Dawn Capital

This week at Latitude59 in Tallinn we were delighted to co-host 'Founders Apéro' alongside our friends at Tera Ventures, 3VC and OTB Ventures 📷 Shamillah Bankiya welcoming investors and founders - and of course referencing our investment in Blackwall (formerly BotGuard)! 🙏 Andrus Oks, Wojtek Walniczek, David Clark, Helis Lipping, Eva Arh

At the Dawn Marketing Summit on Tuesday, we brought together over 60 industry experts to discuss the challenges facing senior marketing leaders in 2025, including: 🤖 What role is AI already playing within your marketing strategy- and what does the future hold? 📍As search behaviour and algorithms shift faster than ever, how do we drive traffic? 🍎What lessons were learned in a CMO’s journey from scrappy scale-up to double Unicorn? 🌱 How can marketers go beyond their “traditional” remit to tackle broader business needs? Thank you to everyone who joined us and brought such energy to the event. A special shoutout to our partners at Erevena for their support. A big thank you to Chloe Dodson, Avalon Lee-Bacon and Danielle Le Toullec for making this event possible, and to our brilliant contributors and moderators: Isabelle Duarte, Yann Sarfati, Andrew Davies, Leah Anathan, Matt Hooper, Ashling Kearns, Prelini Udayan-Chiechi, Lena Hackelöer, Daniel Hyde, and Henry Mason.

📷Shamillah Bankiya and Nikita Rozenberg on stage at #Latitude59 today in Tallinn 🎤Fiona Alston was on hand to quiz them on the founder/investor relationship, the story behind our recent Series B round and what’s next for Blackwall (formerly BotGuard) 👀

In Part I of our Generative AI series, we wrote about why VC-backed startups need to generate up to $3 trillion in value for investors to see payback. We also explored where that value might come from. In our view, this can only happen if agents, or at the very least copilots, start both generating revenue and boosting productivity. 💥 The good news? We’re almost there. We’re seeing killer use cases emerge with immense ROI. Even better, Europe is producing serious winners in each category. 🏆 In Part II of our Generative AI series, we highlight just a few areas where AI agents are breaking through - some snippets below: 👩💻 App Development ⚡ Why it’s killer: The ten largest global dev-services firms capture $180b. Agents that shorten spec-to-ship time by 10x can redirect that spend. 🏆 Who’s winning: Cogna, Lovable, Databutton. ⚖️ Legal ⚡ Why it’s killer: Legal services exceed $1 trillion and are full of unstructured text, making them ideal for LLMs. 🏆 Who’s winning: Lawhive, LEGALFLY, Avantia Law, DeepIP. 🎧 Customer Support & Experience ⚡ Why it’s killer: Zendesk pegs the market size at $165b. Agents and copilots drive up customer satisfaction scores with agents will win this market. 🏆 Who’s winning: Gradient Labs, Fini, Magic, Pavlov. 🖥️🔐 IT Ops & Security ⚡ Why it’s killer: Outsourced IT and security is a $400b market with low margins. Agentic tooling cuts MTTR and labor costs. 🏆 Who’s winning: Blackwall (formerly BotGuard), inforcer, Phoebe.ai, Anyshift.io, incident.io. 🧑💼 HR & Recruiting ⚡ Why it’s killer: HR outsourcing is a $175b market driven by complex local regulations and manual admin. It’s a perfect fit for automation. 🏆 Who’s winning: Jet HR and Dex. 🛒 E-commerce & Localization ⚡ Why it’s killer: The global e-commerce enablement stack is enormous, and AI agents are rewriting trade with automation that drives revenue and reduces costs 🏆 Who’s winning: Qogita and Lokalise. 🛠️ And let’s not forget the picks and shovels of agentic AI: data readiness, evaluation, governance, and orchestration layers that let these agents scale, including our portfolio companies, Dataiku, Collibra, Quantexa, Neo4j and many more. For the full breakdown and the European Agent Map, check out our deep-dive in comments 🔗 Who else belongs on the winners list? Let’s make sure Europe leads the agent era 💪🇪🇺 #AI #Agents #Copilots #B2B #VentureCapital #Europe #GenerativeAI #DawnCapital cc: Norman Fiore Owen Brooks Nils Howland Andrea G.

✏️“We’re seeing for the first time since 2021 a more stable environment for European fintech,” said Josh Bell, general partner at Dawn Capital. “Companies are being built with resilience in mind, and the quality of businesses coming through the pipeline is really strong.” This year, Europe’s fintech investments are reaching the heights of 2022. Leaner, more investable startups and technological developments are creating a real sense of sustained momentum. Learn more in this new PitchBook article by Leah Hodgson 👇 https://lnkd.in/eNAeNV8p

🎉 We are proud to be part of the Top 100 Rising European Startups, unveiled today Viva Technology    Honored to be recognized for our impact in Fintech and to join Europe’s vibrant next-gen startup ecosystem 🚀    Huge thanks to Accel Eurazeo HV Capital Northzone Partech for supporting this initiative that celebrates and accelerates Europe’s most promising startups. 👉 Discover the full list https://lnkd.in/efMGGm_p #Top100RisingEuropeanStartups #startups2025 #EUStartups #VivaTech 

👏 Congratulations to our Head of Data, Tech and AI Ties Boukema on being recognised as one of the Top 20 Data-Driven VC Thought Leaders…for the third year running! The Data-Driven VC Landscape 2025 report explores how analytics experts are optimising productivity and harnessing AI to uncover potential investment opportunities. With a truly impressive Top 100 list, Ties is in fantastic company. We’re also proud to see Dawn featured as one of the data-driven venture capital firms “paving the way for new industry standards.” Ties is the driving force behind Rolodex, Dawn’s proprietary data and AI platform for relationship intelligence. Read the full report in comments, along with more on Rolodex 👇

Have a complex, high volume, repetitive workflow? There is (or should be) an AI agent for that. In Part I of our GenAI series, Shamillah Bankiya and Norman Fiore shared that VC-backed startups need to generate up to $3 trillion in value for investors to see payback. They also asked - where will that value come from? Part II is all about the rise of AI agents and co-pilots. Here are two reasons we’re excited: 🤖Agents have agency. They encounter a choice and make a decision, which means that they can take actions on behalf of humans 🤖The opportunity is huge. Comprising a whopping 78% of US GDP, services are the prime candidate for next gen automation To learn more, and see our predictions for the most killer use cases, check out the deep-dive from Shamillah Bankiya, Owen Brooks, Nils Howland and Andrea G. below 👇

After an amazing chapter at Seedcamp, I’m very excited to share that I’ve joined Dawn Capital as an Investor. Dawn is Europe’s leading specialist in B2B software, where the bar is set high - intellectually, commercially, and culturally. Not often do you find a team that combines such rigour in thinking with genuine empathy and integrity. I’m incredibly grateful to the Dawn team for their trust, and for the warmth with which they’ve welcomed me. I also feel deeply fortunate to have learned from some of Europe’s most ambitious early-stage founders and from the most wonderful team at Seedcamp, who embody thoughtfulness, hustle, and heart in equal measure. A huge thank you to everyone who offered guidance, encouragement, and a front-row seat to what it takes to build from Day One. I’m eager to meet hungry, passionate founders building in enterprise software - if that’s you, I’d love to meet!

Dawn GP Josh Bell at the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) Accelerate Conference today alongside Itxaso del Palacio, PhD, Stephen Nundy and Eric Davison, digging into AI and where next for series A #bvca