My Startup Investment Strategy is simple:
I’m investing in companies that meet the following mutual exclusive characteristics:
- Teams with solutions – not ideas.
- Teams who know what they want and are determined to make it happen.
- Teams that already invested everything they possessed.
- Companies where I have a matching domain expertise.
- Agreeing for Board meetings once a week and after 12 months once a month.
- Leaders that have only one objective, taking the company to an IPO or equivalent liquidity event
- Agree to a relentless due-diligence
- Have a clean cap table (only the invested and active founders)
- Teams with no dominant founder (solopreneur)
- Tech Startups like: AI, Energy, FinTech, ICT, Neuro-Tech, Platforms & Marketplaces, Robotics, Space-tech, Supply Chain, and tech-related spaces. I’m not experienced in ad tech, defense tech, entertainment, fashion, games, and alike, and as such I’m not a good match in those areas.
- I’m looking for exceptional cognitive abilities: Curious, creative, competitive, confident, connected, communicative, collaborative.
- I will always co-invest with other investors with a matching investment strategy.
Take it or leave it
Why so brutal?
My 20 years in Silicon Valley as a VC-funded entrepreneur and later an investor myself taught me that the only way to be a successful investor is by following rules written by the history of startup investment. Between 1950 and 2025 almost all successful tech companies came from Silicon Valley, and no foreign investor has been even close to the success rate of Silicon Valley Startup Investors.
It’s not the wake startup that fails in Europe – they fail because there are only a very few tough and intelligent investors.
That is why I follow my investment strategy at all cost. If a company is not a fit – it’s better for investor and investee to not engage.
I don’t want to be the smartest investor in the world – but a successful investor investing in the smartest teams.