It could seem the setting and society stay related, no matter you would possibly hear in another quarters. A minimum of, that’s one conclusion to be drawn from the information that European specialist VC Revent has closed a €100 million ($109 million) Fund II to put money into “planetary and societal well being” startups.
Launched out of Berlin in 2021 by Otto Birnbaum and Lauren Lentz, Revent’s thesis was (and stays) that essentially the most formidable entrepreneurs wish to construct firms that drive societal progress, and this would possibly, subsequently, develop into extremely invaluable. Excessive-minded stuff.
Admittedly, geopolitics have moved in such a method as to counsel “progress” would possibly look fairly totally different to the views of 2021. However with all that mentioned, the pair has assembled a major array of LPs to again the brand new fund.
These embrace the German retail big the Otto Group, Goldbeck, Wepa, Oetker, Beiersdorf, and Hymer, in addition to quite a few European tech founders. The European Funding Fund has additionally elevated its dedication in Revent’s second fund.
Lentz instructed TechCrunch that the fund is searching for startups in power transition, industrial decarbonization, healthcare, local weather, financial empowerment, and reskilling, amongst others.
Since launch, it’s invested in 26 firms. “Many in local weather tech, some in well being tech, some in empowerment. And total, issues have gone very well. We’ve had quite a few firms that had been picked up by tier-one normal funds,” she mentioned.
Lentz mentioned the fund has all the time tried to place itself within the third class, “as a performance-focused fund, investing in planetary and societal well being, by way of long-term worth creation. Within the early days, there have been some of us who had been skeptical and didn’t perceive why we weren’t simply calling ourselves affect or local weather. However now, I feel, on this present macro setting, his positioning makes fairly a little bit of sense for lots of people, and permits us to essentially use the language of driving worth by investing in long-term important transitions.”
Revent’s LPs are very long-term oriented, she mentioned. “I feel they don’t seem to be afraid of what’s taking place within the U.S. proper now. I feel they, in actual fact, imagine that it’s necessary to proceed investing in these areas regardless of what’s taking place within the US. And I feel there’s this concept of Europe, sort of standing up and punching again and determining what values it stands for, and investing closely in these areas.”
She sees extra capital going towards so-called re-industrialization, European sovereignty, and protection, and “wouldn’t be stunned” if now there’s a proliferation of recent rising specialist funds. “I feel Europe now wants to determine what it stands for … tech and innovation as a part of that, and I feel capital will circulate to some extent that route.”
The workforce is now cut up throughout Berlin, London, Paris, and now has a enterprise companion in San Francisco.