Hi friends,

Venture is entering a more intentional era.

The firms standing out today are not simply scaling assets or expanding partnerships. They are redesigning venture from first principles around alignment: between incentives and ownership, governance and speed, accountability and decision-making, conviction and organisational design.

The recent Emerge x KfW Capital report argues that operational maturity is becoming a real edge. Systems create trust. Governance enables scale. Institutional quality should be designed intentionally from day one, not layered on later.

Along similar lines, a new article by Gregory Dewerpe of noa on the “solo GP” model challenges the assumption that institutional quality requires sprawling partnerships or consensus-heavy governance. Instead, it argues for leaner, high-trust organisations where accountability is concentrated, ownership is distributed and conviction moves faster than hierarchy.

Together, these insights point to the same broader shift: venture firms themselves are being rebuilt from first principles. The firms emerging strongest today are increasingly those built around aligned systems rather than legacy structures.

We hope you enjoy this edition and, if you’re thinking through fundraising, liquidity and modern fund strategy, we’re hosting two sessions:

A live AMA with Denes Ban of RAISE on fundraising funnels, positioning and the frameworks behind successful raises, and a masterclass with Ion Pacific’s Kristaps Ronis on continuation vehicles, structured secondaries and fund-level liquidity strategies in today’s slower exit market.

with 💖
David & Andreas

Insights

Podcasts

Events

Most emerging managers do not fail because of returns. They fail because they never build the governance, systems and operational discipline required to become enduring institutions.

In How to Scale a Venture Capital Fund: Lessons on Moving from Emerging Manager to Institutional-Grade Firm, Emerge and KfW Capital share practical lessons on scaling from Fund I into an institutional-grade venture firm, combining both GP and LP perspectives on what separates enduring firms from short-lived funds.

Inside:

Most people hear “solo GP” and assume one-person firm. Gregory Dewerpe argues the opposite.

In this article, the Founder and Managing Partner of noa explains why the best solo GP firms can be flatter, faster and more accountable than traditional multi-partner firms, drawing on noa’s experience building Europe’s “largest” solo GP firm and distributing ownership, carry and decision-making across the team.

BTRY believes the future of batteries is not bigger EV packs, but ultra-thin power layers embedded invisibly into the next generation of products.

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Michael Brehm and Mohamed Foulser from Redstone alongside Moritz H. Futscher, CEO and Co-Founder of BTRY, about foldable solid-state batteries, Europe’s industrial edge and why manufacturing scalability matters more than lab breakthroughs in deep tech.

Sebastian Mallaby believes Demis Hassabis may already have changed the trajectory of European technology.

In this conversation with Andreas Munk Holm, the author of The Infinity Machine and The Power Law explores DeepMind’s early struggles, the Google acquisition, AI safety tensions inside Google and why Europe may be entering its strongest era yet in technology.

In the latest episode of This Week in European Tech, Mads Jensen and Dan Bowyer of SuperSeed break down NVIDIA’s massive cash generation, the reopening of the IPO market through OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, and Europe’s growing efforts to build sovereign AI and technology infrastructure through deals involving Mistral, EQT and Quantexa.

They also discuss the growing backlash against AI in the US, why frontier AI labs are moving into the application layer, humanoid robotics, and why Isomorphic Labs may be one of the most important AI companies being built in Europe today.