A Luxembourg VC has raised a $170 million fund to invest in European and Israeli startups

Mark Tluszcz portait_April16

Luxembourg-headquartered venture capital firm Mangrove announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $170 million (£130 million) fund to invest in European and Israeli startups.

Mangrove has raised four other funds of the same size and now has over $1 billion (£770 million) under management.

The investor's biggest win to date was website building platform Wix.com, which is based out of Israel. Mangrove put $8 million (£6 million) into the company in its early stages and made $550 million (£422 million) when it went public in November 2015. Mangrove is also famous for being the first investor in Skype, where it turned a $2 million (£1.5 million) investment into $200 million (£150 million).

Mark Tluszcz, cofounder and CEO at Mangrove Capital Partners, who also serves as chairman of Wix.com, said in a statement: "We like to take big bets very early and support our best portfolio companies through multiple rounds of financing to build material stakes. We prefer to invest in unproven or unusual technologies rather than chase the latest fad."

Tluszcz added: "We are absolutely delighted with the returns we’ve generated for our investors and we don’t want to change a recipe that works very well for us. We are also enormously excited by our pipeline — we have at least a dozen gems in the portfolio."

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