First Monday: The SEON & PortfoLion Story
We’re starting the year with a banger! On January 13th we will host an exclusive fireside chat with the co-founders of SEON, Tamás Kádár and Bence Jendruszák, moderated by Mark Pálfalvi from PortfoLion, their seed investors.
Over the past few years, SEON has become one of Hungary’s most celebrated B2B SaaS startups and a global leader in fraud detection.
Bence and Tomi started SEON back in 2017 fresh out of university in response to the continuously increasing and relentless fraud attempts they experienced with the crypto platform they were building at the time. After researching the market, and looking for a solution that could help them, they realized that they could build a much better alternative to what was available on the market.
Fast forward to today, SEON has stopped over $200 billion in fraud-related losses and actively supports over 5,000 businesses worldwide. With a robust team of 250+ dedicated fraud fighters, the company boasts a world-class engineering and R&D hub in Budapest, dynamic commercial go-to-market teams in London and Austin, and an expanding presence in the APAC region, catering to a global clientele.
SEON had a remarkable fundraising journey so far. They raised a seed round from Portfolion in 2018, then raised a Series A led by Creandum, and in 2022 they raised the largest Hungarian Series B round ($94M) led by IVP with the participation of more than a dozen industry-leading angels, and, of course, PortfoLion who - thanks to their multi-stage investment strategy - were able to back the company in every round since the seed stage.
During the fireside chat, you will hear updates about the company’s progress, goals, and lessons learned directly from the founders who both moved to Austin to support the US expansion.
The discussion will be moderated by Portfolion's Mark Palfalvi, who can provide a unique inside investor perspective on SEON's remarkable journey since their initial investment.
During these years PortfoLion has also emerged as one of the leading regional Pre-Seed/Seed VC funds. Besides SEON they led the seed rounds of companies like Novakid and FLOWX.AI that both raised $40M+ from investors like GoodWater, Owl Ventures, and Dawn Capital. Also, PortfoLion has some of the most meaningful Hungarian exits under its belt including BanzaiCloud (acquired by Cisco), Tresorit (acquired by SwissPost), Szallas Group (acquired by Wirtualna Polska) or Starschema (acquired by HCLTech). PortfoLion is actively investing out of its 2nd and 3rd generation funds from EUR 500 thousand up to EUR 3 million with its Pre-Seed/Seed-stage focused VC fund, and EUR 3 million up to EUR 30 million with its Growth fund.
Schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:30 PM - Registration
6:30 PM - 6:45 PM - Introduction
6:45 PM - 7:45 PM - Fireside chat with SEON & PortfoLion
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM - Q&A
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM - Drinks, Mingling & Networking