From Accelerator to Venture Capital Fund

Let’s go back to the beginning: xdeck was founded by a group of entrepreneurs back in 2019 with a clear purpose: providing a truly founder-centric and cost-free acceleration offering for aspiring entrepreneurs – from founders, for founders. Since being operational in 2020, we lived up to this promise and added true value to the founders of our program - even though we started at the height of the pandemic.

Thanks to their high satisfaction with our operational support, more and more founders asked us to invest in them and be part of competitive financing rounds. Subsequently, the logical next step was: xdeck ventures, an early-stage Venture Capital fund, which led xdeck to mature into a truly supportive platform from all angles.

Our platform now includes both an accelerator and a venture capital fund, focusing on pre-seed B2B technology companies in process automation, applied big data and AI, and sustainability tech. By establishing a dynamic and ever-expanding network of founders, operators, partner firms, and investors from various fields, we can grow meaningful, long-term relationships with our founders supporting them beyond our acceleration offering, as well as benefit ourselves from the growth and success of their endeavors.

Our goal is to become the leading platform for early-stage European tech companies, positively shaping a better tomorrow.

To this day we have already accelerated 50 startups across six accelerator batches and invested in 9 of the most promising ventures from our accelerator cohorts and broader network. In both cases, we leverage our operational expertise to become a value-adding partner to our portfolio founders whenever they need us.

Let’s talk about xdeck ventures

In 2021, after founding our VC with the support of strong Limited Partners, we were able to make our first investments in stealth mode. Generally, we initially invest between €200-500k with the potential to participate in follow-on funding rounds. In most cases, we co-invest with top-tier investors (e.g., 10x Founders, Atlantic Labs, Capnamic, and Sequoia) and support our startups in the areas of B2B sales, financial modelling, fundraising, and hiring & organization building.

While we currently perceive high uncertainty in global equity markets, we strongly believe that automation, big data, and sustainability will be among the core areas of interest over the upcoming decade. If the past is an indicator, many of today’s most successful startups, such as Airbnb, Spotify or WhatsApp, were founded during the last big recession of 2008. Why?

- Because founders develop a "scarcity mindset" and build more capital-efficient startups from the get-go. Furthermore, we experience a pool of experienced talent from large tech companies that have been laid off, looking for new opportunities. Therefore, startups can hire top talents they were not able to attract in the past. Also, several experienced employees from tech startups are shifting to the founder role and building new startups, thereby fueling the ecosystem. The time is now to make the winners of the next decade, and our ambition is to support them on their journey.

So, what drives us to make an investment?

Long story short: We value gritty founder teams with deep domain expertise and a distinctive understanding of the problem they are trying to solve. Moreover, we are looking for differentiated products or services that solve a real pain point for customers (“must have” vs. “nice to have”). Want to see us taking a deep dive into our investment portfolio (inkl. specter automation, Plancraft, Floy and more)? Stay tuned!