K Fund is a new €50M VC fund investing in early-stage Spanish startups

Joining the likes of Kibo Ventures, Seaya Ventures, Nauta Capital, Samaipata Ventures, and JME Ventures, Spain has a new VC on the block. K Fund is a €50 million fund that will invest in Spanish startups with an international outlook, making lead investments at both the seed and Series A stages, writing checks of between €100,000 to €2 million. I’m also told it will do follow-on rounds with a maximum of €7.5 million invested per company it backs.

K Fund’s team is made up of a number of fairly well-known actors in the Spanish startup and tech scene, including Iñaki Arrola (Coches.com, Vitamina K), Carina Szpilka (ING Direct), Ian Noel (Bonsai Venture Capital), Ignacio Larrú (IE Business School), Pablo Ventura (JME Ventures), and Jaime Novoa (Novobrief, Tech.eu). Its LPs are described as a mix of public institutions, such as EIF, and private investors.

Targeting early-stage Internet and mobile companies, like most new VCs in Europe, K Fund is talking up the operational experience of its founders and its entrepreneur-friendly approach, citing the value-add, aside from cold hard cash, it aims to provide to the startups it backs.

I understand three investments have already been made from the fund. They are Salupro, Lucera and Hooks. Over the next few years K Fund expects to build a portfolio of between 20 and 25 companies.

Partner Iñaki Arrola says in a statement: “We truly believe that what differentiates our fund from others is our entrepreneur-focus: our objective is to work with them and to transfer our knowledge and value so that they can build bigger and more profitable companies. We’re aware of our limitations, and that’s why not only we’ve brought on board a great set of investors, but also two additional structures”.

Those “additional structures” include a network of what K Fund calls operating partners, made up of a group of professionals with experience in the technology sector and who it says will help the firm in the analysis of projects and also to support portfolio companies in the areas of business development, design, engineering and marketing.