A heterogeneous group of successful entrepreneurs, founders & investors supported by an international network of advisors, corporate partners & co-investors.

Smart Infrastructure Ventures ('SIVentures')

Smart Infrastructure Ventures

Who we are

Smart Infrastructure Ventures is a heterogeneous group of successful entrepreneurs, founders & investors. We are supported by a likeminded international network of advisors, corporate partners & co-investors. In addition we are proud to call the award-winning SpinLab – The HHL Accelerator our family as well as the renowned HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, who has several times been awarded as the best university for entrepreneurship, our friends. At Smart Infrastructure Ventures we believe that a great team of founders can be successful in most markets – let us be part of your exciting journey!


Stages

Our investment focus is early stage startups and unlike some other VCs: we really mean early – don’t worry too much about turnover (yet)! When we invest in a team of founders we are usually the startup’s first professional investor. At that point the company may have raised some money from the FFFs (friends, family & fools – oh and maybe from some angels too ;-), released an MVP and gained first customer traction. We typically invest a low six digit Euro amount as a first investment in a pre-seed or seed round but keep significant capital for follow-on rounds.


Sectors

As our name Smart Infrastructure Ventures suggests, we especially like anything surrounding smart city, energy, proptech, e-mobility, IoT, ehealth etc. – sometimes it is as easy as that! And although smart infrastructure is our focus, we would still like to hear from you in case your team is operating in potentially related areas. Please contact us as well if you believe your startup could be the next big thing – we will definitely take a look.


Geographies

We at Smart Infrastructure Ventures think globally, feel at home in Europe, operate Germany-wide, have a regional interest in East Germany as it’s our home soil and have an office at Baumwollspinnerei in Leipzig. Especially if you are a founder from East Germany: let’s have a chat about what you are trying to achieve!

Mementor

Congratulations to our portfolio company mogenius for successfully raising their € 2.5 million seed round! #itinfrastructure

We are happy to welcome Conceptum (a group of prolific business angels with backgrounds in hosting, cybersecurity etc. like Marc Wilczek) as well as seed + speed Ventures as new investors who join Smart Infrastructure Ventures ('SIVentures'), STS Ventures & Flossbach von Storch as existing investors.

Mogenius kubernetes workspace supports developers who can handle most tasks independently using self-services, saving them more than 50% of the time needed for operations and problem-solving. We look forward to continue working with such a strong founding team of Gerrit, Jan, Benedikt, Herbert & Behrang.

Have you ever wondered, what is currently happening in the #Cybersecurity space? 🔐 Why is every firm talking about #SIEM (and what does it actually stand for)? 🤔 

Our portfolio company Enginsight GmbH is hosting a webcast tomorrow, Friday 25th August @ 10am CET (sign-up link in the comments) to talk about the exciting new features of their tool, File Integrity Monitoring (#FIM) and of course Security Information and Event Management (#SIEM). ❗ 

Don't miss this chance to find out from Enginsight co-founder Max Tarantik how to improve your firms #cybersecurity ! Webcast will be held in German. 🇩🇪

38 % ...

... of our portfolio startups have at least one female co-founder - most of them serving as CEOs. 

It is a pleasure working with you Leonie (traide AI GmbH ), Bettina (Hivebuy), Sonja (Codio Impact), Cindy 🌱 (Planted) & Valerie (Preventio)!

Happy International Women's Day, especially to all #femalefounders out there! 🥂

We are glad to welcome ⚡ encentive GmbH⚡ to the Smart Infrastructure Ventures ('SIVentures') family! We look forward to supporting the team on its crucial mission to accelerate industrial decarbonization!

The team around Daniel Ehnes, Torge Lahrsen & Sascha G. have raised 2.7 million € from established co-investors like Summiteer, Interface Capital (Christian Reber / Niklas Jansen), Vireo Ventures as well as business angels like Stefan Mueller (ENERPARC AG) & Mario Götze.

encentive GmbH will revolutionize industrial energy consumption with their AI technology, helping companies to reduce costs and emissions.

As the year approaches its end, we want to pause for a moment and reflect on what happened at Smart Infrastructure Ventures ('SIVentures') in 2023. 

Four startups (traide AI GmbH , Mainteny & two still undisclosed deals) were welcomed to our portfolio. In addition, two new colleagues (Till Gürtler & Mirco Marwan) joined our team as analysts. Our entire team is looking forward to what lies ahead (including our fundraising for fund II ;)! 

"May your holidays be as joyful and prosperous as a successful startup's journey. Wishing you a festive season filled with joy, innovation, and the kind of growth that would make any venture capitalist proud. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" (Source: #chatgpt) 🎄

Last week our partner Bjoern Bauermeister, CFA had the pleasure to attend the "Ostdeutschland 2023" conference in Leipzig. As one of the few venture capital investors based in east Germany we were happy to see how important the development of our thriving region is for the current government. Thank you for hosting, Carsten Schneider. 

What was your main take-away from the event?

SMAR

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