London Calling: Lightspeed announces its new EU offices

In a period of uncertainty, where many firms are scaling back investments or reconsidering their long-term game plans, Lightspeed continues to go big and go global.

Which is why I’m pleased to announce the opening of our new European office in London’s Seven Dials, near Covent Garden, as well as the hiring of two new partners in Berlin and Paris.

We’ve been fortunate to hire two of the best up-and-coming investors in Europe to staff our expanded operations after recently bringing on board Julie Kainz earlier this year.

* Alexander Schmitt comes to us from Cherry Ventures, where he focused on early stage investments such as Flink, Aware, Advastore and Ninetailed. Alex is a former founder of a FinTech he sold prior switching to the investor role. As an alumnus of MIT in the US and the Technical University of Munich, he lives at the intersection of computer science and finance. Alex will be spending the bulk of his time managing our Berlin operations and spend most of his time in B2B and FinTech.

* Antoine Moyroud has experience as both an operator and an investor, have held significant roles at two European unicorns (transportation service FlixBus and AIOps startup Dataiku) and more recently as principal at EQT Ventures. His interests range from data analytics to collaboration tools, Fintech, Insurtech, and Crypto. Antoine will be based out of Paris.

Julie, Alex and Antoine are well acquainted with the startup community in Europe and are close to many of its most successful founders. They’ll be a fine addition to our existing EU team. In addition to myself, they will be working closely with Adrian Radu who joined from Qatalyst Partners and is focussed on later stage growth investing, Bejul Somaia who leads Lightspeed India and has recently taken on a global leadership role at the firm, Victoria Faber who joined from McKinsey & Company as Chief of Staff, Ross Mason who is a Venture Partner, founder of Dig Ventures and Mulesoft, and of course, London native Nicole Quinn who will continue to split her time between the UK and her home base at Lightspeed’s Palo Alto headquarters.

It’s Europe’s time to shine

After years of people doubting whether Europe-centric companies can scale quickly enough to provide venture returns, the answer has become clear: They can and are.

More and more EU startups are becoming major players on the global market. In fact, there are categories where the market fit is better in Europe than in the US.

For example, German telepharmacy platform MAYD is doing extremely well, due to both a more densely concentrated population and a local healthcare environment that’s rapidly digitising as a consequence of the pandemic. HR management platform Personio is another area where Europe outstrips the US, due to the large number of small businesses across the continent.

The European market remains vibrant, and we anticipate a lot of activity in fall. In terms of deal volume and activity, the EU is only a couple of years behind Silicon Valley and China, and it’s catching up quickly.

Identifying promising early-stage companies from eight time zones away is a challenge for every firm in Silicon Valley, which is why having boots on the ground close to EU founders gives Lightspeed a significant advantage.

Atlantic crossings

With the opening of London, Lightspeed will be the first established fund out of Silicon Valley with people based full time in Europe. It’s a fine complement to our brand new office in New York City, as well as our longtime locations in China, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia.

As a global venture firm, we’ve been investing across borders for more than a decade. Still, having a physical presence closer to our founders, without the need to navigate time zones or oceans, is invaluable. We look forward to many collaborations with our partners across the pond.