Capitalising: How CircleRock has brought in new venture partners to scale its business
Founded by Conor Sharpe and Barry O’Neill, CircleRock Capital hopes to back up to 25 companies this year. It has just hired four experienced new venture partners to help it get there.
CircleRock Capital, the fast-growing venture capital syndicate firm, has appointed four new venture partners. The firm, which closed three investments in January alone, is scaling rapidly and hoping to back between 20 and 25 companies this year. CircleRock’s investor group has risen from 75 to 150 individuals or family offices, and it told The Currency it is also in talks with institutional investors for the first time.
CircleRock has invested syndicate capital in restaurant software company Nory, Denmark’s largest seed funding round Scaleup Finance, virtual reality fitness company FitXR and computer vision company Protex AI. CircleRock was founded in late 2020 by Conor Sharpe and Barry O’Neill, and its new venture partners give an insight into where the firm wants to go next. So who are they?
Sarah Irwin
Sarah Irwin is the former head of legal at Tines. Founded by Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella, Tines has raised almost $100 million (€92.85 million) from investors including Addition, Accel, Blossom Capital and Felicis Ventures. She was previously a corporate associate in Maples. She has now set up on her own, with Tines as her first client.
She advises tech companies on scaling quickly and on strategy. She is the founder and chair of Irish Tech General Counsel, a networking group for lawyers in technology. Irwin is also an angel investor in AwakenHub, co-founded by Mary McKenna, Sinead Crowley and others to support female-led startups on the island of Ireland.
Mark Maxwell
Mark Maxwell is a scout with Sequoia Capital, one of the best venture capital investors in the world. He is one of two executives in residence at Lakestar, a European venture capital firm that was an early backer of Skype, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb. Maxwell is head of EMEA at DBT Labs, a data development company that has raised $400 million and was valued at $4.2 billion in February 2022.
Maxwell is an expert in sales and growth, and previously spent over three years with Fivetran, a global leader in automated data movement worth over $5 billion. He started its British business and was, at one stage, its top-performing sales representative globally.
Patrick Gilday
Based in London, Gilday is a former investor at Global Founders Capital, a large European tech fund best known for backing Zalando and Delivery Hero.
Gilday has already introduced deals in AI and machine learning to CircleRock. He has also worked on deals in fintech, biotech and software tools.
Neha Tanna
A medical doctor with senior investment experience, Tanna is also based in Britain. She has expertise in investing in life science, healthcare, climate and deep tech. She was previously named in the Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech.
She has worked with pharmaceutical company MSD and advised a Swiss-based family office on health and life science investments. Tanna is an advisor to EOS Ventures and HIEx, a climate resilience and access-to-healthcare group.
Partnering up
Sharpe told The Currency that CircleRock had been looking for new venture partners to support its growth. CircleRock was introduced to Irwin by Menno Axt from Dogpatch Labs.
Irwin recalls being impressed by CircleRock’s track record and plans to grow, and she felt she could help it. “I hope to help CircleRock grow its investment network and bring in more investors as well,” Irwin said. She said she had seen up close, with Tines, the importance of founders working with advisors.
“Governance and funding are two areas I’m experienced in,” she said. “With Eoin and Thomas [the co-founders of Tines] they raised a decent amount of money. I could help in terms of legal rigour, sorting out governance, holding board meetings, giving investors updates and so on,” she said. “I think I can help CircleRock companies too that want to scale rapidly, as I have experience of what is required.”
Her network of general counsels working in international technology companies also exposed her to potential investors and to a broad swathe of sectors that would help when looking for new companies to invest in.
Sharpe said getting to know Maxwell came about differently. “I reached out to Mark in the summer of 2022 because of his tech experience and we knew he’d be a good fit to invest in our deals,” Sharpe said.
“We ended up meeting up, getting on great, sharing deals, and both parties realised we wanted to work together, so this was a natural next step.” They met Gilday as an investor with Global Founders Capital, and O’Neill got to know Tanna at a startup conference where she was a panellist.
“VC funds want us as co-investors, and founders want us onboard for their journeys.”
Barry O’Neill
When I spoke to Sharpe and O’Neill last in July 2023, they told me they had invested €25 million in 14 companies across Europe. How has it gone since?
“Although 2023 was a tough year in the venture capital market, we bucked the trend with our cheque sizes and deal count increasing strongly,” Sharpe said. “Whereas previously our investments were in the €1 million to €1.5 million range, a large number of our recent deals have been between €3 million and €5 million.
“It’s a combination of our brand starting to become very well known in the early-stage ecosystem, so both VC funds want us as co-investors, and founders want us onboard for their journeys,” O’Neill added. “More and more people want to invest through CircleRock. We are getting a steady stream of referrals from the families and high-net-worths we work with.
“We have doubled in size from 75 to 150 people who invest through us, so the good work we have done over the last couple of years is starting to compound.”
Sharpe said the new venture partners would help grow their investor base. “Our new Venture Partners will help us broaden this network. They all have very different and unique networks, which will really amplify this reach,” Sharpe said.
“We are also moving on to the next stage in CircleRock’s evolution. A number of our companies are starting to break out and raising follow-on rounds, raising amounts of up to €50 million at four to six times the valuation we invested at last year. We aim to be very supportive when we have access to information that shows a company is scaling rapidly.
“As a result, we’ve also begun to grow the number of larger family offices we work with, those who can write cheques of €5 million to €10 million-plus, which will allow us to maintain and grow our stakes in our portfolio companies we know are performing strongly.
“We’ve also been approached by some institutional sources of capital looking to invest in our vehicles, so we are currently going through due diligence with a couple of these to see if they are a fit for us.”
The AI revolution
What are the big investment themes CircleRock looks at? “Most of our recent deals have been in AI in particular, but also climatetech, fintech and given Neha joining the team, we are looking closer at the healthtech space,” O’Neill said.
CircleRock was also participating in follow-on rounds in its portfolio companies. “As our companies scale, we keep investing more and more. An example since we last spoke is FitXR. We have now invested multiple millions into the business via three separate SPVs,” Sharpe said.
“We also invested further capital in Emma, the leading multi-cloud platform. Based in Luxembourg, we have witnessed them rapidly climb to an eight-figure revenue run rate since launch, and we now have a very meaningful stake in a valuable business.”
What new companies has it invested in? “A recent new portfolio company is Piper AI, the first AI-based full pipeline automation solution that is reshaping the $103 billion CRM industry,” O’Neill said.
“With AI revolutionising industries at light speed and the increasing importance of CRM platforms, we believe Piper is well positioned to make a big splash with their stellar team and exceptional product,” he added. “This was one of the most sought-after seed deals in southern Europe in 2023, and we are delighted to have won an allocation. The team is exceptional, made up of three co-founders with leading experience at Stripe, Twitter, Google and Spanish unicorn Job&Talent. We also have five unannounced deals, primarily in AI, we have done in recent months.”
Sharpe said CircleRock has an active year ahead. “We have a huge pipeline for 2024 and closed three deals in January alone. Between follow-on investment and new investments, we’ll probably get to around 20 to 25 deals this year.”
Fighting to access the best global deals
What type of investor is CircleRock typically looking for? “We are looking to add investors. Typically they are high-net-worths or family offices, and they tend to be very entrepreneurial,” Sharpe said. “We also work with a large number of tech executives, exited founders and venture-backed founders. They love reading our deal memos, and love our model of being able to choose investments that resonate with them on a deal-by-deal basis.”
CircleRock’s investor syndicates back companies using special-purpose vehicles. “SPVs are now front and foremost in the VC world. An example is Thrive Capital run by Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, who recently used an SPV to invest $1 billion-plus into Stripe,” Sharpe said.
“We are very focused on continuing to get into the best deals – we are driven by delivering great outcomes for the families and individuals who support us with their capital.
“We are constantly on the hunt for the best opportunities. We will go wherever we need to in order to find the best opportunities. We’ve recently been on trips to Lisbon, London, Amsterdam and Stockholm. It is important to be proactive and to fight to win access to the top global deals. We meet some of the most interesting founders and investors in the world, so it’s a very rewarding journey building CircleRock.”