Our Background

We are peers amongst entrepreneurs helping the brave to build game-changing companies. We walked in your shoes for over two decades and have built two of Europe’s largest software companies in the first internet wave. Both started in the late 90s and were venture backed:

  • eCircle turned out to be a European category leader in digital marketing execution and was acquired by Teradata in 2012 for $250m at $50m ARR, raising €20m from European VCs 1999-2000 and a €60m secondary with TA Associates in 2010 along the way. Alex and Thomas stayed on for 3.5 years post acquisition and grew the business further to $250m ARR.
  • Hybris managed to become a global category leader in digital commerce software and was acquired by SAP in 2013 for $1.4b at $140m revenue, Europe’s 1st SaaS unicorn. The company had raised $35m along the way. Moritz stayed with SAP post exit for another 7 years, growing the business to north of $1b ARR in 2020.

But becoming corporate tools was not our gig and so we started fresh as small VC partnership with a clear focus:

  • B2B software - What we believe we understand best based on our own entrepreneurial journey
  • Seed - First money in / Last money out - Believe in long-term value creation. Both our companies only turned a success after year 8 along the journey
  • Europe - Always believed in European talent being able to build global category leaders

A more detailed investment thesis can be found here.

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Our Approach to Support

We try to be the best go-to-fund for raising a seed round as a B2B software company in Europe. By narrowly focusing on seed stage and B2B software, we believe we can best leverage the deep expertise from our entrepreneurial past. We provide support in the following areas:

  • Help find product-market-fit, create market-winning category dynamics, and build a cost-efficient go-to- market motion for aggressive scaling. We have done it twice in the past ourselves and many times since with the portfolio companies we’ve mentored.
  • Help build a stellar team on C- and VP-level. In our 20+ years as operators, we’ve hired and built trusted relationships with over 20.000 people in B2B software for all types of roles across Europe, the US and APAC.
  • Mentor entrepreneurs as like-minded peers. From our own experience as founders, we know the importance of having a sparring-partner to discuss all the challenges and sleepless nights a start-up brings along with. Someone with first-hand experience who doesn’t just view a company “as a spreadsheet” like many investors.
  • Offer a network of portfolio companies with the same challenges to share experiences and best practices
  • Help finding the right follow-on investor for a Series A+. Our conversion rate is close to 100% and for every €1 we invested, €10+ have followed from Accel, Northzone, Atomico, Spark, Balderton, Lightspeed, …

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Our Approach to Interaction

We don’t call ourselves “smart money”, but rather “not annoying capital” in the first place. We received lots of unsolicited free advice from investors in our entrepreneurial past and are hence very mindful of your time and wishes. Interacting with us is best described as follows:

  • Ad-hoc – We don’t like regular check-in calls (waste of time) and much more prefer to work in a workshop format on topics that are needed at any given point of time.
  • Pull – You know best when you need help. So, you decide when it’s best to interact and how to interact.
  • Agility – We expect you to be agile. And we are the same.
  • Simplicity – We hate unnecessary complexity and seek simple solutions.
  • Clarity – We openly and clearly articulate our opinion. But in the end, you decide the course of action.
  • Endurance – Building a meaningful company takes time and there will be many stumbling blocks on that journey. We don’t panic and have the patience and endurance to support you on this journey.

This is our “Point-of-View” on how we operate as a venture capital partnership. But it’s up to the entrepreneurs of our portfolio companies to judge how well we live up to this view. Feel free to speak to them!