Visionaries Club is a leading European early stage VC backed by Europe's most successful digital founders and family business entrepreneurs. They provide support to entrepreneurs in their Seed and Early Growth stage to help them take their companies to the next level. The club is divided into two funds: a €150m seed stage fund for early access to promising entrepreneurs across Europe, and a €200m Early Growth fund to support European B2B companies in their early growth stage from Series B onwards.

Visionaries Club is a leading European early stage VC fund with offices in London and Berlin backed by Europe's most successful digital founders and family business entrepreneurs. We strongly believe that leveraging our entrepreneurial investors' authentic knowledge and access is the best support we can provide to entrepreneurs in their Seed and Early Growth stage to help them take their companies to the next level.

Visionaries Club is divided into two funds:

A € 150m seed stage fund leveraging its unicorn and digital founder LP base for very early and exclusive access to the most promising entrepreneurs across Europe.

A €200m Early Growth fund leveraging especially the fund's industrial family business LP network is intended to support the most promising European B2B companies in their early growth stage from Series B onwards with global reach and scale.

Visionaries Club

Congrats to the entire Idealab team for hosting such a great conference in Vallendar last week! 

Robert Lacher joined the stage on Friday for his keynote on "What Entrepreneur do you really want to be?" and addressed the challenges many face with their post-university journey and that all-important "what's next?" question. Inspiring stories of entrepreneurial journeys he came across during his career reveal that they often revolve around three pivotal questions:

1️⃣ 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: What is it that truly drives and excites you? It all starts with being honest with yourself about what you love and are good at.
2️⃣ 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: Passion alone does not make a dent. It is obsession that leads to constant grit, persistence, tenacity, determination, and the spirit to never give up turning an idea into a groundbreaking company.
3️⃣ 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆: There are maybe a thousand ways to be a great entrepreneur. Choose your entrepreneurial game and consider the kind of entrepreneur you want to become if you embark on the journey of building a company. 

Connecting the dots post-university can be challenging, but hopefully, these questions give a little compass for the journey ahead. 🌟🚀

cc: Daniel Khachab, Verena Pausder, Gülsah Wilke, Thomas Dohmke, Robert Kutt, Malte Brettel, Daniel Krauss, Thomas Bachem, Visionaries Club, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management

Two weeks ago we brought together our Visionaries community of digital pioneers, family entrepreneurs, VCs, and friends in London to share some of their very personal stories of their entrepreneurial journeys and crucible moments in shaping global tech ✌🏻

Thank you again to everyone who joined us at Visionaries Unplugged this year - you are what made our day so special! 💯

Today, we want to share some of the many highlights of this special day with you in our little after-movie. 

PS: We will upload all sessions to our website soon. Stay tuned!

cc: Charmaine Chow, Michael Moritz, Marc Benioff, Eléonore Crespo, Miki Kuusi, Harry Stebbings, Daniel Dines, Torsten Reil, Ilkka Paananen, Nathan Blecharczyk, Andrey K., Niklas Zennström, Eleanor Warnock, Miriam Partington, David Helgason, Zeynep Yavuz, Shravin Bharti Mittal, Bogdan Uzbekov, Francesco Simoneschi, Benedikt Sauter, Jorgen Tveit, Francesco Sciortino, Patrick Müller, Patrick Koch, Gloria Baeuerlein, André Petry, Bogdan Uzbekov, Caroline Daniel, Georgia Stevenson, Nils Aldag, Sven Moritz, Toby Willcocks, Philippe Sahli

We are beyond excited to partner with Pivot in their €5m Pre-Seed round, led by Visionaries Club and joined by our friends at Cocoa 🍫 and Emblem and Anamcara 💥 ✌️

Procurement is one of the key foundational strategic pillars for businesses across all sectors, whether digital or industrial. Yet, well-established incumbents have entirely failed to reinvent their product architecture and application layer for over two decades. The strategic function of managing spend has never been more critical, and it is inherently complex. Teams from Procurement, Finance, Legal, Compliance, and IT are all involved. Silos and a lack of access to real-time data in the legacy tooling of Procure-to-Pay systems create a plethora of manual and inefficient workflows.

Marc-Antoine Lacroix and Romain Libeau, former CPO of Qonto and COO of Swile, experienced this pain as operators at two of the most ambitious unicorns in France. Joined by their third Co-founder, Estelle Giuly, who has been a workflow automation expert for years, they built Pivot, a fully integrated, modular procurement platform powered by AI automation. Pivot enables teams to unlock better profitability by removing friction and providing full control in spend execution.

Check out more details here 👉 https://lnkd.in/etfArvQa

With Visionaries Club, we are incredibly thankful to be a sparring partner to the team, bringing modern procurement to the market!

cc Marc-Antoine Lacroix, Romain Libeau, Estelle Giuly, Cocoa 🍫, Anthony Danon, Hanno Renner, Emblem, Guillaume Durao, Steve Anavi, Annelie Ajami, Loïc Soubeyrand, Oliver Samwer, Anamcara

💸 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗻: $𝟭𝟱𝗠 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔 💸

We are thrilled to announce that our portfolio company, Apron, secured a $15M Series A, led by Index Ventures and with our continued backing.

Apron has proven to be a game-changer for SMBs and boutique accountancy firms. With this investment, they will further transform existing clients' workflow and take on larger practices that handle hundreds of clients, thousands of transactions, and billions of pounds. Apron is amongst Europe's fastest-growing fintech companies because they solve a real pain thousands of businesses still experience daily when paying their invoices.

𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗻 𝗛𝘂𝗯 & 𝗦𝗻𝗮𝗽
We are continuously impressed by the speed with which the Apron team advances the product. Apron Hub pulls together the user's clients and tasks so they can all be managed in one place. This will improve payment speed and safety. Apron Snap will allow users to capture invoices instantly and automatically. These are just two of the many feature releases Apron has lined up. Keep an eye out for future releases.

𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗻?
Sign up for a free trial here 👉 https://lnkd.in/emfwaNB4
Read more about the funding round here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eTRxxgwV

cc: Index Ventures, Jan Hammer, Bogdan Uzbekov, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ariel Sterman, Robert Jäckle, Robert Lacher

Today, we want to say THANK YOU to all our amazing speakers and guests who took the time to be part of Visionaries Unplugged last week. We are truly honored to have such an amazing community of supporters - It was a blast.

Special thank you to our great partners Taylor Wessing and VESTBERRY.

For everyone who wants to rewatch certain sessions or wasn't able to join, you can find the whole recording here: https://lnkd.in/ehdDK9GD

We will shortly follow up with more content and an edited audio recording. So stay tuned! ✌️

cc: Charmaine Chow, Michael Moritz, Marc Benioff, Eléonore Crespo, Miki Kuusi, Harry Stebbings, Daniel Dines, Torsten Reil, Ilkka Paananen, Nathan Blecharczyk, Andrey K., Niklas Zennström, Eleanor Warnock, Miriam Partington, David Helgason, Zeynep Yavuz, Shravin Bharti Mittal, Bogdan Uzbekov, Francesco Simoneschi, Benedikt Sauter

AND WE’RE LIVE…🎬

Thank you to everyone showing up to Visionaries Unplugged 2023!

We kicked-off the day with a great opening by Michael Moritz and his insights about the crucible moments of his personal journey, what "looking for the unexpected“ really means…and his perspective on the state of global tech.

If you weren’t able to make it to London, feel free to join us virtually via our livestream: https://lnkd.in/ehdDK9GD

Finally - Visionaries Unplugged goes live today at 1.30 pm CET - Join us and tune in here: https://lnkd.in/e8p4ddC8

It’s happening! Visionaries Unplugged goes live today at 1.30 pm CET 🚀

Together with our community of digital pioneers, family entrepreneurs, VCs, and friends, we will take over London today with Visionaries Unplugged: Disrupting to Endure, with conversations you don’t want to miss out on. We promise. 🤞

Join us in unlocking Europe‘s potential and getting to know what drives and excites us along our journey to support the next generation of global tech leaders in B2B.

Thank you again to everyone joining us and our great partners, Taylor Wessing and VESTBERRY! 

cc: Charmaine Chow, Michael Moritz, Marc Benioff, Eléonore Crespo, Miki Kuusi, Harry Stebbings, Daniel Dines, Torsten Reil, Ilkka Paananen, Nathan Blecharczyk, Andrey K., Niklas Zennström, Eleanor Warnock, Miriam Partington, David Helgason, Zeynep Yavuz, Shravin Bharti Mittal, Bogdan Uzbekov, Francesco Simoneschi, Benedikt Sauter

#VisionariesClub #VisionariesUnplugged

💥💥💥Welcome to the Visionaries Family, Johann! 💥💥💥

Selling is hard! Especially in B2B. And it has not always been sexy. But next to product, it is maybe the most crucial ingredient to make a SaaS company fly and make or break its success. Having worked with more than 50 SaaS founders, we have learned how hard it is to build a successful go-to-market team - from Growth and Marketing to Sales and Customer Success. Why? Because most advice founders receive on sales comes from people (..VCs) who haven’t actually done it themselves. How often did we hear, “Just hire a VP of Sales," "Get a good recruiter," or "You should get the sales playbook of company XYZ and apply it".

Building Sales and Go-to-Market successfully is not just one hour of advice - it is a craft that takes operational time and deep involvement. But first and foremost: Deep commitment, passion, and attention to detail.

That's why we're so happy to take Johann on board, as his go-to-market experience is unique and unparalleled in SaaS. As Slack’s SVP of Sales, Johann led its go-to-market team in EMEA and has been in charge of Slack’s commercial success in the region while the company’s revenue scaled from the early beginnings to well over USD 1bn. Before that, Johann was Head of EMEA at Dropbox. He grew the team from 5 to 250 people, taking full responsibility for the EMEA go-to-market strategy, driving the local business to several hundred million USD.  

Johann Butting will join Visionaries as an Expert Partner, giving our portfolio companies a unique advantage in building their sales and go-to-market strategies.

Join us tomorrow for a behind-the-scenes journey into family business life with Shravin Bharti Mittal, the Founder of Unbound and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, and Visionaries Club Founding Partner Sebastian Pollok at Visionaries Unplugged.

Shravin and Sebastian will take you on an exploration of Bharti Global's origins, one of the world’s largest telecom companies with 450+ million customers, and Shravin's mission with Unbound - a globally oriented, long-term technology investment firm dedicated to nurturing and championing the next generation of "100-year companies" while genuinely creating substantial value - REAL value.

Don't miss your chance to participate virtually on September 21st. Reserve your spot now → https://lnkd.in/e3W6kW3G

Only one more day to go until Visionaries Unplugged in London...and one more highlight to share ✌🏻

We are excited that Nathan Blecharczyk, Co-Founder of Airbnb will join us on stage for a fireside chat with our Founding Partner Robert Lacher sharing a few very personal moments and experiences as an entrepreneur building and scaling Airbnb into one of the most enduring companies of our time.

Tune in for Visionaries Unplugged: Disrupting to Endure and join our live stream from London: https://lnkd.in/ed5shhUT

VC:VISIONARIES

Visionaries Club

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