Welcome back to the EUVC Podcast, where we bring you the people and perspectives shaping European venture.
In this pitch episode, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Pedro Ribeiro Santos, Partner at Armilar, to walk LPs through the story, strategy, and succession plan behind Armilar Fund IV — the firm’s new pan-European early-stage fund.
Armilar is one of Europe’s longest-standing independent tech VCs and Portugal’s original venture franchise. Founded 25 years ago inside a bank, spun out nearly a decade ago, and now built as a multi-generational partnership, the firm has backed some of Portugal’s most important tech companies and, crucially for LPs, has quietly built a track record of fund-returners (“dragons”), not just mark-to-market unicorns.
Fund IV doubles down on what Armilar knows best: early-stage, tech-intensive companies across data, digitalisation, and connectivity with 40–50% of the fund in Portugal & Spain, and selective investments across the rest of Europe.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered:
01:17 | What is “Armilar”?
02:30 | Origins & Spinout: from bank VC to independent GP
03:40 | Portugal with no ecosystem: building conviction before it was fashionable
04:50 | From US to Europe, then back home: learning cycles and timing
07:22 | Fund IV in a nutshell: stage, cheque size logic, what they lead
09:44 | Geography & LP backbone: why Iberia + pan-Europe works now
11:41 | Track record, DPI & dragons: realized outcomes over PR outcomes
13:51 | Portfolio & staying power: board-level involvement + follow-through
16:19 | Team & succession: designing a GP to outlive the founders
21:38 | Iberia today: Portugal + Spain converging into one innovation region
27:45 | Golden Visa & LP angle: what’s real, what’s marketing
29:29 | What LPs should underwrite and what to ignore
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — chapters included.
✍️ Show Notes
The LP frame: why Armilar, why now, why Fund IV
Most pitch episodes default to “here’s what we do.” This one is more interesting because it answers the questions LPs actually underwrite:
1) Is this a real franchise or a one-fund story?
Armilar has been investing for 25 years, and the partnership has been explicitly rebuilt to operate as a durable institution, not a founder-only shop.
2) Is the return story real (DPI), not just marks?
Armilar’s emphasis is on realized outcomes and dragons, not headline unicorn valuations.
3) Is there a coherent edge that persists across cycles?
Their edge is: technical evaluation + early-stage leadership + Iberian sourcing density + long-term founder trust + European co-investor network.
Fund IV is positioned as a continuation bet on a playbook that’s already been proven — not a reinvention fund.
Armilar in one glance
What they do
Stage: early stage, primarily Series A (with flexibility around it)
Thesis: tech-intensive, data- and digitalisation-led companies — data, digitisation, connectivity, with overlap into AI, cybersecurity, and hard tech with strong software layers
Style: generalist across verticals, but with a strongly technical team bias (engineering/science backgrounds)
Where they invest
Pan-European with a deliberate Iberian center of gravity
40–50% of Fund IV expected in Portugal & Spain
Opportunistic US historically, but current posture is Europe-first sourcing
Fund IV status
First close: €120m+
Already executing: first three deals signed (1x Iberia, 2x rest of Europe)
Target: aims to roughly double AUM over the next year-ish, acknowledging a tough fundraising climate
Track record: dragons over unicorns
Armilar’s return story is deliberately framed around cash returned, not press.
Realized pool (good and bad included):
~€178m invested → ~€433m returned
Active portfolio marks:
currently around ~3.3x cost (with the historical note that exits often land above book)
Mature fund TVPI:
around ~3x on mature vintages (with upside still to be realized)
Examples that matter to LPs
SafetyPay — a fund-returner without needing a $1B headline
OutSystems & Feedzai — backed extremely early; later raised mega-rounds from top global growth investors; Armilar stayed close (board-level) through the scale phase at founder request
The philosophy:
Unicorns are for show. Dragons are for DPI.
Fund IV strategy: more of what already works
Fund IV is a tightening of the core engine:
Stage focus
Primarily Series A / equivalent — where:
there is a product
early revenue signals exist
a structured lead investor can shape the round and governance
Sector focus
Broad “digital & data” umbrella:
data
digitisation
connectivity
…with strong overlap into AI, cybersecurity, and industrial software.
Geographic logic
Armilar’s strongest edge is Iberia density + European access:
Portugal & Spain are the “home hubs” where the firm has brand, sourcing, and trust
Rest of Europe is accessed through long-term VC/angel relationships
LP base & structure
EIF and SETT as cornerstones
Private LPs aligned with long-duration early-stage exposure
This matters because the firm isn’t building Fund IV on “tourist capital” — it’s building it on repeatable institutional support.
Succession: a GP designed to outlive the founders
This is where the episode is unusually explicit.
Armilar treats succession as a product — not a hope.
senior founders still present (experience + memory)
operating core carried by the next generation
a bench behind them with clear progression pathways
Why this matters for LPs:
VC is a 15+ year craft. You don’t know if a partnership truly works until you’ve run a full fund cycle — from first cheque to final distributions. Armilar is building governance and ownership to make continuity investible.
Iberia today: one innovation region
Pedro’s view is that Portugal and Spain have converged:
cross-border capital flows are normal
founders know the whole Iberian stack
deal-sharing across Lisbon/Porto/Madrid/Barcelona is increasingly fluid
Portugal’s ecosystem has matured through repetition:
early failures → second-time founders → scaled companies → emerging “mafias” (still waiting for the IPO moment that fully validates employee equity culture at scale).
Spain historically had more domestic capital and local-market focus — now trending toward more globally ambitious, product-led ventures.
Golden Visa: helpful for some, not the thesis
This section is now framed correctly for LPs:
yes, some investors use fund investments as part of residency pathways
Armilar wasn’t built for that scheme, but welcomes suitable investors
the operational bottleneck is bureaucracy — delays are outside the GP’s control
LP takeaway:
If you invest, do it for strategy + team + track record. Treat the visa angle as a possible side benefit, not the underwriting case.
💡 One-Liner Takeaway
Armilar Fund IV is a continuation bet: a deeply technical, 25-year European VC franchise doubling down on early-stage fund-returners from an Iberian base — with a succession plan designed to keep performance alive across generations.
