BERLIN, 28. March 2022 AlphaQ Venture Capital (AQVC) is a new and innovative venture capital fund of funds, a so-called “VC for VCs”, domiciled in Germany. The vehicle has an initial targeted fund volume of half a billion Euros. Initiated and run by a team of experienced European startup founders and VC investors, it is AQVC’s decisive effort to strengthen the venture capital ecosystem by backing established tier-1 and emerging breakout fund managers.
The fund is going to invest globally, with a strong focus on Europe. The capital will be allocated to 50-60 funds which in turn finance more than 1,200 early and growth stage startups. AQVC is screening over 2,000 VC funds per year for investment and has secured allocations or already invested in 50 top-tier VC funds like Northzone, Partech, Speedinvest, Headline, Nucleus Capital, White Star Capital and many others.
Stephan Heller, Founding Partner of AQVC: "First and foremost, success in Venture Capital depends on access to the best performing founders and VC fund managers. At AQVC, some of us are former startup founders ourselves who have successfully built and scaled dozens of tech companies. We know what it takes to start, run and exit a company. Therefore, as investors into VC funds, we focus on founders and investors alike. After all, investors only prevail if founders do, too.”
The AQVC team has developed an innovative stock corporation structure, which helps to overcome the common volatility, liquidity, and transparency constraints of classical VC funds. By the simple purchase of AQVC stocks, investors get access to a portfolio of established tier-1 and emerging breakout VC funds. “Venture capital should be a central building block of every long-term investment strategy. We make the asset class more accessible and convenient to invest in: With AQVC you get VC superstars in a single stock”, adds Stephan Heller.
The capital gains of the fund are going to be accumulated and reinvested, resulting in compounding effects and long-term value creation. This enables the management to take a more sustainable approach to investing without the disadvantages of a typical closed investment cycle.
AQVC offers three major innovations:
Startups in digital technology will drive a lot of impact and value creation in the next decades. AQVC invests in top VC funds that are focused on fast-growing startups in large markets and who invest across different stages from pre-Seed to pre-IPO and anytime in between. This concentrated and actively managed VC portfolio is optimized for low volatility and high returns, mixing different fund vintages, stages, strategies, and geographies across Europe, Israel, and the US.
Venture Capital at large has grown over the past 20 years to be one of the best performing asset classes. European VC funds outperformed the US counterparts during this period. There are hundreds of new VC funds and a rise of micro VCs and specialized managers (Web3, Health, Neo-ecology, Deep Tech etc.), growing the asset class by over 25% annually. This growing market size and fragmentation increases complexity for investors. It requires a new breed of experts with strong access to the best managers of tomorrow, to generate excess returns whilst driving real-world impact. AQVC is run by an international and experienced team of VC fund investment professionals but also operators and founders, making it one of a kind in the space.
In general, VC funds are illiquid with a long-term investment horizon, to balance the highly volatile nature of startups they invest in. Therefore, traditional VC funds do not work on the stock exchange per se. However, AQVC’s unique fund of funds structure as a stock corporation solves this. Through the purchase of AQVC shares, investors get access to a balanced portfolio of established tier-1 VC funds with a proven track record as base allocation and a well diversified portfolio of highly promising emerging breakout VCs. Giving investors the opportunity to participate in some of the greatest technological innovations of the coming decades with a single investment.
Katrin Suder, former senior McKinsey partner as well as state secretary, now investor and board member across private and public companies, clearly supports AQVC: “AQVC is creating new access to venture capital as an asset class. The team wants to be the gateway to venture capital for large institutional investors, while at the same time democratizing the asset class for retail investors. By eliminating accessibility and liquidity barriers, they solved two problems with one solution for professional and retail investors alike.”