Baseline founders say they became ‘frustrated’ with the ‘institutionalisation’ of how start-ups are built in Ireland.
Dublin-based private venture fund Baseline has closed a multimillion-euro round to invest in Irish and European start-ups.
Emerging from the Baseline community – an independent workspace for early stage founders – Baseline Venture Fund I has closed a €4m round, and is targeting a further €1m. The fund will invest €100,000 into 50 Irish and European start-ups over the next three years.
Baseline is looking to back technical founders building AI-native SaaS, intelligent automation, and infrastructure for execution-heavy or regulation-heavy environments. The fund focuses on pre-seed rounds.
It began deploying capital in May, and since, has already backed 10 start-ups, including Otel and Rekord. The rounds were co-invested by the likes of Foreword, Hello World, NAP, Nebular, Octopus, Pitchdrive, Playfair, Point Nine Capital and Y Combinator.
The fund was created by former founders and angel investors Eamon Leonard and Fiona Kelly who set up the Baseline workspace in Dublin’s Liberties last year.
Posing as Ireland’s only private VC fund exclusively focused on pre-seed raises, Baseline wants to be the “first cheque” for businesses raising pre-seed. It is not backed by government or institutional partners.
“As contributors to the Irish ecosystem over the past 20 years, we became frustrated by the institutionalisation of how startups are built here,” said Leanord.
“Incubators, accelerators and established VC funds are largely funded by government programmes or state funds, which means they’re ultimately more aligned to job creation than value creation.
“This has created an environment where founders aren’t pushed to their full potential. The best Irish founders have either left Ireland completely, or they raise their first round abroad and build at home,” he added.
Kelly added, “Running a local community grounded in founders helping each other is core to how we’re developing the earliest stage of the Irish ecosystem from an independent perspective. It helps with deal flow and diligence.”
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