Annalise Dragic Becomes One of Europe’s Youngest VC Partners

• Dragic has been promoted from principal to partner at Sapphire Ventures.
• At 29, she is one of Europe’s youngest female VC partners, according to the firm.
• Just 12.2% of Europe’s venture-capital decision-makers are women, according to PitchBook. 

At 29, Annalise Dragic has become one of Europe’s youngest female venture-capital partners.

The ex-Morgan Stanley analyst rose through the ranks at LinkedIn and Square-backer Sapphire Ventures and will now become one of the investor’s key executives in the region.

Her promotion makes her something of a rarity in an industry widely dominated by men. Just 12.2% of current VC decision-makers in Europe are women, according to a November snapshot from PitchBook.

Dragic previously studied science, technology, and international affairs before joining LinkedIn as an analyst, moving from San Francisco to London to Dublin.

“I think the combination of those experiences really led me to be excited about investing, excited about being a partner to entrepreneurs, and helping them scale businesses that ultimately have a positive impact on society,” she told Insider. 

Dragic joins the likes of Katie Leviten, who was appointed to general partner at JamJar Investments in 2017, when she was 29. At the time, JamJar, set up by the founders of Innocent Drinks, said Leviten was the youngest female VC partner in the UK — and possibly even Europe. 

There has been some movement among women in VC in recent months. In October, former Kauffman fellow and founder of impact firm Ozone X, Lea Bajc, joined future-of-food venture capitalists Blue Horizon as a partner, making its nine-person investment team 67% women.

European software backer Dawn Capital promoted Evgenia Plotnikova to general partner in September, saying she was one of the continent’s youngest GPs.

Frontline Partners brought in former Octopus Ventures investor Zoe Chambers last month. Some 50% of Chambers’ investments at Octopus were to female-led businesses, and she continues to over-index on traditionally overlooked founders at Frontline. 

This is not unusual. When women do call the shots, they’re twice as likely to back female founders, the Kauffman Fellows found.

Dragic said Sapphire has written checks to “a number” of women-led businesses and that the firm is helping teams build out diverse boards. “I think founders know that diverse teams win, and Sapphire knows that, that’s why you see that blend in our own team.”

Dragic has been involved in deals across the firm’s portfolio, including publicly listed Cazoo, DevOps code-security platform Git Guardian, and

open-banking

startup Yapily.

She joined London-based Atomico as an intern while an MBA student at Stanford, after leaving LinkedIn. “As a summer intern, I was really fortunate to get that opportunity to enter European venture,” she said. 

After finishing business school in the summer of 2018, Dragic was brought on as a senior associate at Atomico and worked with the likes of publicly listed Lilium and Peakon, acquired by Workday. 

In 2020, Dragic joined Sapphire Ventures’ founding partner Andreas Weiskam, who helped set up the firm’s Palo Alto headquarters before heading to the UK in 2012 to establish a European branch in London.

Sapphire has had four public debuts in its European and Israeli portfolios, with the IPO of Monday.com, a direct listing of Wise, and a

SPAC

for Kazoo, as well as merger-and-acquisition exits.

The firm is also doubling down on its presence in Europe. Veteran investor and partner Kevin Diestel has left its Silicon Valley headquarters for London, basing nearly a third of Sapphire’s enterprise-startup-focused investors in the UK.

The team will continue to ramp up investments across the continent during 2022, focusing on series B to IPO-stage startups working on business applications, fintech, and infrastructure software. Last week Sapphire announced $2 billion in new capital commitments for late-stage investments.