Elkstone<\/a> founder Alan Merriman told The Irish Times. The company is seeking to fill a \u201cgap in the market\u201d for \u201cyoung, early stage, high-potential companies struggling with funding\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s where we can make a big difference. Not only can we put our money to work at that early stage,\u201d he said, \u201cbut through our international network we can draw in international VCs as those companies scale.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said there is a \u201cfunding gap that is well in excess of \u20ac1 billion, so there is clear capacity for the market to absorb a fund from Elkstone that is in the order of \u20ac150 million plus\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Merriman expects the Elkstone fund to invest in between 30 and 40 companies. \u201cIt is inevitable some companies will fail. That is the nature of venture but some companies will do incredibly well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The firm has reduced its threshold for interested investors to the legal minimum of \u20ac100,000, to be drawn over five to seven years. It wants its entry point to be \u201cat a level where people can take advantage of EIIS (Employment Investment Incentive Scheme) relief\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government brought in the EIIS [to encourage the public] to invest in venture,\u201d he said, noting that there was a \u201csignificant cohort of investors in Ireland who can afford to invest in venture at that type of level; we need to get their money to work for the good of the economy”.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is now well understood that public [stock] markets are unlikely to get the strong returns they\u2019ve given over the last 10 or 15 years,\u201d he said, urging the public to engage in further investment in private equity funds.<\/p>\n
The firm believes its edge on the market is getting access to the \u201cvery best venture opportunities\u201d across the island of Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very focused on getting strong returns from this fund and, to do that, we want to have access to the very best Irish companies, regardless of whether they are in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland,\u201d Mr Merriman said.<\/p>\n
Elkstone\u2019s first venture fund closed at \u20ac100 million<\/a>, including investment from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, having surpassed the \u20ac75 million planned at its announcement in 2022. Those funds have been spread across nearly 30 companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Private market investment firm Elkstone is seeking to raise at least \u20ac150 million in a second venture fund,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":215881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,117941,607,117943,117942,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-215880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-elkstone","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-ireland-strategic-investment-fund","12":"tag-smes","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115180842927846762","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}