Kibo Ventures

Lightbird is a Zurich-based VC firm backing entrepreneurs at one of the most intense periods of a company’s life – the early stage (Pre-Seed/Seed/Seed+). We invest in the most ambitious founding teams that use technology to solve real problems for real people and real businesses. The fund invests in B2B software with a particular focus on companies using PLG, Community-led Growth, Bottom-up Saas, NFX, Self-serve etc.. While we’re able to invest globally we will invest most of the money close to home (Europe). We are a rising brand with young, dynamic and driven people that values team work and open communication. We are rebels and want to challenge the status quo in VC by doing things a bit differently - more human. We strongly encourage individual initiatives and diverse perspectives, and enjoy spending time with each other.

henQ is a Seed and Series A venture capital fund. We invest across Europe in B2B startups with a software component, writing tickets of EUR 2-5M. Companies we invest in range from having their first embryonic product and a few pilot customers, to having EUR 2-3M in annual recurring revenue being ready to properly scale. Our assets under management are approximately EUR 200M. Our latest fund - raised in 2020 - is EUR 80M in size. The returns of all our funds are among the best in the market. Famous brand name funds like Sequoia are reaping the benefits of what they did in the past and defending their existing great position. At henQ, we are equally as ambitious but our work is much more exciting, as together we are building the next great success story in VC rather than defending a legacy. We do so by constructing a high conviction portfolio (making on average 3 new investments / year) and only investing in the very few deals we truly love. The results are top returns and the wonderful privilege of only working with people we admire. Joining now, you could still become one of the key players in our team.

We understand entrepreneurs, since we are entrepreneurs ourselves. Venture Stars is a Munich based venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in innovative, digital B2C and B2B business models. Having started as start-up entrepreneurs ourselves, Venture Stars has a tradition of working very closely with the founders of its portfolio companies. Our Philosophy: We think entrepreneurs are the ones creating the future. Therefore, our investment philosophy focuses on founders first. Our Portfolio: Venture Stars believes in a boutique approach. We invest in a selected, high-quality portfolio, fully focused on helping our companies to successfully develop. Our Team: We are a small partnership of serial entrepreneurs, with many years of experience in founding and scaling start-ups. We enjoy working with founders who share our drive and our values.

Marathon Venture Capital is an early-stage investor helping ambitious founders build world-class technology companies. The firm currently manages about €100 million in commitments between two funds. Our portfolio companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from leading global investment firms while catering to customers on the Fortune 500 list or being acquired by them. We invest the first million and roll our sleeves up to help you build a fast-growing,world-class software company.

It’s also the natural next step in over a decade of collaboration between its co-founders, Jessica Verrilli and April Underwood. What We Do We invest in early stage companies, typically from pre-seed through Series A. From idea through product-market fit and beyond, we back founders who bring an insight about a market, an audience, or problem space and a drive to fully realize their vision on the largest possible scale. We support those founders with our own hard earned experience and access to an exceptional network of leaders and builders across the industry. Our History Jess and April first met at Twitter, where they played key roles scaling the business from early-stage startup (Jess was employee #34 and April joined at #150) to public company and beyond. April built and led product and partnerships teams, and Jess built the corporate development function, acquiring 30 companies and meeting with early-stage founders every day. After her time at Twitter, April joined Slack at 150 employees to lead product and platform as its first Chief Product Officer through 10X growth in employees, revenue, and customers. Jessica joined Google Ventures (GV) as a General Partner where she invested across stages for over 4 years. You can read more about each of their backgrounds here. Along the way, in 2015, Jess and April along with four Twitter colleagues co-founded #ANGELS, an angel investing collective which has gone on to serve as a model for other alumni syndicates from companies around the world. Between the two of them, Jess and April backed 75 companies, and through #ANGELS built a distinguished community of operators and founders through dozens of events, a podcast, and a network of relationships across the venture capital landscape. In 2023, Jess and April teamed up to build Adverb Ventures, a new venture capital firm backing early stage startups with hyper-growth ambitions. Adverb invests in exceptional founders who seek to redefine existing categories or create new ones. Jess and April closed the inaugural Fund 1 in the first half of the year and are both full time actively investing and building Adverb. What's in a Name? Through our many years working for and with founders building breakout companies, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not just what you’re building that matters but also how you choose to build it. There are a lot of ways to build great businesses, and strategic choices to make at every step along the way. Ultimately, the adverbs matter as much as the verbs. And of course, that adage is true for investors too. Our job is to pick the right founders and opportunities and to tilt the odds of success in their favor. Our mission is to be the investor who helps our founders navigate the most crucial moments of building their business, showing up both substantively and empathetically.

We invest from day-zero to seed, backing founders from all over Europe. We are fortunate to have been on the zero to one journey with portfolio companies who have raised in excess of $1Bn in follow-on funding from some of the world's best VCs.