SaaS businesses in Europe have been getting a lot of attention from investors in recent years. Venture investment in the region’s SaaS companies is growing quickly. According to a 2019 Accel Euroscape report, from 2016 to 2019, it rose from $2 billion to $5 billion, growing much faster than in the US, which grew from $15 billion to $20 billion.
Today we are looking at Oxx which is a venture capital fund of $130m+ that invests in fast-growing European software businesses.
Jointly headquartered in London and Stockholm, Oxx is a dedicated SaaS-focussed fund, investing broadly across software applications and infrastructure. Some of the companies in its portfolio include the likes of Peak (AI-powered decision intelligence), Funnel (automated marketing performance reporting and intelligence for businesses) and Codility (technical recruitment platform).
As opposed to investors with a rigid Silicon Valley SaaS mindset – which Oxx believes heavily favours hyper growth ahead of sustainable business – they are particularly passionate about the concept of a more patient and sustainable form of capital.
We recently had the chance to catch up with Richard Anton, Co-founder and General Partner at Oxx. If you get as excited as us about SaaS businesses and where Europe is headed, you might want to read on.
Hello Richard, thank you for being with us today. Would you be so kind as to share with us your journey in the venture capital industry and as co-founder of Oxx?
I’ve been a venture capital investor for 25 years. I was also previously Chairman of the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA). I spent 18 years at Amadeus Capital Partners investing primarily in B2B software.
Through Amadeus I met my friend and Oxx Co-founder Mikael Johnsson, and we worked together there for four years. We were two of a very small number of investors specialising in SaaS at the time, so it was a natural fit. We co-founded Oxx in 2017 to back Europe’s best B2B SaaS companies at the scale-up stage.
Our whole team are SaaS geeks, and our specialised SaaS expertise has been important to the hyper-relevant network and support we offer our founders – but our culture of always being in your corner and rolling up our sleeves is what really sets us apart.
Oxx is jointly headquartered in London, England and Stockholm, Sweden. What are the benefits of setting up a company in these two environments and what does it mean for your operations in Europe?
London and Stockholm are fantastic centres of innovation. However, borders have been largely erased over the last year – i.e., you are no longer limited to hiring talent who can get to your office every day, and your customers don’t have to be based in your city either.
We’re seeing great companies come from all over Europe. The pandemic has forced every company to learn how to buy, sell and operate remotely effectively, which is an enormous opportunity for companies that lack global presence.
So, Oxx is a VC team that invests in B2B SaaS businesses. What is your opinion of the current state of European SaaS? Any findings on the impacts of the pandemic?
We are in the golden age of SaaS right now. In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously said ‘software is eating the world’ – a decade later, software still has so much more left to eat!
via https://www.AiUpNow.com
November 8, 2021 at 08:21AM by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
