Pear VC closes its first two investments in Europe: Spathios and PillSorted

The Catalan startup Spathios, a platform for booking emblematic spaces in various cities for corporate events, and the British PillSorted, an online pharmacy that custom manages prescriptions and medications for patients in the United Kingdom, are the first two startups chosen by the American fund Pear VC to invest in innovative projects emerging in Europe.

Both operations have been carried out in just over five months; the exact time that one of Pear VC's partners, Pepe Agell, co-founder of Chartboost – now owned by Zynga – has been in Barcelona. After a preliminary exploration phase, Agell has delved into the work that brought him back to his city, Barcelona: leading Pear VC's growth strategy in Europe, by investing in projects that are internationally scalable and, specifically, in the United States.

PillSorted and Spathios are the first step of a more global project that will take shape in the coming months. To begin with, between May and June, Pepe Agell himself and the also Catalan and founder of Pear VC, Mar Hershenson, will hold meetings with entrepreneurs from Barcelona, Valencia, Paris, and London to seek candidate projects to join the second acceleration program that the American fund will launch soon.

"We want European presence in our acceleration programs; in fact, Spathios will be the first European and Catalan startup to participate in the accelerator and to become part of the Pear community," highlights Agell.

This will be the opportunity that Pear VC offers to Spathios, the project by Pol Hevia and Joaquim Tresserra which, based in Barcelona, has devised a platform for booking and hourly rental of emblematic spaces first in Barcelona, and now already in Madrid, Valencia, and London, for holding corporate events. "We think it's a great proposal," says Agell, because "the reality of companies has changed a lot since the pandemic and not only because many have less space, but also because the relationship with workers is governed by other parameters, both here and abroad." They currently manage more than 600 spaces.

For Spathios, joining the American accelerator means being in a group of five to ten incipient companies that receive from 500,000 to 750,000 euros to develop and "whom we accompany from Silicon Valley for four months to build their strategy, set up the team...". In the last phase, this transnational program "also helps them find resources with the presentation of the project in Silicon in front of 700 international investors."

Currently, Pear VC is raising four new funds in the United States "and Europe is part of our investment strategy." However, for now, it will not set up a structure in Barcelona, ​​"the office will come perhaps when we have enough projects, but for now if a small team is created for Europe it will be better to have it distributed across several cities."

With the resources it raises, the American fund is also very interested in continuing to co-finance startups in which it sees potential. This is the case of PillSorted, where it has entered as a participant with 2.5 million dollars of a seed funding round that has raised 6 million dollars and in which Hoxton Ventures has also participated.

The British startup founded in 2019, in Cambridge, by pharmacist Zeinab Ardeshir, is a response to the services provided by pharmacies in the United Kingdom by offering them technology to free them from the administrative burden of managing treatments prescribed by the public health system National Health Service – NHS, so the platform is directly connected to the British public service.

PillSorted is offered as a personalized pharmacy option and appears alongside local stores on general practitioners' computers. In addition, once the prescription is managed, the patient receives the medication at home and, if it is long-term treatments, PillSorted also monitors them and guarantees their administration.

"PillSorted leverages technology to deliver pharmacy products while creating personalized, human-centered experiences," says Agell, explaining that the round's funding will be used to develop its product and expand its services in London and the UK. It has also begun piloting the service to support healthcare workers as part of an ongoing integration with social care.