Sifted acquires Onstage to expand founder events business
Our portfolio company Sifted, a leading provider of subscription-based intelligence, news and events for the European startup ecosystem, has acquired events business Onstage, adding its flagship Demo Day and Deploy events to its portfolio.
Founded in 2020 by Episode 1 general partner Hector Mason and DMG Ventures partner Taos Edmonson, who were later joined by cofounder Issie James, Onstage has built a reputation as one of Europe’s leading startup Demo Days.
More than 2,000 founders apply to each cycle, with finalists pitching to a network of more than 330 VC firms, including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Balderton and LocalGlobe. Companies that have presented at Demo Day have gone on to raise more than £500m.
Onstage’s annual Deploy event also brings together leading VC firms and the LPs that back them.
The tie-up marks Sifted’s first ever acquisition, in a deal designed to complement its annual Sifted Summit conference for scaleup founders, operators and investors.
Florencia Schiavon, Sifted CEO :
“We’ve always been very deliberate about operating in the scaleup space. That’s reflected in the journalism we produce, the events we host and the business we’ve built. But the timeline from startup to scaleup is getting much shorter. It’s no longer a decade between one stage and the next. There’s a real opportunity for Sifted to support founders much earlier: to write about them, amplify them and build a stronger community around them. This acquisition perfectly fits our mission to represent European tech all the way through the startup journey.”
Read more here.