Backed by British Business Bank, Railpen, Molten Ventures and OpenAI’s CFO, Sarah Friar, Fund III will see the firm double down on its play of backing the best repeat founders.

Tapestry VC launched its $80m Fund III today with the stated aim of doubling its scale and deepening its focus on backing repeat founders across Europe and North America. Backers include OpenAI’s high profile CFO Sarah Friar, among others,

Fund III is almost three times the size of the firm’s previous funds, and is co-anchored by a $40m commitment from new sovereign investor British Business Bank, alongside returning institutional co-anchors multi-million pension fund Railpen and Molten Ventures.

Tapestry VC pointed to the impact Europe’s repeat founder successes has had on innovation, job creation and growth, saying European tech had minted 477 unicorns over the past eight years, of which 60pc were started by a repeat founder.

Founded in 2018, Tapestry was an early advocate of the potential of repeat founders, backing, for example, Nothing’s seed round in 2020 before the hardware manufacturer went on to become “the unicorn it is today with $1b in revenue”.

Tapestry also backed virtual event player Hopin at its Seed stage, before it rocketed to a $7.75b valuation during the Covid-19 pandemic, albeit suffering greatly as people began to return to real person events, and ultimately selling off its main events product to RingCentral in 2022, and its StreamYard product to Italian tech giant Bending Spoons.

Another early bet was Irish-founded Fin AI (formerly Intercom), which was acquired last month by Salesforce for $3,6bn, one of Europe’s biggest start-up acquisitions in recent times.

Tapestry VC cites Dealroom data that demonstrates that companies backed by second and third time European founders are today worth $2.2trn in combined enterprise value, and employ over 2m across 23,000 companies. Today, 75pc of startups worth over $50bn globally were founded by serial entrepreneurs, says Tapestry VC.

Alongside the launch of Fund III, Tapestry VC has opened a flagship London office, and its Irish founder Patrick Murphy is relocating from San Francisco to London after a decade of investing on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I’ve spent a decade investing on both sides of the Atlantic and the opportunity in Europe has never been clearer,” said Patrick Murphy, founder at Tapestry VC.

“There’s an entire generation of founders returning to build again with sharper instincts, deeper networks and who share our global-from-day-one ambition.”

Tapestry VC’s portfolio spans software, AI, cybersecurity, fintech, autonomy and deep technology. It specialises in Seed and Pre-Seed, and in working with founders before there’s even a company or formal process in place.

“Today’s repeat founders represent a generation shaped by expensive experience. They’ve already navigated the realities of building, scaling and exiting technology companies and, second time around, they want partners who have felt the same pressures,” said Audrey Miller, Partner at Tapestry VC. “This is what Tapestry VC brings.”

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