Analysis
Yvonne Bajela has closed an oversubscribed $17 million debut fund called Evertrue, she announced Tuesday, after more than a decade investing in UK and European startups at LocalGlobe and Impact X Capital Partners, TechCrunch reported.
Who is Yvonne Bajela
Bajela started her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and later worked as a senior investment manager in Japan before moving into venture capital, where her bets at LocalGlobe and Impact X included fintech Wise, insurer Marshmallow and robotaxi startup Mooves, according to TechCrunch. "After more than a decade backing founders who bet everything on their ideas, it felt like time to make a bet of my own," Bajela said.
Evertrue's $17 million Fund I
Evertrue's Fund I closed above its original $13 million target after Bajela turned away investors who wanted the fund to grow larger. "Fund size is a strategic decision, not a measure of success in itself," she said. The fund will write average checks of roughly 350,000 British pounds and plans to back at least 20 companies over three years, focused mainly on early-stage AI and fintech startups in the UK and Europe. Evertrue has already backed seven companies ahead of its formal close.
“Evertrue's Fund I closed above its original $13 million target after Bajela turned away investors who wanted the fund to grow larger.”
Who backed Evertrue
Evertrue's institutional backers include the British Business Bank and Basecamp, the fund-of-funds arm of investment firm Phoenix Court -- which is also home to Bajela's former firm, LocalGlobe. The fund was part of the British Business Bank's 400 million pound Investor Pathways initiative, which has put 90 million pounds into 10 first-time fund managers. About 80% of Evertrue's limited partners are based in the UK, with the rest spread across Europe, Asia and the US; more than half of the fund's existing portfolio already operates in the US.
Europe's emerging fund manager market
Bajela's close lands amid a broader resurgence for first-time European fund managers. Emerging managers in the region raised $7.4 billion through the end of September, according to PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch, already surpassing the $6.2 billion raised in all of 2025.
That puts Evertrue's close inside a much larger wave of debut and sophomore funds competing for the same limited-partner dollars as larger, established European firms -- part of a wider run of fund closes this quarter that also includes Entourage Ventures' 100 million euro Fund II.
The risk for a fund this size is concentration. With roughly 20 checks planned and seven companies already backed, Evertrue has far less room than a larger fund to absorb a handful of failures, and its thesis leans on two crowded categories -- AI and fintech -- where competition for the best seed deals has intensified as larger funds move earlier into the stack.
What's next for Evertrue
Watch whether Evertrue's seven existing portfolio companies attract follow-on capital from larger funds, typically an early signal of a debut manager's picking ability, and whether Bajela raises a larger Fund II once this vehicle's thesis has had time to play out.