As the year draws to a close, Hillside Enterprises looked at which industries are on track to see the largest levels of VC investment in 2024. The figures show that at $76.6 billion invested to date, enterprise software should see the most investment in 2024. With 2,753 investment rounds, it’s also the sector to have seen the second-largest number of investment rounds.
Hillside Enterprises’ portfolio company, Emma, is a multi-cloud services business based in Luxembourg. It raised $17 million in its recent Series A funding.
The VC firm seed-funded the cloud business at the end of 2022 through its partners at Circle Rock Capital. Since investing in the tech start-up, Emma’s revenues have soared sixfold from €4 million to more than €25 million. Emma aims to empower businesses to optimize workloads, forecast usage, and improve resource allocation, ensuring financial predictability and operational efficiency.
The health industry is set to see the second largest sum of investment in 2024, with $60.4 billion invested to date, whilst the fintech sector sits in third with $31.1 billion invested.
Hillside Enterprises’ portfolio company easyMoney, a bridge and development lender and licensee of the easyGroup, exceeded £400 million in total lending this year. EasyMoney provides alternative financing for property professionals across the UK, secured on a first-charge basis against UK real estate.
The democratization of access to returns provides fractionalized investment in private credit, not just for professional investors, but for the many retail investors across the globe who wouldn’t normally have the channels to invest in this space.
Having exited its tech distribution business in the summer of 2024, Hillside said it will continue to invest strategically in companies that make an impact and can scale and build value.
“We are very proud of all our portfolio companies and the changes they’re making in their respective industries. The fact of the matter is, the businesses we invest in, whilst making an impact is important, they have to have a clear route to growth and profitability or there is no longevity,” said Timothy Manna, founder of Hillside Enterprises.
Looking ahead to 2025, Sydecar CEO Nik Talreja sees an improving VC climate on the horizon.
“Heading into the new year, the factors limiting liquidity and returns may loosen up, as we expect the IPO market to open up and regulatory easing to make M&A easier,” Talreja said. “For emerging managers, this means there may be a slightly more favorable landscape, but perhaps only incrementally – we’re likely never going to see the same level of emerging manager activity (the number of Fund 1s launched) as we did in 2021-2022. This will be a healthy correction, as fundraising as a venture manager should be hard but not impossible.”