La Famiglia, a Berlin-based venture capital Fund (no, not the mafia organization, if I’m confused) has raised €250m for its third combined seed fund (which is €165m ) and its first growth co-investment fund (90 million euros).

The fund vertically focuses on ML and AI, data, logistics and supply chains, B2B consumerization, fintech and insurtech, sustainability, so-called “Industry 4.0”, as well as other new technology areas.

The company currently has over 70 startups in its portfolio, including Deel (a payroll and HR platform, recently pegged at a $12 billion valuation); Personio (HR management software); Forto (digital freight forwarding); as well as Y42 (data operations cloud), Sweep (carbon accounting platform, similar to Watershed in the US) and Buynomics (business operating system). To date, the fund has raised over €350m since its inception in 2017, when it closed its first seed fund of €35m. The second €60 million seed fund came in 2019.

The fund aims to invest up to €5 million in mainly B2B start-ups. Zurich-based quality management platform Ethon.ai is Fund 3’s first investment.

The family offices behind brands such as Valentino, Adidas, Swarovski, Hapag Lloyd and Estée Lauder are Fund 3 LPs. Famiglia is also recently backed by entrepreneurs such as Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), Ross Mason (Mulesoft) and the portfolio founders Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition), Hanno Renner (Personio) and Michael Wax (Forto).

It’s perhaps no surprise that La Famiglia can reach LPs that other VCs might struggle to reach. The family of founding partner, Dr. Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, owns the measurement technology company Krohne Messtechnik (annual revenues over $780 million), putting them in fairly rarefied circles of European high society. However, it must be said that Fürstenberg is a longtime investor herself, having backed AMAZE an an Angel (a smartphone shopping app for fashion bloggers) and working more generally at tech companies.

Fürstenberg told me in an interview: “I think we were lucky (with the fundraising) because we had very good performance figures for the first fund. Funds one and two were much harder (to raise) in comparison. And fund three just gave us a lot of performance, and kind of spoke for itself. Fundraising is always a lot of work, but I think this was by far the easiest fundraiser, by comparison.

The team is also co-led by general partner Judith Dada, who previously led Facebook’s VC initiative and previously managed marketing strategy for Amazon Europe.

Had they encountered any fundraising problems given the problems associated with the current macro-economic environment? Dada replied, “It’s a conversation we’ve had continuously… But I think overall, given that we’re investing in B2B tech companies, we see market issues hitting us less hard, potentially, than other funds.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty but overall, just looking at the kind of fundamentals of the kinds of companies we invest in, maybe Europe won’t be home to the next Facebook or the next Amazon. , but we will welcome the next Siemens or the next Mersk,” she commented.

Fürstenberg added that the slowdown in tech stocks and layoffs had “actually been good for the ecosystem. We are seeing a lot of great talent coming back into the market. So it becomes easier to hire great people. And I think from a deal-flow perspective, the signal-to-noise ratio has improved so much. Additionally, the quality of the founders we’ve spoken to over the past three or four months is also better.

Perhaps appropriate for International Women’s Day, La Famiglia’s senior investment team now includes 60% women (50% of total team) and 60% with a migrant background (30% of the total team).

SAP Hybris founder and business expert Carsten Thoma also joins La Famiglia as an advisor.