It wasn't obvious that Wellington Partners would emerge as one of Europe's best venture capital firms
when I visited them at their Munich offices seven years ago. At the time, their IT portfolio seemed to be little more than an arbitrage play between U.S. innovation and European cautiousness. And despite earning impressive profits from the $43 million sale of Alando.net to eBay Inc. in 1999, it was hard to distinguish Wellington from other German venture upstarts such as PolyTechnos, Target Partners and Knorr Capital.
Exits and smart investments since 2001 have sharpened those differences. Wellington Partners sold Ciao to Greenfield Online in 2005 and Giga to Premier this month. After a strong start highlighted by Actelion and MediGene exits, Wellington's life sciences portfolio has provided less liquidity in recent years. But, the IT side of the equation should continue to support the firm's returns with promising startups such as professional social networking firm
Xing, online game directory
Wazap! and peer-to-peer lending startup
Zopa mature.
And with the success, the firm has found its own way. It
closed its sixth IT-focused fund this month at 265 million euros ($388 million). Dedicated to commercializing the innovative life sciences and hard technology research the Continent is known for while still eager to build global consumer Internet companies, Wellington Partners has created a diversified firm built to last. Its expansion to London will only expedite this evolution.
- Joshua Jaffe
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