In this episode of the EUVC podcast, Andreas sits down with Mike Reiner and Joachim Laqueur, General Partners at 432 Legacy, the successor to Acrobator Ventures.
Mike and Joachim are investors with deep expertise in scaling B2B software and software-enabled hardware startups across Europe and the US. With a fund size of around €50M and €28M in assets under management, 432 Legacy is focused on seed-stage investments but supports founders up to Series A, fostering innovation on a global scale.
In this episode, we’ll explore the vision behind 432 Legacy, including how their journey with Acrobator laid the groundwork for the fund’s mission. We’ll discuss their approach to identifying high-impact startups and the strategies they’ve employed to achieve standout successes like Lemonaid Health, Vital Fields, and Ready Player Me, among others.
Watch it here or add it to your episodes on Apple or Spotify 🎧 chapters for easy navigation available on the Spotify/Apple episode.
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✍️ Show notes
Personal development
Mike: SFor me there have been several events in life that planted very strong seeds such as a room mate that had a Tibetan Buddhist teacher Rimpoche and who taught me meditation. The real turning points and best teachers are often difficult life events, and for me it was the death of my mother shortly after a break up of a 7 year relationship.
It was a period where I buried myself in work and for a couple of years was close to a burn out.
Anxiousness: I remember waking up in the morning saying fuck because my first thought was around to do’s for that day. There was a lot of stress in the system and I was chasing quantity not quality. It was always about doing more, a lot of multi tasking —> instead of deep focus
Numbness: put my emotions away and they came out way later. Like grief. Way to much in my head.
Got deeply into coaching > a lot of retreats ranging from meditation to holistic coaching > deep journey to get more into the body and heart (not be a walking head).
Realized, wounds from my parents divorce when I was 9 and a long period of no contact with my father. —> Coping mechanisms
Essentially a deep journey to feel more and more connected with myself and everything and everyone else.
The work with coaches and going to retreats best thing I have done in my life. > feel more productive, more grateful and more in the heart than ever in my life. Now, we just want to bring some of this work to founders.
Joachim: It’s about continuously learning who I am and what the patterns are that shape my actions and interactions. For a long time, I was incompetent and unaware.
Awareness came around the time of my divorce (cliché, I know). A deepdive retreat led by Rupda, the coach we partnered with for the Austria retreat, was the start of feeling competence.
The unspoken effects of arduous founder journeys, being screwed over by business partners, and a general sense of insecurity shaped me.
A vicious circle of self-doubt, inability to accept complements and lack of self-love was broken within the period of a 4-day retreat. It was so powerful. As a result, I found myself again.
Although still divorced, the relationship with my ex is strong and kind. She even brainstorms with us on topics like company culture.
On the business side, I have surrounded myself with people I connect to on multiple levels—no ego but compassion and inspiration. Continuously learning makes me a better person, leader and investor. I wish this for all the people we work with.
Mike: Personal approach is really important to founders. That they can relate, that you can help them with advice, that they can call you in the evening if they happen to struggle. Its a tough journey.
We worked with various coaches in the current fund to primarily try out what works best for us. Like trying to involve coaches in the pre deal phase for founder assessments, for 1on1 coaching with different styles and also group coaching.
Austria retreat was a way to bring one of our favourite coaches Rupda to more founders and investors. We feel passionate about this and want to do this even more next year.
Data and AI in venture capital
Joachim: We want to remove bias as much as possible and identify startups with hockey-stick growth while avoiding hyped valuations. To achieve this we start with data-driven sourcing, ranking and shortlisting. Later, after investment, we use data to support our follow-on decisions and exit-timing.
Of course AI is a big part of our approach, but we like to stay away from meaningless buzz words.
Mike: there have been various AI hype cycles. Back in 2014 when I was investing pre-seed all the sudden a lot of decks just had “AI” all over them. It started getting hot. Back in the days I started AI community City AI where we ended up in 80 cities and also the conference World Summit AI to just get better access to interesting AI dealflow and talent. Already back in the days we were joking how long it would take for AI to become better in picking deals than humans.
Ironically even today VC’s are discussing IF this will happen. I think at this stage, it's very clear that it's not IF but only WHEN.
Very tough to build something significant yourself. Takes a lot of time and resources. And early stage funds are not in the position to have large data science teams. Only later stage funds typically. Also, there is a lot of noise and marketing talk.
How we found our system - Quannix: A lot around serendipity
Back in 2019 when I was at an early Series A fund called OpenOcean we experimented with data driven dealflow ranking and I played around together with a data scientist to build some simple scoring. It was fun but really ended up being a nice to have and not very useable.
We also did some research about the best AI VC systems out there. I talked to various people like the CTO of Signalfire or EQT motherbrain etc. One of the systems we really liked back in the days was owned by a big fund called WR Hambrecht - it seemed the only system that had a truly comprehensive market view.
It was also around 2018 that I met Sarah Fisher, a Johnson & Johnson executive who only years later introduced us to Thomas, who was the owner of the system called Quannix behind WR Hambrecht.
(sarah - thomas work together for years)
Several years of building a relationship, aligning values led eventually this year to the decision to do the next fund together.
Funny to connect the dot looking backwards.
Joachim: So what is Quannix….
Quannix is akin to what the leading quant hedge funds use for public markets, but then for the opaque private markets. It’s proprietary, developed, tried and tested over almost 20 years with excellent results.
We employ a hybrid approach combines AI-driven precision with human insight, ensuring investments align with data-driven opportunities and traditional business fundamentals.
Generating lists of companies isn’t challenging, as demonstrated by the myriad of services available. Relevance is. If they rank companies at all, the signals they use are an algorithm of the usual suspects: LinkedIn dynamics, GitHub, mentions, socials, etc. There is very little if any, real intelligence and even less so correlation. We tried to work with one of the popular ones to improve their similarity search. It was frustrating.
With Quannix, we can see and value virtually any private company in the world in real-time. When we say a market is growing (in value) or not, we do this based on the sum of all companies within (public and private) in real-time and looking back on a quarterly basis.
Our signals have an 80-85% correlation. These signals are processed via a cascade of over 1000 models which are continuously trained on over 30.000 listed companies and data-feedback loops we receive from Fortune 500 clients.
This allows us to:
identify the top-performing startups globally within the target scope and valuation range
assess the disruptive potential of each startup's business model or technology relative to industry incumbents and rivals
additional risk assessment, analyzing various performance-related counter-variables to identify potential challenges or red flags
The future of the company
Mike: In a future where AI is going to be increasingly better at picking startups than any human can, the personal approach is going to be more important than ever.
Thats why we plan to fully double down on personal development on the one hand:
And a data driven investing on the other hand: What we just explain about Quannix.
Coaching for us: 1) Involving coaches in the pre deal phase, 2) Founder coaching post investment where the founder can choose what coach and 3) Portfolio group session: Mastermind format. Share vulnerably.
Joachim: We, and the rest of our team, don’t see another way to build a sustainable long-term vision other than combining two seemingly opposite elements:
We bring together two seemingly opposite worlds: the objective and the subjective.
The world of truths—data, AI, and objective analysis—and the world of human potential, where growth is guided by introspection, connection, and authentic transformation.
While data reveals patterns and insights, personal development unlocks purpose, resilience, and the ability to lead with intention.
Fight the worst enemies of sustainable value creation:
A lack of self-knowledge, connection, and empathy is the seed of toxic cultures, short-sighted pursuits of wealth, and the foregoing of responsibility.
Bias and a (severely) limited market view are two of the worst enemies of sound investment decisions.
What connects and leads us here (Mike, Sarah, Joachim, Thomas, and Ramon) is our desire to find solutions for and marry these worlds.
With this partnership, we employ tried-and-tested ingredients in personal development and data-guided early stage investing to build something special for LPs and founders.
The need for rebranding
Joachim:
When we started the Acrobator fund, the name actually came from the growth marketing boutique of Bas. His success as an angel investor and reputation as a digital marketing expert made it a logical name for a fund focused on the very founders he invested in before and support them with growth hacking.
If we look at how Acrobator’s thesis sharpened even before its first close, we see the underlying strategy is to find opportunities that generate disproportionate alpha. In Acrobator, this is achieved through what we call Eastern Diaspora founders and data-heavy startups.
Looking ahead, the capabilities we have, the pillars of personal journeys and data-guided investments and the role we want to play, we felt we needed an umbrella brand to connect it all.
Acrobator is narrow and clear for a specific ICP, but 432 Legacy is the future under which everything comes together.
Mike:
The new name we chose that reflects our values long term: 432 Legacy
Meaning behind 432 and Legacy
Does this mean there won’t be an Acrobator II?
Mike:
On the contrary: The arbitrage strategy of Acrobator I works. We did it then by focusing on the eastern diaspora founders initially overlooked by Western VCs. Within that community, we focus on enabling technologies and data-heavy companies. Essentially selling the shovels to the gold seekers. Mid-layer B2B plays.
We have a very strong network there, which we’ll continue to leverage
Just gradually transition to more outbound driven sourcing strateg
Joachim:
We continue to pursue arbitrage, whether because of certain geo, technological development, or change in regulation or a combination of them.
We’re currently shaping the themes for a potential 2025 fund.
What excites you about going into 2025?
Joachim: bring the data capabilities / matching strategy LP/Founder…
Mike: I’m excited about the opportunity we have with this unique system Quannix to execute a highly effective and high quality sourcing strategy. I’m excited about the highly personalized conversations we can have with family offices, especially those going through a generational change.
And what I love personally of. course is that we double down to help founders with their personal development journeys and even bring this kind of work to the wider ecosystem via our collaboration - doing the retreats for founders and investors. Its an excellent way for people to experience the power of an amazing coach first hand.
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