In 2023, Digital East Fund (ex-Earlybird) continued its strong commitment to supporting tech startups with global ambitions and roots in Emerging Europe. It was a year of hitting important milestones including successful exits, promising new investments, and strong follow-on rounds.
2023 marked another successful exit, with the acquisition of Mikrogroup, a leading provider of ERP & accounting software for SMEs, by TeamSystem in August 2023. Mikrogroup’s acquisition validated the potential of SME-focused SaaS applications, affirming our core focus on this vertical. Apart from underlining our thesis, this marked the sixth successful exit within the 2014 vintage portfolio of 15 companies, among others such as UiPath, Minit, and Vivense.
Among the new investments in 2023 is DraftWise, a New York-based legal tech startup transforming how lawyers draft and negotiate legal documents using state-of-the-art AI. DraftWise stands out in the market, with its AI models tailored for law firms, a stellar founding team merging tech and legal expertise, and an impressive client base featuring globally renowned law firms. Explore the investment thesis behind Draftwise here.
2023 also witnessed remarkable achievements within our existing portfolio. Binalyze, a Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) solutions leader, which we originally backed in the pre-seed round in 2021, secured a $20 million Series A round. Alokai (f.k.a. Vue Storefront), the leading front-end development platform for headless e-commerce software, also marked a milestone with a $20 million Series A round. Furthermore, Cerbos, a younger portfolio company providing an open-source API tool to build and manage permission systems at organizations, raised $7.5 million in its seed round.
We are excited about 2024 and hope it will bring more success and positive impact within our investment focus.
