Vienna-based healthtech VC Calm/Storm has reached a final close of its €30m second fund. The money’s being invested in early-stage healthtech startups founded by Europeans, with at least 75% of those companies registered in Europe at the time of investment.
Around 70% of LPs for its first €20m fund have supported its second fund, while new investors include Swiss health insurer CSS, German pharma giant Schwabe and Austrian bank Raiffeisenbank. In total, Calm/Storm has 111 LPs, none of which are institutional investors; 70% are private and the rest are corporates.
The firm began investing out of the fund two years ago, so far betting on 25 companies, including Swiss full-body scan startup Aeon Life and Aiomics, an AI-powered platform which helps healthcare providers transform unstructured clinical documents into structured patient records.
The average ticket size is €500k, double that of its last fund.
It’s focusing on digital health verticals like prevention and consumer health. It’ll also make investments in startups building and operating infrastructure for large healthcare providers like AI scribes, revenue cycle management tools and technologies to help with diagnostics and clinical decision-making as well as compliance tools, partner Johannes Blaschke tells Sifted.
“Fund one was all about access, making sure we had a seat on the table with the best teams in healthcare … Now we’re doubling down on what we believe are the winners within the market,” founder and managing partner Lucanus Polagnoli adds.
How Calm/Storm structures its deals
While Calm/Storm targeted a close by the end of March this year, it delayed after receiving late interest from bigger corporate funds who then came on as LPs, Polagnoli tells Sifted.
The fund deploys four types of tickets: discovery, pre-seed, seed and post-seed. With pre-seed tickets — which are used most often — it aims to take a 5-10% stake, and with its seed tickets, 3-7%. And it always leads alongside other investors, Polagnoli says.
Calm/Storm also sends all deals to its LPs so they can co-invest. To date, it has co-invested over 120 times with LPs and venture partners, Polagnoli tells Sifted.
According to Sifted data, Calm/Storm is the most active specialist healthtech VC in Europe.
Polagnoli says the firm saw 92% of all Europe’s public pre-seed digital health rounds between July and September.
What Calm/Storm looks for
Calm/Storm aims to invest in “purpose-driven founders,” Blaschke says, adding that the second fund will place more importance on the impact companies have on patients, rather than solely looking at financial returns. Nine of the 25 companies backed so far have a founder with a medical background.
These founders, and the companies they build, don’t need to be based in Europe, with up to a quarter of the fund’s capital going outside the continent: “We want to let the door open for the exceptional European founders that build something somewhere else — most likely in North America,” Polagnoli says.
So far, it’s made two exits out of the fund, bringing its total to 10 across both funds.
Bets from its €20m first fund include Berlin-based financial operating system for hospitals Nelly — the fastest-growing healthtech startup in the DACH and CEE region — and clinical trial platform Lindus Health.
