Early-stage investor Vanagon Ventures just announced the first closing for the first fund of €30 million, which they were able to complete after just 6 months. The venture capital company is accompanied by Matias Collan and his team from ACE Alternatives. ACE Alternatives is a digitized fund administration service provider and supports fund managers in the launch of investment funds, onboarding of investors, as well as with the ongoing administration of the funds throughout their life cycle.
Founded in 2022, Vanagon Ventures is focusing on B2B start-ups that are transforming the digital green transformation from a cost burden into a profit center. Investments at the intersection of the two megatrends, the new Internet and green transformation, offer great opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs.
“We support young startups, who can solve the challenges of a green transformation with innovative technologies and even make them profitable, with capital, know-how and a network,” emphasized Susanne Fromm, technology investor and General Partner of Vanagon Ventures, who founded Vanagon Ventures together with serial entrepreneur Axel Roitzsch and former Microsoft strategist Sandro Stark.
The fund managers describe themselves as entrepreneurial investors who have established their own startups and have been active in B2B digitalization consulting. As a result, they have first-hand experience with the disruptive power of new technologies on entire industries. The investment focus of the venture capital fund is on young founders who, for example, use tokenization through distributed ledger technology (DLT) and artificial intelligence to create innovative solutions for a sustainable and competitive future.
The team was comprehensively advised in the legal structuring of the fund by Dr. Philip Mostertz of Orbit, a law firm specializing in fund law. To date, Vanagon Ventures has invested in ten startups, all of which “have the potential to turn the market upside down in the long term”, added Fromm. Portfolio company The Landbanking Group, for example, which was founded by a former McKinsey partner, uses technology to turn nature conservation into a lucrative investment. Vanagon Ventures is also financing the world’s largest marketplace for digitized CO2 certificates, a kind of Moody’s for digitized environmental goods, a tokenizer of real economic goods and a technology rating company that uses satellite data and artificial intelligence to bring radical transparency to the carbon market.
But Vanagon Ventures is not only supporting green transformation as an investor. Together with the University of Frankfurt School of Finance, the venture capital company also set up the 18-week online program “ReFi Talents”. This equips change makers with the knowledge they need to drive innovation for a regenerative economy. In September 2023, the first ReFi Talents cohort started with 160 participants worldwide. And Vanagon Ventures’ journey continues. Financing talks are currently being held with start-ups in the fields of ESG reporting automation, software for the circular economy and biodiversity measurement. For Stark and his colleagues, there is no question: “The clock is ticking. We cannot achieve the digital, green transformation with idealism and appeals to morality. To tackle the climate crisis, we need to rely on innovative technologies that enable companies to adapt their business models sustainably and profitably.”
