The Prague and Krakow firm, whose earliest bets include UiPath and ElevenLabs, is doubling pre-seed in Central and Eastern Europe and its global diaspora with a team of six partners and a typical check of $1-5 million.
Credo Ventures Credo closed Stage 5, moment $88 million fund The Prague and Krakow firm’s fifteen-year strategy of writing the first institutional check for founders from Central and Eastern Europe and its diaspora was raised in one round.
The fund is the firm’s largest fund to date, rising from a €75 million fourth fund that closed in 2022.
The firm’s founding partners Ondrej Bartos and Jan Habermann launched Credo in 2010 and have backed more than 100 companies across four funds.
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Two header results, UiPath, RPA platform created by Romania AI voice company ElevenLabs, listed on the NYSE at $35 billion in 2021 and most recently valued at $11 billion, are Credo-led cases, and for good reason: both were seed investments led or co-led by the firm before either company became widely known. Maciek Gnutek, now a partner at Credo, was an early backer of ElevenLabs.
The fifth fund is managed by six partners. In addition to Bartos and Habermann, the team includes Gnutek, who focuses on the Polish market and diaspora relations; Jakub Krikava, whose background includes public policy and the Czech Ministry of Defense; Max Kolowrat-Krakowsky, international investment practice and US networks; and Matej Micek, focusing on infrastructure, artificial intelligence and developer tools.
A multi-generation structure has been designed. Credo’s stated argument is that the new generation of GPs is strengthening the firm’s position at a time when the CEE ecosystem is maturing, but its pre-seed layer is structurally underserved.
The firm’s thesis for Fund 5 is a sharpened version of what it has always done. While Krikava told start-up.ro that the firm remains flexible, typical checks will fall in the $1-5 million range.
The sector focus is deliberately loose, with Credo describing itself as founder-first rather than theme-based, but the team is particularly suited to tech founders with global ambitions and has a growing eye on AI companies after the growth spurt in its fourth fund portfolio.
The CEE region it covers has a total population of about 170 million and a GDP of about US$2 trillion, and Credo argues that the diaspora element, particularly the founders of the region’s construction in San Francisco and London, is an equally important resource channel.
The competitive framework is quietly highlighted. The firm notes that fragmentation and cultural differences among CEE countries remain meaningful barriers for outside investors, creating a structural advantage for the firm, which has built networks in the region over fifteen years.
Credo’s backers included Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Index Ventures, citing the firm’s quality early-stage acquisitions. About two-thirds of the capital in the fund comes from institutional investors, with no public funding involved.
The increase in fund size from €75 million to $88 million is not dramatic, but modest, indicating that Credo is not only betting on a step change in regional production, but also betting on the compound value of being the first name called by a founder leaving the region.
