After the busiest year of dealmaking on record, with over $138 billion in venture capital invested in startups across EMEA in 2021, we’re excited to share the 2022 edition of the EMEA VC Investor Prominence Rank. 

This is a practical ranking of venture capital investors, a tool to help founders navigate the vast, and at times opaque venture market, for each stage of their growth. It is also unapologetically data-driven – this ranking is compiled entirely from Dealroom’s objective universe of data, the methodology can be found at the bottom of this page, and the qualifying rounds and portfolio companies are listed at the top of each investor’s profile.

See the full ranking

How it works

This comprehensive and quantitative list takes into account investors’ success in backing unicorns and future unicorns, as well as their level of deal activity in the last 12 months. This year we’ve iterated our methodology by adding a dilution factor – weighted successful investments based which round the VC first invested at, e.g. Seed > Series C.

The rankings 

Focusing on firms, rather than individual investors, the list measures their ability to spot potential stars at seed stage – rather than the size of investment made – which means firms are being compared on a level playing field. 

EMEA Overall

1. LocalGlobe
2. Accel
3. Index Ventures
4. Seedcamp
5. HV Capital
6. Balderton Capital
7. Insight Partners
8. Global Founders Capital
9. Lakestar
10.   Kima Venture

London-based Seed firm LocalGlobe, came out on top of both the Seed and Overall rankings for EMEA, with 14 unicorn seed investments, 11 future unicorn seed investments, for totals of 15 and 19 respectively backed at all stages.

EMEA Seed

1. LocalGlobe
2. Seedcamp
3. Global Founders Capital
4. Kima Ventures
5. Point Nine
6. Cherry Ventures
7. 500 Global (formally 500 Startups)
8. Speedinvest
9. Entrée Capital
10.   Episode 1 Ventures

This is the second year LocalGlobe made the #1 spot for EMEA Seed ranking. Some of their latest investments include B2B mortgage & lending startup Super Payments and SaaS company Payaut.

EMEA Series A

1. Accel
2. Index Ventures
3. HV Capital
4. Balderton Capital
5. Lakestar
6. Creandum
7. Bessemer Venture Partners
8. Sequoia Capital
9. Northzone
10.   Partech

For the second year in a row, Accel took the #1 spot for Series A investment in the EMEA region, having backed 26 EMEA unicorns at Seed and Series A, and a further 20 at Series B+. Their portfolio is also home to a strong pipeline, with 29 potential future unicorns. Index Ventures follows close behind, with 40 EMEA unicorns backed at all stages.

See the full ranking

Data-driven transparency

This list of leading investors in EMEA is first and foremost a data-driven tool intended to help founders find the venture capital investors that will best support them to grow their startups, at each stage of their growth. It also intends to help the once opaque world of venture capital investing become more transparent. And enable startups and LPs to assess what the best VCs have been up to, and visa-versa help VCs reflect on how they’ve been supporting startups in the past 12 months.

We hope it will help drive the conviction that lies at the heart of it: what makes the difference between a good investor and a great one? 

See the full ranking

The methodology

Dealroom’s data-driven methodology was revised in 2022 to take into account how early a particular fund invested in any one startup.

1. Unicorn score: For this scoring, we are adding the number of unicorn investments at the Seed entry stage with a factor of 100, the number of unicorn investments at an early entry stage (Series A/Early VC) with a factor of 30, and the number of unicorn investments at late entry stage (Series B+) with a factor of 10. The number of unicorn investments at an unknown entry stage is also calculated as a factor of 10. So make sure your profile is updated and accurate. 
2. Future unicorn (included $250M – $1B exits) score:  The future unicorn score is calculated similarly to the unicorn score seed investments receive a factor of 100, Series A/ Early VC a factor of 30 and series B+, and unknown stage a factor of 10. 
3. Rank score: To obtain the final ranking score, we add your unicorn score with a factor of 100’000, your future unicorn score with a factor of 10’000, and finally, the number of investment rounds carried out in the last 12 months. 

What we mean by “unicorn” and “future unicorn”:

Unicorns and $1B+ exits: Companies founded since 1990 that has reached USD$1B valuation. This also includes companies that exited at over $1B and have since dropped below the USD$1B mark after going public. More on edge cases and methodology here.

Future unicorn: Fast-growing companies with valuations between USD$250M – 1B. We include only companies that have raised investment in since 2015.