Founded by Thor Björgólfsson, Novator focuses on investing in growth-stage companies with the capacity to transform markets across health, technology, and telecommunications.
Birgir is a partner at Omega VC and holds board positions at companies including Numan, Zwift, and Novator. He also serves as chairman of Klang Games and founder and chairman of Groska.
The investment round was led by White Star Capital with participation from Novator, Vostok New Global, Anthemis Exponential, Colle Capital, and Hanwha Dream Fund.
"We started Numan three years ago to help men take better care of themselves. Since then we’ve had a positive impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of men in the UK, and have been humbled and inspired by the response that the Numan offering has had. This funding is a significant milestone on our journey to help millions of men be healthier. White Star Capital is one of the best investors in our space, and I’m delighted to be working together along with a wider team of brilliant investors. We now have the team, product, technology, and investor base to accelerate Numan’s growth and fulfill the potential of our vision."
The pre-seed round was led by Speedinvest with backing from high profile angel investors.
"When a world class team of repeat founders builds a well differentiated product in a huge, under-digitized market, it’s a no brainer to partner with them. We’re beyond excited to be on board and look forward to supporting them in building a category leader."
General Catalyst led the round, which will finance the company's international growth strategy and technology scaling.
"We’ve been extremely fortunate in 2020 to accelerate our growth, strengthening our expertise in technology-enabled, customer-centric flower gifting. We’re privileged to have played our part in keeping people connected in this difficult period, and I’m proud of our growing team for scaling our operations whilst maintaining the signature thought and care we put into every order. With this new backing from General Catalyst and Index we start 2021 with renewed energy to pursue our vision of becoming the world’s leading and most loved flower company."
The digital bank secured £60m from new and existing backers, bringing its total funds raised this year to £125m.
"“From the beginning, Monzo has been creating a new kind of bank that’s giving people more oversight and control over their finances than ever before.“"
The financing round was led by General Catalyst alongside several other prominent institutional investors.
"Over the past few months we have seen an acceleration in the shift from offline to online car buying as UK consumers have continued to embrace our unique and market-leading proposition. This latest funding demonstrates the conviction of some of the world’s best investors in both our business model and team as well as the UK market and gives Cazoo the firepower to deliver on our plans to provide the best possible car buying experience for UK consumers."
