VC is a marketplace, capital in, capital out. But too many GPs still see IR as a burden instead of a core function.Daniel Keiper-Knorr · on venture as a two-sided marketplace
Rohit Yadav sits down with Daniel Keiper-Knorr, founding partner at Speedinvest. What started as a boutique €10M fund in 2011 is now a €1.2B+ platform and one of the most active early-stage investors across Europe.
This episode isn't just about numbers, it's about how you scale thoughtfully and what's next for venture capital in Europe and beyond. After publishing the Rethinking Venture Capital report, Rohit has been exploring themes that often go unnoticed, and one of them is the venture fund management business itself.
As we enter what we call the Venture 3.0 era, fund management is being shaped by two powerful forces: institutionalization and democratization. It might not always steal the headlines, but it's increasingly where the future of venture is being built.
We talked about:
- The structural strategy behind their growth, from fintech-only in 2011 to now 6 vertical teams covering AI, climate, deep tech, health, and more.
- How they built a truly pan-European footprint, and why local presence still matters.
- Their intentional shift toward specialized, autonomous sectoral teams.
- What real succession planning looks like in venture.
- Why most liquidity plans are broken, and how Speedinvest is using secondaries and other tools like sell-side M&A to unlock real value.
- The increasing role of consolidation, and whether Europe will see €10B VC firms emerge in the next five years.
We wrapped with a strong call to arms: Europe must close its Series B/C capital gap, LPs should fund innovation the way they fund infrastructure, and founders must know that VC isn't for everyone, and not every company needs to be a unicorn.
This is the playbook for Venture 3.0: institutional, global, strategic, and deeply human.
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FIRMS
Pan-European seed stage firm founded in Vienna in 2011, with offices in London, Berlin, Munich, Paris and Vienna.
Bought the founders' first company, an early fintech doing mobile payments over premium SMS, in 2006.
General Catalyst and La Famiglia
The omnipresent example of active consolidation on the VC side.
PEOPLE
Founding partner at Speedinvest; he and his two co-founders have worked together for close to a quarter of a century.
Investments thought leader, Big Book of VC.
POLICY & CONCEPTS
Mansion House Compact, TIBI, WIN
UK, French and German initiatives; all positive, but venture will only ever take a small slice, with most going to buyout, infrastructure and private credit.
Series B, C and D
The Series A crunch is largely resolved; the gap now is too few large European growth funds, which leaves the door open to American and Asian capital.
Recycling into later funds
The old model of early DPI from fund one rolling into fund two no longer works; companies stay private longer, so it is fund one into fund three, two into four.
Shifting Dynamics of Venture Fund Management →
The full written snapshot of this interview on the Rethink site.