White Star Capital’s 2021 Year in Review
After (another) unprecedented year, the White Star Capital team wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the accomplishments of 2021, which would not have been possible without our founders, investors, and colleagues. We would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who has supported us along this journey so far, and look forward to working alongside you in 2022.
Looking Back
After the uncertainty of 2020, we welcomed 2021 and both the opportunities and challenges it would bring, inspired by the growth and resilience shown by our portfolio companies and our own White Star Capital team during that year.
It’s fair to say that 2021 was our best year yet, as we closed our third and largest fund of $360m in September, White Star Capital III, which was oversubscribed from our original $300m target. This landmark occasion in the history of White Star Capital allowed us to look back at our journey and look forward to the future.
This year also saw the closing of our oversubscribed Digital Asset Fund, closing at $50m in May. Led by General Partner Sep Alavi, this sector-specific fund focuses on crypto-networks and blockchain-enabled businesses at each layer of the tech stack. These two funds bring our total AUM to over $775m.
In Spring, we proudly supported Dialogue’s initial public offering, only three years following their Series A, which we led. We also saw Safello IPO and join the Nasdaq First North, after a successful and highly oversubscribed pre-IPO round. Finally, our portfolio company Dfuse landed a $60m grant from The Graph Foundation in order to join its ecosystem for indexing the decentralised internet.
This year we welcomed 28 new companies to the White Star Capital family, across North America, Europe, and South East and North East Asia. Our founders were also busier than ever, with 49 of our portfolio companies successfully raising over $910m in funding during 2021 (including new investments). Tier Mobility and Clark Insurance became unicorns, joining AIG, Freshly, and Dollar Shave Club within our portfolio. Congratulations to all our founders for these accomplishments and thank you again for having us on your journeys!
We also further strengthened our team across multiple functions and geographies, so that we can continue being the partner of choice for entrepreneurs internationally. We welcomed 11 wonderful individuals to the team this year, 45% of which are women, adding incredible talent to our offices in Toronto, Montreal, New York, London, and Guernsey, and in our brand new Singapore office. Our global team now consists of 24 nationalities, who speak 12 languages.
Looking Forward
2021 was a landmark year, but we have no doubts that 2022 will be even better. We hope to continue partnering with and nurturing talented founders and to create a platform for promising ventures to scale internationally. The entire White Star Capital team is extremely excited about what the future holds and thrilled to have the chance to continue working on our day one mission — to help local leaders become global champions!
White Star Capital is a global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses. Operating out of Guernsey, New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong, our presence, perspective, and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.
