Federico Pirzio-Biroli
Founder & Chairman @ Playfair Capital
London, United Kingdom
Federico Pirzio-Biroli is a seed investor at Playfair Capital in London focused on Software and Non Profit. Fede started out as an angel investor in 2010. His portfolio quickly grew, so he built a team around him and thus Playfair Capital was born. We have since gone on to become one of Europe’s most active and well-known early-stage VC funds. Before becoming a technology investor Fede worked for several NGOs in Africa, with a particular focus on aidtransparency. He recently renewed his focus on Africa by relocating to Kenya and becoming an angel investor in East Africa’s burgeoning startup ecosystem. He maintains an active role at Playfair and continues to lead our investment team.
- Total investments:
- 11
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 0%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Federico Pirzio-Biroli invests in
Stages Federico Pirzio-Biroli invests in
Countries Federico Pirzio-Biroli invests in
Round sizes
Round size
- Seed
- $1.5M–$4.5M
- Pre-Seed
- $200k–$1M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 2 (18%)
- Non Profit 2 (18%)
- Venture Capital 2 (18%)
- Travel 1 (9%)
- Charity 1 (9%)
Stage
- Seed 5 (45%)
- Angel 3 (27%)
- Pre-Seed 2 (18%)
- Funding Round 1 (9%)
Country
- United Kingdom 6 (55%)
- Kenya 1 (9%)
- Sweden 1 (9%)
- United States 1 (9%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
Purple Elephant Ventures
|
Purple Elephant Ventures is a venture studio that aims to launch three or four start-ups per year focused on enhancing travel and tourism. Purple Elephant Ventures was founded in 2020 by Ben Peterson, Jan van De Willebois & Mikul Shah. | $4.5M / Seed / Jan 15, 2025 | |
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Purple Elephant Ventures
|
Purple Elephant Ventures is a venture studio that aims to launch three or four start-ups per year focused on enhancing travel and tourism. Purple Elephant Ventures was founded in 2020 by Ben Peterson, Jan van De Willebois & Mikul Shah. | $1M / Pre-Seed / Oct 07, 2022 | |
Bibblio
|
Bibblio helps digital publishers get the most from their content pages. Their content recommendation tools are designed to increase audience footfall, engagement and spend, directly improving site metrics and guaranteeing ROI. Bibblio's core product is an AI engine connecting millions of pieces of content based on relevance. Publishers useBibblio's tools to recirculate their content within their sites, direct users to their truly relevant promotional content and acquire new audiences by sharing traffic across their verticals. | $200K / Pre-Seed / Mar 06, 2015 | |
Brewbot
|
Brewbot is a multidisciplinary team of designers and developers based in Belfast, N. Ireland. They come from different backgrounds and experiences — music, design, code, and fine art — but they all share a common passion for brewing. | $1.5M / Seed / Oct 02, 2014 | |
CRE Venture Capital
|
Founded in 2015, CRE Venture Capital invests in early stage tech companies that are levered to Africa. CRE is headquartered in the New York metro area, with a regional office in Lagos, Nigeria. | Jan 01, 2014 | |
Trouva
|
Trouva, launched in September 2015, is the marketplace for bricks and mortar independent shops, selling unique homeware and lifestyle products from hundreds of shops and boutiques. Trouva bridges online and offline in retail to offer click and collect, 1-hour delivery, and worldwide shipping in a single seamless platform.Trouva is one of the mostexciting e-commerce start-ups in Europe, backed by amazing VC and Angel Investors whose successes include Secret Escapes, Net-A-Porter, and Farfetch (BGF Ventures, Octopus Investments, C4 Ventures, Index Ventures & LocalGlobe). | $1.5M / Seed / Dec 20, 2013 | |
WeStore
|
WeStore makes self-storage simple. They deliver boxes to your house or office. You pack them up. Then they collect them at a time that suits you. They’ll keep them safe for as long as you need. And when you want them back, they’ll drop them round the next day. All without you having to lift a finger, or a box. | Angel / Nov 18, 2013 | |
FullCircl
|
DueDil is the largest source of free private company information in the UK and Ireland.DueDil enables companies to benefit from the richest source of private company information, on a platform which runs alongside existing processes to help drive automation and enable more informed decision making. From sizing your market and on-boarding newcustomers, to automating your compliance checks on the businesses that you deal with, DueDil is the end-to-end solution companies need to transform their on-boarding process.Founded by entrepreneur Damian Kimmelman and launched in April 2011, DueDil is headquartered in London, UK. It’s backed by Passion Capital, Jonty Hurwitz, Federico Pirzio-Biroli, Sherry Coutu, and Tom Hulme.DueDil has been shortlisted for two Guardian Digital Innovation 2012 awards, was a finalist at the TechCrunch Europas, winner of the GeeknRolla startup competition, and has been featured in publications such as the Telegraph, TechCrunch, the FT, Wired, The Guardian, GigaOm and The Wall Street Journal.Along with companies such as Adobe, LinkedIn, and Thomson Reuters, DueDil was named as one of 31 companies expected to have an important impact on the information industry in 2012 by leading market research firm Outsell Inc, and the UK government's Cabinet Office transparency team has cited DueDil as a business providing innovative services using open data, in Deloitte’s ‘Open data: Driving growth, ingenuity and innovation’ report. | Angel / Aug 14, 2012 | |
Believe.in
|
Believe.in provides a white label technology that improves online fundraising, donation processing, and event performance of non-profit organizations.Available in multiple markets, languages, and currencies, Believe.in supports 2.8 million non-profit organizations globally and is easily customized and integrated into any non-profitorganization’s website and existing back-office toolkit.Believe.in was founded in May 2011 and is based in London, United Kingdom. | Angel / Apr 15, 2012 | |
axera
|
Flattr is a micropayment and micro-donation system that enables its users to financially support their favorite content creators.Users of Flattr are able to pay a small amount every month and click Flattr buttons on sites to share the money they paid among those sites.Flattr was launched by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson in March 2010. Itis based in Malmo, Sweden. | $1.7M / Seed / Feb 16, 2012 | |
| See all 11 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Playfair Capital
Playfair is a sector agnostic fund focused exclusively on pre-seed investing. Based in London, Playfair invests across the UK and Europe with an intentionally high conviction, low volume approach: making six investments a year out of its third $70m fund and preserving time, capital and resource to help companies post-investment. Our 78% Series Agraduation rate is ~3x industry average. Playfair has backed 100+ companies since 2013, including Thought Machine, Orca AI, Protex AI, StackOne and Nory.
Playfair Capital Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Andrew Sheffield
Associate
|
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Chris Smith
Managing Partner
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Clare Zhang
Analyst
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Federico Pirzio-Biroli
Founder & Chairman
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Henrik Wetter Sanchez
General Partner
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FAQ
What does Federico Pirzio-Biroli invest in?
Federico Pirzio-Biroli invests primarily in Software, Non Profit and Venture Capital startups, most often at Seed and Angel stage. Most of the 11 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United Kingdom. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is Federico Pirzio-Biroli's check size?
Federico Pirzio-Biroli typically joins rounds of $1.5M–$4.5M at Seed and $200k–$1M at Pre-Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Federico Pirzio-Biroli participates in.
When did Federico Pirzio-Biroli last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Federico Pirzio-Biroli closed in Jan 2025. Shizune tracks 11 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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