Just a few weeks after 20VC announced its third investment vehicle, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that the relatively new VC firm based in London is gaining a new general partner. Julien Codorniou is leaving Felix Capital, where he has been a founding advisor since 2015 and a partner since 2021, to join 20VC to focus on early-stage investments.
Harry Stebbings launched 20VC in 2020 as the venture capital extension of his eponymous podcast series. The podcast was built in 20-minute episodes that were interviews with founders, investors and operators, and 20VC was initially envisioned as a “micro VC”, in which Stebbings would invest smaller amounts alongside bigger backers, providing skills and advice on growth alongside his money.
But just like Stebbings’ interviews these days have become much longer than 20 minutes, 20VC has also grown. In 2021, 20VC closed a $140 million fund. And for its third fund two months ago, 20VC managed to secure $400 million. Around $125 million of that fund is dedicated to seed investments and $275 million will be allocated toward Series A rounds.
Given that there are few acquisitions and even fewer IPOs in Europe these days, raising $400 million in the current tech environment could be considered an achievement. It also proves that Stebbings has built a successful media platform that can be leveraged for tech investments with positive network effects.
Over the past few months, 20VC has been growing its team so that it can deploy the capital it has raised. In addition to Kieran Hill, who joined as a seed partner back in 2021, Paul Bonnet (general partner) and Alexandre Dewez (partner) respectively left DST Global and Eurazeo earlier this year to focus on Series A investments (and later) for 20VC.
Julien Codorniou is the latest addition to the team. He’s going to be 20VC’s third general partner, focusing on seed investments. This will be a change of pace for him, as Felix Capital usually leads funding rounds at a later stage.
As part of Felix Capital, he participated in funding rounds in Pigment, Agave, Omada, TechWolf, and Prediko and Agave — a gaming company whose Series A was announced only yesterday. He has also been a business angel, investing his own money in Bloom & Wild, Xentral, Homesome, Olio, Peanut, Nabla, Curio, Bits, and Sunday.
As an angel investor, he also got to interact with Stebbings as they both invested in Tripledot Studios, BeReal, and Linktree.
Before his career in VC, Codorniou was at Microsoft and then spent 11 years working for Facebook (now Meta). In particular, he oversaw Workplace, Facebook’s communication platform for enterprise customers.
