F1V in 2023: 15 new deals, portfolio startups’ value hits $3.8 billion

F1V in 2023: 15 new deals, portfolio startups’ value hits $3.8 billion

By Vital Laptenok, general partner at F1V

In 2023, Flyer One Ventures reviewed 1,012 startups and backed 15 new companies, including Filmustage, AiSDR, Scalestack, Deskree, Zero Systems, Field Materials, Ludis Analytics, Machinet, and CloudChipr.

This year we co-invested alongside Y Combinator, Techstars, Unpopular Ventures, 10X Capital, Forum Ventures, Hustle Fund, Web Summit Ventures, Seedcamp, Passion Capital, ff VC, and other great VC funds.

Our firm also provided follow-on investments to 11 existing portfolio startups, including RedTrack, All Right, NewHomesMate, Mate academy, and Sheep Inc.

Over the past five years, F1V has invested $40 million in nearly 78 companies. The fund has seen one exit (Vochi was acquired by Pinterest) and the portfolio company Chipper Cash becoming a unicorn.

The total value of the F1V portfolio companies is roughly $3.8 billion. This number is higher than the GDP of San Marino, Andorra, Belize, and the Republic of Cabo Verde.

In 2024, F1V plans to keep investing in startups at pre-seed and seed stages from Europe and the United States with about the same tempo as in 2023, while also supporting its portfolio.

Performance numbers

F1V is outperforming some of the European VC market's average numbers, according to the fund’s report made public in mid-2023.

F1V has already returned its first fund (primarily invested in 2019), which is much better than the average return of 1% in Europe. The ratio of distributions to paid-in capital of Fund I is 1.0, while the median among European funds from the 2018 vintage is 0.01x.

Fund I total value to paid in (TVPI) is 3.09x, while the median among the European funds from the 2018 vintage is 1.55x. Fund II TVPI is 1.95x, while the median among the European funds from the 2020 vintage is 1.09x.

The top quartile conversion rate from seed to series A among European early-stage VCs is 40%, and the median conversion rate is 19%. As of the end of Q2 2023, the F1V portfolio's conversion rate from seed to series A was 47%.

Events and recognition

The F1V team participated in more than 15 tech events, including as speakers at How To Web, Web Summit, VC Platform Global Community Summit in New York, Pirate Summit, and Surge Summit. We juried at Techchill Milano, Infoshare, and Podim’s Demo Day.

To bolster the local ecosystem, F1V supported the Ukrainian startup delegation at Web Summit and provided speakers for the Venture DeepDive lectures and StartUp Academy 3.0. General partner Vital Laptenok became a mentor at the Mission Possible program for entrepreneurs.

We organized five webinars for the startup community with speakers from Angular Ventures, Earlybird VC, Redpoint Ventures, 20VC, and Wise.

For the F1V portfolio, we conducted workshops on fundraising, B2B sales, AI, and other topics. We held an offline Founders Evening in Kyiv and organized Founders Summit, a virtual event for our founders and LPs.

Screenshots of Founders Summit, a virtual event F1V held in 2023 for its portfolio companies and LPs.
Screenshots of Founders Summit, a virtual event F1V held in 2023 for its portfolio companies and LPs.

Vestbee, a matchmaking platform for startups and VCs, included F1V investment director Elena Mazhuha in the list of Top 100 Women In VC in CEE. F1V was also recognized by Vestbee in March 2023 as VC Fund Of The Month.

News from portfolio startups

In 2023, an impressive 37 portfolio companies secured funding.

Here are 10 other noteworthy achievements of our portfolio:

  • Mate academy was shortlisted for the People’s Choice award at the USF Startup Awards 2023. It also rolled out its services in Brazil. Since the beginning of 2023, the company has been generating $500,000 per month, marking a threefold increase from 2022. The number of its students employed after completing the courses increased by 40%.
  • NewHomesMate started operating in Denver and Phoenix. Having tripled his team, the startup now covers 12 markets in the U.S., including Austin, Houston, and Miami.
  • Competera won the European competition 2023 Vendors In Partnership Awards. The company was also shortlisted for the U.K. eCommerce Awards 2023, partnered with Starboard Cruise Services, and started working with the Novus supermarket chain.
  • Filmustage was nominated for the Production Tech Innovation of the Year at the prestigious Makers and Shakers Awards 2023.
  • Bairro was selected as a finalist at CTT Correios de Portugal E-commerce Awards 2023.
  • Greenscreens.ai made its debut appearance on the FreightTech 100 list.
  • 99math won the Estonian Startup Award. The startup now has over 1 million users.
  • Cargofy launched a venture studio and AI lab named Forward to provide expertise and funding to startups in logistics and AI.
  • Fintech Farm launched the neobank Liobank in Vietnam, while its Azerbaijani project Leobank gained 1 million customers.
  • All Right was recognized as one of Europe's top 100 edtech startups by HolonIQ. The startup also organized a free three-month English course for the children of Ukrainian soldiers.

New advisors

In 2023, F1V partnered with eight stellar advisors to consult its portfolio startups.

  • Ruslan Nazarenko, senior growth product manager at Vimeo.
  • Lilia Lutsenko, senior product analyst at Wise and lecturer and Laba Business School.
  • Stan Lysenko, enterprise account executive at Amplitude.
  • Marina Trypolskaya, head of sales at SplitMetrics.
  • Olha Mateva, senior product data scientist at Preply.
  • Iryna Filatova, head of marketing at Lift.
  • Anastasiia Krasiukova, SEO/ASO Lead at Promova.
  • Anatolii Kasianov, CTO at Holy Water.

Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter to get one useful article every week via email and on LinkedIn. Each story can be read in under 5 minutes, enabling you to promptly implement insights into your business.

More posts like this: