London’s Isomer Capital has formalised its relationship with The European VC founders Andreas Munk Holm and David Cruz e Silva, who both now add the title of Venture Partner to their CVs. However, the move isn’t quite a “traditional” Venture Partner addition to the roster, as the grand plan is for Andreas and David to help VCs build their funds via The European VC content platform and its syndicates that allow them to build vested communities of founders, operators, angels, and VCs as "Operator LPs”.
This past week has seen some rather unusual activity in the VC space. On Tuesday we received word that Switzerland’s Seedstars is launching a platform with a multitude of funds aimed at supporting up-and-coming fund managers, particularly those in emerging markets, with both know-how and connections, but crucially capital. In so much, they effectively kicked off a fund of funds vehicle.
The following day, Molten Ventures announced that they’d opened the doors on a syndication programme of its fund of fund, kicking things off with a collaboration with Castlegate Investments, the private family office investment vehicle of serial entrepreneur, Tommy Kelly. As the programme grows, Molten is giving other investors access to some of the best seed and early-stage fund managers in Europe.
And low and behold, today, Isomer Capital is heading down the same route, with its own take, bringing aboard The European VC founders Andreas Munk Holm and David Cruz e Silva as Venture Partners.
Founded in 2020, The European VC started off as a single podcast aimed at GPs but has grown into something much much bigger. Today, it includes no less than five podcasts, a heavily subscribed newsletter, a WhatsApp group, live and virtual events, and crucially, the duo has created a vested community of founders, operators, angels, VCs, and LPs. And it’s exactly this know-how that Isomer is tapping through the formal agreement.
“Andreas and David have a completely different approach and toolbox to us through their content, events, and syndicate, which will bring immense value to our portfolio, partners, and more emerging managers,” says Schorge. During a phone interview, he added, “We’ve known each other for quite some time now, and found that we were almost always discussing the same things, working toward the same goal. We simply didn’t get around to formalising the relationship until recently.”
A broad smile and laugh from Andreas confirmed this statement.
“When David and I started looking around for a firm to partner with we did a lot of asking around and there’s one name kept coming up again and again,” said Munk Holm. “We’ve admired Isomer for a long time, and now, we’ll be able to bring our offering to even more of Europe’s amazing VCs while working with the best in the industry. By partnering with Isomer, we can go beyond that and support the LP side.”
As we collectively batten down the hatches and do our best to ride out the economic tempest that’s been thrust upon us, there seems to be no better time to regroup and see what we can do better in the next outing.
For the longest time, we’ve read the stories of VC firms offering value add, with “operator experience” generally appearing close to the top of that list, but perhaps knowing how to build a company isn't quite enough.
Who’s adding value to the VCs? And perhaps more importantly, who’s adding value to the LPs that in turn support these VCs?
It would appear that a restructuring and rethinking of the way venture capital functions in Europe is afoot, and I’d expect that we’ll see further activity in this area coming quite soon.
If we really are going to ride out the storm, perhaps the best time is now to remember the phrase most often attributed to John F. Kennedy, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
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