How successful have VC investments in European marketplaces been? 

We evaluated a dataset of 182 European marketplace and platform businesses 2018-2026 to better understand which verticals have generated the strongest investor returns relative to the capital they consumed. We measured each company by two metrics: 

• Value-to-Capital or “V2C” (latest pre-money valuation ÷ cumulative equity raised prior to thatvaluation date) 

• Money-Weighted XIRR (IRR calculation factoring in the amount of time each tranche of capital had been deployed until the last available valuation date). Source was Pitchbook data (2018-26) for equity raised and disclosed valuations.
  
  Our main findings:

Across the full dataset, marketplaces raised some $24bn of primary equity and are valued at $69bn; that’s an aggregate of 2.9x V2C, and a median money-weighted XIRR of 42%. This compares with the average net IRR on the median European VC fund over the past 10 years of 15%, and 23% for the top quartile.

As expected, returns are concentrated. The top 10% of marketplaces account for about two-thirds of all value created.

In Circular Economy, Vinted is currently valued at 16.2x V2C, and a 45% XIRR for the average Vinted investor. Also noteworthy are BackMarket (10.3x), Rebike (9.8x) and Swappie (9.8x). We expect their V2Cs to climb further.

In Auto and Mobility, businesses including BlaBlaCar (4.3x, 22% XIRR), CarOnSale (11.8x), Motorway (8.9x) have produced solid returns in categories often perceived as operationally complex.

Consumer Marketplaces ManoMano (5.1x, 75% XIRR), Fresha (3.5x, 26% XIRR), and PLAYTOMIC (2.7x) all demonstrate that significant value creation is possible when a platform successfully aggregates fragmented supply and becomes the default destination within its category. Similarly in B2B, Ankorstore (horizontal wholesale,12.3x), Nivoda (diamond wholesale, 4.4x), and YardLink (equipment rental, 12.9x) prove the same.

At the same time, a new generation of AI-native B2B platforms, are disrupting traditional, fragmented professional services industries. Legora (18.8x) and Wordsmith AI (11.0x) generated some of the strongest V2C investor returns in our dataset in the shortest time — and this is where we expect to see continued value creation over the coming years.

A priced round is not the same as an exit. But the data suggests that many marketplace and platform businesses will generate outlier cash returns too. Helping VCs discover and access these category leaders is core to what we do at EIV.  It is difficult to argue that the opportunity to build or back these businesses has disappeared. If anything, the evidence suggests that exceptional marketplace companies will continue to create extraordinary investor returns across a wide range of sectors.