In the middle of the current corona crisis Thomas Oehl and his partners Herbert Mangesius and Benedikt von Schoeler are announcing a new fund which is called “VSquared Ventures Fund” exclusively at Bits & Pretzels. As Thomas tells us, the new fund targets B2B Deep Tech startups and is situated in Munich, Germany. 

The three partners have a strong track record within the startup community already. With their first fund “Vito Ventures Fund 1” they did 15 investments and hit a volume of 23 million and a CoC valuation of 1.4. Interestingly, their first fund already focused on B2B Deep Tech technologies, which are defined by a substantial amount of R&D and therefore need a lot of funding with examples such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence. 

Their new fund has strong backing by renowned investors, such as Albert Büll, founder of the Hamburg-based project developer B&L, who consistently invests in scalable, future-oriented technologies, but also tech pioneers such as Sonnen founder Christoph Ostermann and Metaio founder Thomas Alt.

Its target size is $65 million with an investment period of 5 years. The ultimate goal of the “VSquared Ventures Fund” is to invest in technologies that will be transformational and tackle the worlds biggest and most fundamental social, economical and foremost environmental problems, as Thomas Oehl shares with Bits & Pretzels: ‍

“We have a claim for the fund: Embracing technologies that advance society (...) it's a broad claim but it sums up what we think technology should bring to the table today.”‍

The investors are convinced that Deep Tech will lead to a paradigm shift towards a pervasive data economy which will transform the biggest industries as Thomas points out: ‍

“(Our) investment focus will be new space companies, quantum computing, new materials, AI companies, robotics and enterprise software solutions that help you to create something new.”‍

The new “VSquared Ventures Fund” is located in Munich for good reasons: Thomas and his team are convinced that Europe will be the leading force behind this paradigm shift. Munich has a strong track record in the Deep Tech space and R&D with young companies such as the Aerospace company Lilium, AR company Metaio, the process mining company Celonis and more.

The team of VSquared Ventures also sees a strong advantage in major tech companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft having their engineering hub in Munich as well as corporates like BMW, Siemens and Allianz being situated here. Not to mention a lot of great talent gathers in the area because of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), two renowned universities, right around the corner. 

As for the corona crisis, Thomas is really optimistic looking forward, because in his view the current situation is speeding up digitalization that would have taken a lot longer otherwise (especially in corporates). So he sees a lot of opportunity for Deep Tech companies that are developing groundbreaking technologies.

In addition to that, those Deep Tech companies are very focused on developing their technologies rather than chasing revenue which means they are not as dependent on the current economic situation as others, he points out: ‍

“We started investing in development heavy companies already 3 years ago with our first fund because we believe that development heavy technologies are more future proof and help you to build a strong portfolio aside from market effects.”