Source: New York Times
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LONDON — When Adyen, a Dutch financial payments processor, began trading publicly last month — and nearly doubled its stock price on its first day — partners at Index Ventures had reason to cheer.
It was the second investment by the venture capital firm to cash out in a short time. Just a month earlier, the European mobile payments company iZettle was sold to PayPal for $2.2 billion, or nearly double what that the start-up had hoped to fetch in its own initial public offering.
Index, founded in Switzerland in 1996 and now based in London and San Francisco, is trying to seize on the moment and amass more financial firepower.
The firm plans to disclose on Monday that it has raised $1.65 billion for its two newest funds: $650 million for its early-stage investment fund, and $1 billion for a so-called growth fund that invests in slightly older companies.
Those figures are up slightly from the $550 million that the firm raised in early 2016 for its last early-stage fund and $700 million for the later-stage round.
The new funds, raised in a matter of weeks, are meant to help Index continue its recent roll, one that has impressed its investors.
“When you find a venture fund that we will back in successive iterations, it tends to be because they’ve figured out that formula or magic where they’re investing early in transformative companies,” said Kathryn Mayne, a managing director at Horsley Bridge Partners, which has invested in every Index fund since 2005.
To be clear, Index does not have the name recognition of Silicon Valley’s biggest boldface names, like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins or Benchmark Capital. Nor does it have the firepower…
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