Writing Europe’s Corporate Venturing Playbook and
From climate resilience to corporate longevity - lessons from Europe’s founders, corporates, and investors redefining how innovation scales.
The EUCVC Summit returned this week in force — from Hampus Jakobsson’s “not-dumb” climate investing to Carlsberg x Future Five on resetting ESG, and a masterclass in the nuts and bolts of collaboration: bridging corporates and startups with dealflow.eu and the EIC, incubating “speedboats” with BEAM and Jungheinrich, scaling with (not over) founders at Inter IKEA × Regeneration.VC, rebooting CVCs with InMotion and Maersk Growth, and why durable networks like The Link are the real moat. Europe’s frontiers—climate, AI, energy, mobility—won’t wait; these talks are the playbook for building corporate venturing that lasts.
And we got Ventech’s Stephan Wirries on for a quick on discussing their €175M Fund VI to double down on AI, industrial software, and European sovereignty.
Also a quick hits beyond the mic: a sharp read from True on how agentic AI flips internet commerce from “capturing attention” to “serving agents,” reshaping interfaces, pricing, personalisation, and payments.
And finally, we’re crowdsourcing the community’s biggest fund-modelling headaches to inform what we build next. Please 👇
With 💖 David & Andreas
Table of Contents
🎧 Podcasts of The Week
🏢 The EUCVC Summit
EUCVC Summit 2025: Hampus, Pale Blue Dot & Andreas Munk Holm, EUVC: Climate Tech in a Trump Era
EUCVC Summit 2025: Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, Carlsberg & Kasper Hulthin, Future Five: Resetting ESG: Beyond Compliance to Real ChangeEUCVC Summit 2025: Thijs Povel, dealflow.eu & Ekke Van Vliet, EIC: Bridging Corporates and Startups in Europe
EUCVC Summit 2025: Jesper Bang Olsen, BEAM & Kerk Wichmann, Jungheinrich: Incubating startups
✍️ Insight Articles of The Week
Attention was all you need: the changes ahead in internet commerce by Joe Seager-Dupuy
🎧 Podcasts of The Week
Stephan Wirries on Ventech’s on Fund VI: €175M for AI, Industrial Software & Europe’s Sovereignty
Today, we dive into the announcement of Ventech’s Fund VI, which has closed at €175M — the firm’s largest fund yet, with an impressive 95% LP re-up rate. To unpack it all, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Stephan Wirries, General Partner at Ventech.
From AI and industrial software to European sovereignty and late-stage capital markets, Stephan shares how Ventech is positioning itself for the next decade — and why Europe still has structural gaps to fix if it wants to scale globally.
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify — or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
What’s the hardest part of fund modelling for you — assumptions, follow-ons, liquidity, or something else? Tell us in 3 minutes.
🏢 EUVC Summit: Europe’s Innovation Frontiers
If corporates treat CVC as a three-year experiment, Europe will miss the moment. These bets demand 10–20 year commitments. They require C-suites to see CVC not as optional R&D spend, but as a strategic lens on existential challenges.
Beyond governance and fund structures, the real test of whether European CVC is working lies in what we choose to invest in.
Climate resilience. Energy transition. Digital health. AI. Food security. Mobility. Defense. These aren’t just venture themes — they are strategic imperatives for Europe’s competitiveness.
Done right, corporate venturing embeds innovation into strategy and culture — positioning corporates at the heart of solving Europe’s biggest problems, while ensuring the continent doesn’t become a follower in AI, energy, and mobility.
At the EUVC Corporate Venturing Summit, leaders mapped out how CVC can drive Europe’s frontier industries.
Climate Tech in a Trump Era – Hampus Jakobsson (Pale Blue Dot)
Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner at Pale Blue Dot, spoke about building climate tech in a geopolitical moment defined by uncertainty — from U.S. policy shifts to rising populism in Europe.
Lesson: Climate innovation is not optional, it’s survival. It’s not good will, it’s good business. Hampus argued that corporates must stop waiting for policy clarity and instead lead with long-term conviction. Climate bets are by nature political, slow to monetize, and globally competitive — meaning corporates must brace for volatility while staying committed.
Why it matters: If Europe hesitates, we lose entire industries to the U.S. and China. From batteries to carbon markets, leadership will not be handed to Europe by default. Corporate venture is one of the few tools to scale capital into frontier climate bets fast enough to matter.
Resetting ESG: Beyond Compliance – Simon Boas Hoffmeyer (Carlsberg) & Kasper Hulthin (Future Five)
Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, Senior Director of Sustainability at Carlsberg Group, and Kasper Hulthin, serial founder and now climate investor at Future Five, challenged Europe’s corporates to stop treating ESG as a checkbox.
Lesson: The ESG game is shifting from compliance to competitiveness. Simon stressed that metrics and reporting are necessary, but insufficient. Kasper argued corporates must now embed ESG into their growth strategies, turning sustainability into a source of value creation rather than cost control.
Why it matters: Founders and investors no longer take ESG theatre seriously. The capital and talent will flow to corporates that use ESG as a lens for innovation — not as a PR shield. Europe, with its regulatory weight, has the chance to turn ESG from bureaucracy into a competitive weapon.
Bridging the Corporate–Startup Divide – Thijs Povel (dealflow.eu) & Ekke Van Vliet (EIC)
Thijs Povel, through dealflow.eu, helps corporates and startups find each other. Ekke Van Vliet works at the European Innovation Council, where public funding meets scale-ups.
Lesson: Collaboration requires clarity, budgets, and accountability. Too many corporates invite startups in without knowing who owns the project, what budget is attached, or how success will be measured. Thijs called this “innovation tourism” and warned it burns founders’ runway. Ekke added that clarity from day one is the only way to maintain trust.
Why it matters: Europe risks losing its best founders to U.S. and Asian capital. If startups spend their runway chasing corporates that never commit, they’ll look abroad — and Europe loses not just startups, but industrial sovereignty.
Incubating Startups – Jesper Bang Olsen (BEAM) & Kerk Wichmann (Jungheinrich)
Jesper Bang Olsen from BEAM and Kerk Wichmann from Jungheinrich were clear: most corporate incubators end up as innovation theatre.
Lesson: True company building demands independence. Inside the mothership, ventures suffocate under governance, KPIs, and risk-averse cultures. Kerk explained why Jungheinrich spun ventures out as separate “speedboats,” free to test, fail, and pivot without constant approvals. Jesper added that corporates must be willing to accept fast failures as part of the process — otherwise, the learning never comes.
Why it matters: Many company builders are PR plays. Corporates love to showcase “innovation labs,” but unless ventures are designed to scale independently, they die in pilots. Europe can’t afford more vanity projects; we need corporate-backed startups that survive outside the glass box.
The Love Triangle: Founders × (C)VC Dynamics – Linn Clabburn (Inter IKEA) & Destana Herring (Regeneration.VC)
Linn Clabburn from Inter IKEA Group and Destana Herring from Regeneration.VC, laid bare the messy love triangle between founders, corporates, and CVCs.
Lesson: The founder–CVC–corporate triangle only works when incentives are aligned. Founders want autonomy, corporates want control, and CVCs are stuck in the middle. Linn stressed the need for radical transparency: everyone should state what they’re here for — returns, visibility, or speed. Destana added that CVCs have to play honest broker, giving corporates comfort while protecting founders’ freedom.
Why it matters: Misalignment breeds mistrust. Too often corporates promise “strategic value-add” they can’t deliver, while founders feel trapped. The winners will be CVCs that manage this messy triangle with transparency and trust.
Rebooting a CVC – Mike Smeed (InMotion Ventures) & Ida Christine Brun (Maersk Growth)
Mike Smeed of InMotion Ventures (Jaguar Land Rover) and Ida Christine Brun of Maersk Growth have both steered CVCs through strategy resets.
Lesson: Rebooting a CVC takes brutal honesty and fresh alignment. Mike shared how InMotion pivoted from futuristic bets back to nearer-core investments when JLR shifted strategy. Ida explained how Maersk Growth constantly re-validates its mandate against Maersk’s broader transformation. Both stressed that transparency with founders and internal stakeholders is critical to surviving a reboot.
Why it matters: A messy reboot can destroy years of goodwill. Founders and VCs already mistrust corporates. If a CVC changes direction without clarity, portfolio founders feel abandoned and ecosystems lose faith. Handle the reboot openly and you can save credibility; mishandle it and you’re done.
Building Corporate VC Networks – Mette Hoberg (The Link) & Jeppe Høier (EUVC Corporate Co-host, Investor & Board Member)
Mette Hoberg Tønnesen from The Link and our EUVC Corporate Co-host Jeppe Høier closed by emphasizing the power of networks.
Lesson: No CVC survives in isolation. Mette showed how corporates need peer networks to share learnings, co-invest, and align on standards. Jeppe added that strong external ties make it politically harder for a corporate to shut a unit down: when you’re a trusted partner in an ecosystem, your existence has value beyond the parent company.
Why it matters: Ecosystem credibility is survival fuel. Startups already doubt corporates’ staying power. Add a reputation for instability, and founders will never pick you over a top-tier VC. Building networks signals seriousness — and makes it costly for a new CEO to casually pull the plug.
Where operational expertise and innovation work for you.
✍️ Insights of the week
Attention was all you need: the changes ahead in internet commerce
Like most investors, we at True are obviously excited by the direct applications of AI.
We have made several investments in the space already including Jitty (AI to find your dream home), SeeChange (AI to prevent theft in retail stores) and Eyva (AI-driven insights for product portfolios), to name a few. And we’ll keep looking for more.
But alongside direct applications, we are just as interested in the second- and third-order consequences of increased adoption of AI amongst consumers.
We hear a lot about how AI is threatening incumbents. Reference sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp are grappling with traffic erosion from ‘zero click searches’, where content is summarised into AI answers without a monetisable click-through to underlying websites. Dominant players in travel are racing to combat disintermediation risk posed by agents that promise direct bookings. Even Google Search - arguably one of the greatest monopolies of all time - is under threat from Open AI, Perplexity and other challengers.
A theme we’re thinking through is how transaction flows on the Internet will change in an era where AI agents - rather than human users - are taking on responsibility for large portions of the online purchasing journey. We’ve written before that agentic commerce needs to solve some fundamental challenges before it truly takes off - and even then, won’t be suited to all circumstances. But it seems inevitable that everyday consumers will soon be accompanied by agentic AI handling at least some portion of their online shopping.
Attention was all you need
Agentic commerce changes things dramatically because the organising principle of Internet commerce for the past two decades has been the scarcity of human attention.
As tech penetrates more and more of our daily lives, online services are locked in an intense battle for attention and engagement. Accordingly, Internet commerce has been shaped for humans’ finite attention spans. Websites and apps are designed to capture interest quickly, nudge purchasing decisions through slick UX, visual merchandising and behavioural cues, and optimise conversion whilst driving maximum value from each interaction. Every step is carefully curated for a world with humans low on attention and patience.
But the paradigm is shifting with agentic commerce.
When the robots take over
To state the obvious: software is very different to humans.
It has dramatically higher capacity for sustained attention and dramatically lower search costs. While most human users in most situations are looking for the path of least resistance, often using heuristics and gut feel to make decisions, software can ruthlessly, surgically and tirelessly pursue the ‘optimal’ route given a set of defined parameters.
No longer is mastery (and manipulation) of human behaviour the key to success for Internet commerce - in fact, it might soon become irrelevant in a world where attention is no longer scarce.
We see this impacting a few different areas of today’s transactional experience on the Internet:
Interfaces: Rich interfaces with thoughtful visual merchandising help humans navigate complex websites quickly, using the inherent information density of images (vs. words) to steer attention and trigger emotional responses. That will need to evolve. Even if the end-state sees agents navigating graphical user interfaces like humans (vs. plugging in directly an API or MCP server), they will be more single-minded in their efforts to solve a defined problem and therefore less susceptible to eye-catching merchandising seeking to distract. Best-in-class design will look very different.
Personalisation: An everpresent buzzword, today’s ‘personalisation’ software often relies on inferring needs and wants rather than expecting a user to explicitly lay them out. Proxies for intent come from the source of traffic (e.g. a particular ad creative), behaviour patterns in website navigation, first/third party data, and so on. By contrast, AI agents equipped with the relevant user context for a defined task could make personalisation much more simple with less guesswork - a straightforward exchange between the agents and the website, like a two-way personal shopping experience. “I’ll have your team speak to my team,” and all that. Check out Fabric, who are building part of the data stack to make that a reality.
Product Information: Most product display pages feature thoughtfully curated emotive imagery and well-crafted copy designed for emotional human users. But agents will be more sceptical and rigorous. Expect to see deeper information and more objectivity. For example, consider performance nutrition: agents will disregard subjective marketing terms like “natural”, “wholesome” and “healthy” alongside images of models with six-packs. Instead, we’ll trend towards new objective product claims. Forward-thinking brands are already pushing in that direction, like David’s Calories from Protein (“CFP”) score.
Pricing: Price discrimination across different channels is an age-old tactic to optimise margin whilst capturing as much demand as possible. Historically, this has been possible because the friction and marginal search cost to find the best deal is too much for most human users. But an AI agent acting on my behalf can scan every corner of the Internet to find the cheapest way of purchasing a given item. Pricing structures could go either way depending on category: simplicity and consistency across all channels at one end, or individualised through AI driven negotiation bots like Nibble at the other.
Upsell: If your order-level unit economics rely heavily on impulse upsell in the checkout flow, it may be time to rethink. I think and hope endless upsell screens will die, and I certainly won’t miss clicking through offers for at-seat food, car rental, public transport tickets, travel insurance, and so on when trying to buy a flight ticket. These unsolicited offers won’t survive the agentic UX paradigm - no consumer will want to be badgered with follow-up asks from their AI agent. Tactics designed for emotional and impulsive human users simply won’t make sense anymore.
Payments: No merchant wants to fall at the final hurdle. The need to offer consumers a fast and low-friction method to pay has led to an ever-expanding universe of payment options: credit card, debit card, Apple/Google Pay, buy-now-pay-later, one-click, ‘Pay by Bank’, and so on. Speed is key to avoid losing the human’s attention and losing the conversion. But if an agent can and will be more patient, they may start optimising for different things beyond speed alone. Expect smarter digital wallets with loyalty/offer optimisation, value sharing with merchants, group purchasing, etc. - an era of consumer-facing payments orchestration might be starting (check out Google’s AP2 announcement for some initial thoughts on how payments are evolving for agentic commerce).
There is no doubt that many more areas will change fundamentally once human attention (or lack thereof) is no longer the organising principle of Internet commerce. That’s what makes it such an exciting time to be building and investing for the new reality.
We are excited to back founders reimagining how it all works, so if you have a vision for how interfaces, purchasing journeys and transactions evolve in the era of AI, please get in touch here.
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