Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder VC – a fund operating within the Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder group, managing funds from the PFR Starter program – was actively investing between 2019-2023. During this period, it invested in 14 startups operating in areas such as mental health, AI, enterprise management, and live commerce. So far, it has exited two of them: the psychotherapy and personal development platform Wellbee, of which it was a co-founder, and Primetric, a company developing a tool for managing employee workload and financial performance planning.
The funds obtained from these investment exits will allow Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder VC to return the contributions to investors – PFR Ventures and Bielowicki Family Foundation – already within a year after the end of the investment period.
“We managed to return the invested funds at a record pace, and this is just the beginning of exits from our investments. The fund has a dozen more companies in its portfolio and another 3-5 years to plan final profits for investors. We are aiming for returns on the entire fund of several times the invested amounts. We still have companies in the portfolio that are leaders in their industries in Europe, such as Selmo.io operating in the live commerce industry, or a project solving one of the biggest challenges in the AI industry, which are computational resources, as well as several other entities that still have time to build value,” says Radosław Czyrko, Managing Partner of Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder VC.
Both previous exits were realized through the sale of shares to industry investors with a strong market position. Wellbee was acquired by Benefit Systems, a leader in the employee benefits market, and Primetric was taken under the wing of BigTime – a leading American provider of professional services automation software.
“The Polish venture capital market very much needs communication about investment exits by VC funds. Data on returns generated for investors will significantly translate into the interest of subsequent individuals in this prospective, albeit risky, asset class. In 2024, there were about 20 media announcements about local exits. A small part of them was described in a transparent way. I am glad that Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder was able to stand out in this regard, sharing the information on a tenfold return when selling its shares in Wellbee to the listed Benefit Systems. Thus, funds supplemented with funds from POIR are entering the stage of generating profits for their investors,” comments Maciej Ćwikiewicz, CEO of PFR Ventures.
In September, Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder launched a new VC fund, which was one of the first to acquire management funds from the new Starter 2.0 program. The fund team wants to invest the raised capital in about 30 new projects.
“We are focusing on breakthrough technologies in the areas of AI, CleanTech, EdTech, MedTech, and Cybersecurity, especially in SaaS and marketplace models that have the potential to redefine entire economic sectors. While most funds wait for mature projects, we have adopted a more strategic approach and work with teams already at the conceptual stage. This allows us to jointly shape businesses that fill market gaps and create entirely new business categories,” says Arkadiusz Seńko, the second managing partner of Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder VC.
The managers plan to increase the current capitalization of the new fund with additional contributions from private investors, ultimately reaching a level of 100 million PLN.Founders interested in obtaining financing and cooperation can send pitch decks to the address contact@thcpathfinder.com.