Project A Ventures, Europe’s largest “Operational VC”, raises $375m fourth fund to continue investing in early-stage European tech companies

Project A Ventures, one of the leading early-stage tech investors in Europe, announces the closing of its fourth generation of funds to invest from pre-seed to Series A in the most promising founders across the continent. The new $375 million fund is the largest fund raised so far, and will bring the company’s total assets under management to $1 billion. Project A started 10 years ago, and has since been investing early in some of the most promising European tech companies, such as Trade Republic, Kry, sennder, WorldRemit, Spryker and Voi.

With the new fund, Project A will continue to invest in founding teams that are reshaping their industries while focusing on sectors across B2C and B2B including fintech, commerce, enterprise software, data infrastructure, supply chain and climate tech. Even though the majority of deals will be B2B focused, Project A will continue its investments in consumer businesses.

Limited partners of Project A’s new fund generation consist of institutional investors in the US and Europe, selected European corporates and German “Mittelstand” companies as well as well connected entrepreneurs.

“The closing of our fourth fund is a major milestone in our company history as it marks the 10 year anniversary of Project A successfully supporting founders all over Europe - not only with the capital they need but also with operational expertise to help their businesses thrive. Last year alone we welcomed four new unicorns in our portfolio and we plan to continue investing in tech companies at early stages,“ says Uwe Horstmann, General Partner and Co-founder of Project A. “As the ‘war for talent’ makes it harder to grow organizations quickly, we have found that startups and scaleups require more hands-on support. That’s why we are continuing to expand our operational VC model to have our functional experts directly support our portfolio companies in scaling their business and their technology.”

Project A boasts one of the largest platform teams in European venture capital. Its “operational VC” model includes more than 140 functional experts, who actively support its portfolio companies. This enables those companies to access a wide range of operational support services across key areas, such as software engineering, product development, business intelligence, brand and communications, data, marketing, sales and recruiting. In the last year, Project A’s operational teams have worked more than 100,000 support hours for portfolio companies, enabling them to grow and thrive in their respective markets.

With more than 100 investments made since 2012, Project A has been backing founders from pre-seed to Series A and beyond in sectors such as fintech, digital health, logistics, eCommerce, proptech, B2B enterprise software and mobility. Additionally, since 2018, Project A has hosted its annual Knowledge Conference, where investors, operators and experts come together to share their knowledge on startup operations and venture capital with thousands of attendees.

Project A also announces that it plans to expand its private equity co-investment practice, and will invest up to $80m in Private Equity deals. Project A is keen to use the experience it has gained by investing and scaling early-stage companies for over a decade, at the 'growth' end of the market. Over the last years Project A has already built a portfolio of 11 private equity co-investments. The fund's new initiative to invest alongside PE funds is testament to Project A's commitment to investing over the lifetime of a company.

Ben Fischer, General Partner at Project A, says, “We have accrued a huge amount of expertise in how to help technology companies grow and reach scale. Having shown that this knowledge can be transferred into the more mature buy-out environment, we are keen to double down on this opportunity. By investing alongside world-leading PE funds, we are able to offer more mature companies operational implementation know-how of our experts, strategic guidance and extensive knowledge sharing by our early stage portfolio.”