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Just a few weeks after 20VC announced its third investment vehicle, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that the relatively new VC firm based in London is gaining a new general partner. Julien Codorniou is leaving Felix Capital, where he has been a founding advisor since 2015 and a partner since 2021, to join 20VC and focus on early-stage investments.
Harry Stebbings launched 20VC as the venture capital extension of his eponymous podcast series. On the 20VC podcast, he spends 20 minutes interviewing with tech CEOs and operators.
Just like Stebbings’ interviews are now much longer than 20 minutes, the 20VC fund also became larger over time. In 2020, he raised an $8.3 million micro-fund so that he could participate in early-stage rounds without necessarily leading them.
In 2021, 20VC closed a $140 million fund. For its third fund, 20VC managed to secure $400 million. Around $125 million of that fund is dedicated to seed investments and $275 million will be allocated toward Series A rounds.
Given that there are few acquisitions and even fewer IPOs in Europe these days, raising $400 million in the current tech environment could be considered as an achievement. It also proves that Stebbings has built a successful media platform that can be leveraged for tech investments with positive network effects.
Over the past few months, 20VC has been growing its team so that it can deploy the capital it has raised. In addition to Kieran Hill, who joined as a seed partner back in 2021, Paul Bonnet (general partner) and Alexandre Dewez (partner) respectively left DST Global and Eurazeo earlier this year to focus on Series A investments (and later) for 20VC.
Julien Codorniou is the latest addition to the team. He’s going to be 20VC’s third general partner and focus on seed investments. This will be a change of pace for him, as Felix Capital usually leads funding rounds at a later stage.
As part of Felix Capital, he participated in funding rounds in Pigment, Agave, Omada, TechWolf, and Prediko. He has also been a business angel, investing his own money in Bloom & Wild, Xentral, Homesome, Olio, Peanut, Nabla, Curio, Bits, and Sunday.
As an angel investor, he also got to interact with Stebbings as they both invested in TripleDot Studios, BeReal, and Linktree.
Before his career in VC, Codorniou spent 11 years working for Facebook (now Meta). In particular, he oversaw Workplace, Facebook’s communication platform for enterprise customers.
Romain Dillet is a Senior Reporter at TechCrunch. He has written over 3,000 articles on technology and tech startups and has established himself as an influential voice on the European tech scene. He has a deep background in startups, privacy, security, fintech, blockchain, mobile, social and media. With twelve years of experience at TechCrunch, he’s one of the familiar faces of the tech publication that obsessively covers Silicon Valley and the tech industry. In fact, his career started at TechCrunch when he was 21. Based in Paris, many people in the tech ecosystem consider him as the most knowledgeable tech journalist in town. Romain likes to spot important startups before anyone else. He was the first person to cover N26, Revolut and DigitalOcean. He has written scoops on large acquisitions from Apple, Microsoft and Snap. When he’s not writing, Romain is also a developer — he understands how the tech behind the tech works. He also has a deep historical knowledge of the computer industry for the past 50 years. He knows how to connect the dots between innovations and the effect on the fabric of our society. Romain graduated from Emlyon Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He has helped several non-profit organizations, such as StartHer, an organization that promotes education and empowerment of women in technology, and Techfugees, an organization that empowers displaced people with technology.
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