Funding the next Fintech Unicorns: Dawn Capital, Raising $235 million in iZettle and Wonga

Dawn Capital invests primarily in financial, enterprise and tech startups. Its portfolio includes cybersecurity firm Mimecast, which went public in 2015 and has a current valuation of $2.16 billion (£1.5 billion), and Swedish graph database firm Neo4j, which helped journalists examine the Panama Papers.

Haakon Overli, a general partner at Dawn, said the fund was oversubscribed thanks to investor interest in Europe. Dawn invests about half its money into UK tech startups and the remainder across continental Europe.

this particular investment in iZettle is propelling the e-commerce site forward. iZettle is a one-stop shop for cutting-edge commerce tools — offering everything you need to take quick payments, ease day-to-day management, and get the funding to grow. This level of investment will increase this Fintech unicorn rapidly and will surely change the way we conduct payments online. 

"Things that appear niche are where we have done well," Overli said. "They are things where the subject matter may not be the most exciting, but the output is very valuable."

The firm will continue its focus on software-as-a-subscription businesses for the third fund. Almost a third of Dawn's new funding comes from the European Investment Fund (EIF).

"After Brexit, [the EIF] needed time to figure what the new world looked like," Overli said. "They said 'We want to back funds with a European strategy that do well, and you're one of them."