Ingels mentions he already has many investors who are interested, both with his existing partners in Smartfin — such as IT-entrepreneur Jos Sluys (investment fund Saffelberg), Jan De Clerck (Domo), and Jan Toye (ex-Palm Breweries) — as new ones. This way participations for up to 20 million euro will be possible. With the first fund, this was limited to 8 million euro.

New is also that Bert Baeck will join the trio as a partner. Last year, the entrepreneur sold his own scale-up TrendMiner, a big-data company for manufacturing industries, in which Ingels also participated. “This way we are bringing even more entrepreneurship in the management of our fund”, says Ingels. “Bart Luyten, the co-founder of Smartfin, and Thomas Depuydt (ex i-Minds/IMEC) have more finance-technical profiles. Bert and I have more entrepreneurial roots.”

“There is actually enough available money on the market today”, says Baeck, “The difference can be made through experience, having the network, and offering sound advice. The idea is that both Jurgen and I will help hands-on in the companies: scouting for leaders and managers, implementing software platforms, etcetera.”

The focus will mostly be on European companies that would benefit from digitalization, artificial intelligence, and big data to improve themselves for efficiency and acceleration. “Occasionally an exception will emerge where we could take over existing companies and turn them around through digitalization, like auction houses or accountancy firms. There are some great added values to be created in that space, we think.”

The first Smartfin fund, sized at 75 million euro, has already invested half of it (38 million) and recently cashed out on the sale of satellite communications company Newtec to the Singaporean ST Engineering. Next to that, it participates in the software companies Itineris, Maria DB, Divitel, and in Unified Post.

Ingels: “We are no longer taking new participations with the first fund, and will be using the remaining resources for capital increases. But it was a great start. We have the ambition to grow like the Belgian-Dutch Waterland group (the largest investment fund of the Benelux, red.), but within the sector of digital companies.”

This article was initially published by Tom Michielsen in DeTijd. https://www.tijd.be/nieuws/archief/Jurgen-Ingels-lanceert-fonds-van-150-miljoen-euro/10123773