Newlin Ventures

Some of our founders started with artificial intelligence and building new services, products and business models years ago. As investors, tech builders, entrepreneurs and in top management. That resulted in multi-billion dollar turnovers - not just unicorn status. We have big visions and love tech. ​And we have a passion for learning and thinking. Here are some results and thoughts based on the learnings: ​"Financial engineering" must be as precise as other engineering: Investments in Ventures and Tech needs to be high enough to reach critical milestones, but too much money can be even more destructive than not enough. (More) Money can buy speed. But there are time-compression-diseconomies. In many areas of digital solutions the first mover will have a big chance to win the race to be the market leading platform. This applies especially to artificial intelligence (AI). Data is the new oil - yes, but look closer: Rockefeller earned his fortune at Standard Oil with access to oil (drilling), especially refinement and making a trustworthy product out of it (Standard Oil) and then later controlled transport channels to customers. Oil is like data nothing. Only when you bring the right data together for a use case, you get value out of it. Also the analogy with transport channel in oil applies for AI. It makes a lot of sense to look closer into the oil industry to learn for AI. Longterm stable data access is a key topic. And in some areas it needs even a co-development of AI algorithms together with new sensor systems to have access to data, which is precise enough. Sensors and IOT are still key topics for artificial intelligence.​ Ecosystems are key - but only stable and exclusive ones! Innovation needs often content with high production costs for it and a minimum of users or market coverage. For these situations you can see often discussions about open innovation. This is low cost and risk. But with this the innovation spreads fast and easy to all competitors: the innovation lose the USP and the margin in the whole market decreases. And this is even worst case for the consumer, since they got so many solutions to choose and test and the companies do not earn enough to improve their products more. Open innovation ecosystems with many programmers as co-producers have big relevance in some areas. But only, if new applications, content etc. can be produced with a very limited investment. Best examples are the smart phone apps. But this strategy did already not work with smart watch apps. It didn't and will not work with augmented reality in many areas, many health-tech segments and not for automotive in-cabin innovation. There are many reasons for it and we analyzed them very carefully. But on the other side all this sectors need ecosystems. Based on that analysis we developed a new concept for investment and building startups: Scalator X

We are all entrepreneurs who have started successful companies to change the world for the better - in one case from zero to over a billion in revenues in less than a decade. We have a true long term view - our fund is an independent evergreen fund, with no end of fund life date, thereby avoiding many of the conflicts typical in the venture industry. Finally, we strive to have a life-long relationship with all our entrepreneurs. Focus First and foremost, our primary goal is to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. While we can invest at any stage, from early to expansion to late stage growth, we’d prefer to get to know you and your vision - and how we can help - early. We can invest as little as one million dollars to as much as ten million in a single company. Currently, we are interested in software companies that can apply innovations in IoT, Big Data, and Security technology, to drive meaningful disruptions in energy and infrastructure sustainability, and establish clear category dominance and leadership. Ecosystem We have a diverse ecosystem of people and partners that can help. This might include partnering opportunities, customer opportunities, company scaling and team building advice, and strategy development. Please talk to us about how we can help you and your business grow. Unconcerns With an independent, evergreen fund, we're unconcerned with structural issues that lead to entrepreneur-unfriendly activity at most venture firms today. Our "unconcerns" include timing out, the next fundraise, and arbitrary investment constraints, enabling us to be structurally aligned with our entrepreneurs' best interests. Timing out Venture Today. Most funds operate on a 10-year timeframe, after which holdings in portfolio companies are liquidated and distributed to LPs. This means that when a fund is close to timing out, investors can push for a premature exit - even if that goes against an entrepreneurs' long-term vision. How We’re Different. Our fund is an independent, evergreen fund with no end-of-fund-life. The next fundraise Venture Today. Once an investment is made, the capital deployed is gone for good. This means that investors are under constant pressure to raise the next fund, which often leads to entrepreneur-unfriendly behavior that optimizes fundraising. How We’re Different. We recycle most of our proceeds back into the fund, thereby eliminating the need to fundraise. Arbitrary investment constraints Venture Today. Constraints on fund strategy are usually set when VCs market their funds to LPs. These typically include limitations on stage (Seed / Series A only), arbitrary ownership targets (at least 20% ownership), and control (board seat required). How We're Different. We're flexible as to investment stage, ownership targets, and board representation. We only care about partnering with category leaders.

We focus on digital business, AI, deep tech, and asset-light IOT. We offer extensive support to those who try the impossible. With the strong backing of our family office investor, we're on a mission to become one of Europe's most successful early-stage VCs. Born in Heilbronn, Germany, we were formerly known as ZFHN / Born2Grow and re-invented ourselves in 2023 to pursue this new mission.

KPN Ventures is the venturing arm of KPN, The Netherlands’ leading telecom & ICT company. We focus on early growth-stage investments (series A, B & C) in European and US high growth companies in the segments depicted on the right side. Our investments typically range from 1 to 5 million euro for minority stakes, building long-term partnerships, ultimately aiming for external exits, not acquisitions. Our key investment criteria are: experienced and diverse team, innovative product with unique competitive advantage, international market potential, sustainability, potential for cooperation with KPN, commercial traction (€1M revenues) and attractive deal structure. We aim to build value-creating partnerships with innovative European or US-based technology companies, accelerating innovation and growth by providing access to capital, industry expertise, technical infrastructure, professional network and channels to customers. Industry Expertise Get support from experts in the field of telecommunications, networking technology, cloud computing, cyber security, data & analytics, sales, marketing, finance, legal & regulatory, patents, etc. Infrastructure Build your business on high quality communication infrastructure, including KPN’s high quality communication networks for voice, messaging, data and IOT, its data-centers, cloud hosting and communication, security and data services, e.g. through API’s. Channels to Customers & Industry Network Get access to KPN’s customer base of millions of residential customers and hundreds of thousands of business customers in The Netherlands and abroad, its large industry network of global tech suppliers and partners, and KPN Ventures’ international network of investors.

MS&AD Ventures is a small team with a big impact. Our team is made up of people with many years of both investing and operating experience around the world. We are backed by MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, the 7th largest insurance conglomerate in the world.

At Snowpoint, we back dual-tech companies looking to navigate the complexities of government and commercial use. We lean on our deep industry knowledge and operational experience to help these businesses overcome the nuanced challenges and risks associated with creating innovations and cutting-edge technology that will protect our national security and deliver value to societies at large. We see a major technological shift on the global stage that is transforming all aspects of modern life and aim to be at the forefront of driving this necessary transformation across both defense and commercial markets all from the lens of rediscovering the roots of U.S. venture capital. With new technologies coming online faster than ever before and governments greatly increasing R&D spend globally we find ourselves at a precipice not seen before. In addition to continued consolidation in the defense industrial base a misalignment on incentives between the government and the commercial sector has been allowed to continue which has resulted in an inefficient process to rapidly develop and deploy innovative technologies leaving us exposed. An Innovation Mindset Cell phone, radar, GPS, the internet, and many other everyday use items owe their existence to research by governments pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. The internet’s origins date back to the late 1960s, when a DARPA-fueled research project created what was then called “Arpanet”. In the decades that followed, the world wide web emerged from Arpanet, satellites proliferated in support of global positioning systems, and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags were invented and placed on items for inventory tracking. Taken together, this set the foundation for what we now call the “internet of things” (IoT). As the IoT, the remote work movement, and geostationary orbit satellites deepen their footholds within the commercial sector, and as the battlefield grows increasingly distributed with each successive global conflict, edge communications are approaching another breakthrough age. In tandem, speed and distance with which business and militaries operate is continuously increasing, and their communications capabilities must keep pace. The world’s new level of interconnectedness has pushed many to value privacy over convenience - something that the defense sector has been doing for years. Thanks to the precipitous rise and continued exponential increase and adaptation in these technologically infused spaces, the potential on both sides of the dual-tech coin is far from being realized. We believe by backing this decade’s visionary entrepreneurs - those who create products or services which completely transform their customers’ businesses or livelihoods - will leave a tremendous impact on both the commercial and defense sectors. Inflection Point Commercial and government demand over the next decade will be vastly different than the past decades, and valuable developmental lessons learned in the late 2010s will illuminate the path forward for the next decade. Today’s robots appear to be reaching an inflection point - exponential growth in intelligence, computational power, and capabilities are accelerating. The rise in big data is creating a demand for a more efficient means of organization and analysis, setting the table for AI in dozens of verticals including healthcare, military, and industrials. The ever-tenuous geopolitical landscape is pushing billions of government dollars into developing new advances in technologies which have endless use-cases across all sectors. Against this backdrop, the major defense industrial complex in its current form lacks the processes and structure to blaze this new trail for the next generation of companies and technologies. Within this startup ecosystem, we see many compelling opportunities in the future - soon, technology will no longer limit this field’s ability to change the world. Instead, market conditions will be the greatest indicator for transformative potential, and we believe dual-tech business models will be among the most successful of all robotics, artificial intelligence, and data companies. New Frontiers As the world continues to watch tensions percolate and conflicts arise, we at Snowpoint believe that the startup ecosystem will be the answer to mitigating, protecting, and deterring. We are focused on backing and helping build exceptional companies that are intersection of both commercial and defense to further national security and societal resilience. Since 2021, there has been almost $100B invested into the Defense Tech space, which is nearly 40% higher than the prior 7 years combined. History has proven that entrepreneurs can succeed in breaking into the dual-tech space, they just need the capital to do so. The dual-tech overlap is larger than most investors realize and the ones that stand ready to back companies at the center of it will be heavily rewarded.