Speedinvest: The Vienna Syndicate That Defied European VC Gravity
Speedinvest was born in 2011—not in London, Berlin or Paris, but in Vienna. At the time, Austria’s startup scene barely existed. The founders weren’t high-profile ex-founders or Sand Hill veterans. They were a ragtag crew of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and ex-corporate operators who shared a conviction: Europe needed better seed capital, and it wasn’t coming from the traditional venture hubs.
Among them was Oliver Holle , a former founder of mobile app development firm 3united (sold to VeriSign in 2006). Holle was deeply embedded in Austria’s nascent tech scene and frustrated by the lack of risk capital. He teamed up with Daniel Keiper-Knorr , an angel investor and ex-private equity guy, and a few other Austrian business insiders.
They didn’t have a playbook, but they had a plan: invest small, invest early, and help relentlessly. Their bet was that hands-on operators could outperform suits from finance.
The name Speedinvest reflected their thesis: fast decisions, high velocity, lots of hustle. It wasn’t subtle, but it stuck.
Speedinvest’s first fund was €10M—tiny, even by 2011 standards. But they overperformed. Early hits included Shpock , the “flea market app,” later sold to Schibsted, and Koch Media , sold to Embracer.
But what set Speedinvest apart was its platform mentality . Well before a16z industrialized it, Speedinvest built vertical teams with domain expertise in fintech, marketplaces, deep tech, and health. They didn’t just offer term sheets—they offered talent sourcing, go-to-market playbooks, and cross-border scaling help.
They embraced the unsexy: Austria, Switzerland, Eastern Europe. They did enterprise SaaS and industrial automation while others chased copycat apps.
And they moved fast:
Fund II: €58M (2015)
Fund III: €100M+ (2018)
Fund IV: €190M (2021)
Today: Over €1B in assets under management across multiple sector-focused vehicles.
Speedinvest’s real superpower? Talent scouting. They backed wefox in Germany, Bitpanda in Austria, TIER Mobility in Berlin, and CoachHub early. They were one of Europe’s few funds that truly knew how to operate across multiple geographies and sectors. They didn’t pretend to be pan-European. They were.
They became known for backing gritty founders, often in overlooked regions. They weren’t tourists in the Baltics or the Balkans—they were locals in those markets.
By the early 2020s, they were everywhere:
Offices in Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, and Munich
Sector teams for fintech, deep tech, climate tech, and marketplaces
LPs including EIF, HNWIs, and institutional investors
And despite their size, they stayed in the seed lane—resisting the urge to chase late-stage hype.
In 2024 and 2025, Speedinvest made several high-profile hires:
Emily Segal , former head of EMEA partnerships at Stripe, joined as a Partner in fintech
Andrej Hladky , ex-Accel scout, came in to co-lead their CEE push
Fatima Rezaei , former product lead at Doctolib, now drives their health tech investments
These hires reflect Speedinvest's shift from “scrappy Austrian syndicate” to one of Europe’s most respected early-stage VCs.
Their portfolio now includes over 300 startups, with >30 exits and multiple unicorns. But their culture hasn’t changed much: founder-first, operator-led, no BS.
Speedinvest isn’t flashy. They don’t chase headlines. But they’ve become a benchmark for what early-stage VC in Europe should look like: deeply local, operationally engaged, and allergic to arrogance.
In the Alps, they’re known simply as Speedi . And for founders in Europe, that name increasingly means one thing: you’re in good hands.
