Former Sequoia associate Matt Miller has already locked in $355 million for his new VC agency, Evantic, which can also be backed by Sequoia, TechCrunch discovered.
Final December, Miller introduced his departure from Sequoia after twelve years to “begin [his] personal fund centered on the good founders of Europe.”
Regardless of the European focus, TechCrunch’s understanding is that Evantic will truly make investments on each side of the Atlantic, with a deal with B2B firms on the Sequence B and progress levels. Nevertheless, its actions will probably be carried out from London, the place Miller moved from California in 2021.
Earlier than transferring to the U.Ok., Miller had already spearheaded Sequoia’s enlargement into Europe and ultimately joined Sequoia’s European workplace in London, the place he labored alongside its first native rent, Luciana Lixandru, who stays there.
Sequoia on Monday declined to touch upon Miller or the brand new fund.
Miller’s fundraising has exceeded expectations. Preliminary stories indicated that Miller was elevating $300 million for this new enterprise. Sources near the matter now corroborate the Monetary Instances’ newer report that the goal is $400 million and that Sequoia is collaborating as a restricted associate. TechCrunch has reached out to Sequoia for affirmation.
Particularly, Miller’s new agency has secured $350 million from exterior sources, per a U.S. regulatory submitting; Evantic has additionally obtained $5 million in inner commitments and is within the means of closing the remaining $45 million from founders and different members of the startup ecosystem, sources inform TechCrunch.
Miller’s departure seems to stem primarily from a failed energy play at portfolio firm Klarna. Not lengthy earlier than asserting his exit, Miller had reportedly tried and did not oust former colleague Michael Moritz from the board of the buy-now-pay-later behemoth. Sequoia quickly after apologized for supporting the try and gave Miller’s board seat to a different associate.
On the similar time, broader tensions have been surfacing inside Sequoia over associate Shaun Maguire, whose views have confirmed divisive each internally and amongst portfolio founders. Wunderlist founder Christian Reber, one of many first Sequoia-backed founders in Europe, expressed his disagreement again in January with Maguire over the German far-right social gathering AfD earlier this 12 months. Miller and Lixandru additionally distanced themselves from the views supported by Maguire, who has since then made extra controversial feedback.
Regardless of the Klarna incident, Miller seems to take care of good relations that Sequoia, as evidenced by the agency’s participation as an LP in his new enterprise. Miller additionally stays a enterprise associate at Sequoia and continues to symbolize the agency on a number of boards.
Throughout his time at Sequoia, Miller labored carefully with firms together with Confluent, dbt Labs, Docker, Grafana, Graphcore, Hex, and Tessian. He additionally overlapped with longtime Sequoia worker Spencer Hemphill, who left earlier than Miller did and is now reportedly Evantic’s CFO.
Whereas technically a U.S. fund, Evantic will now be part of the ranks of cross-Atlantic enterprise corporations together with Index Ventures and Northzone, the latter of which mentioned it was “doubling down on the transatlantic.” It’ll even be related in measurement to the $348 million that the Norrsken Basis, established by Klarna’s founder, is investing in European startups that use “AI for good.”
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