The world immediately is riven by cultural variations, political divisions, and geopolitical disputes — a difficult surroundings for any investor trying to find startups that may develop giant sufficient to ship venture-scale returns.
Kompas VC, which operates out of workplaces in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Tel Aviv, has developed a regionally delicate technique to assist it navigate, and put money into, this fragmented world. And it’s placing recent capital in direction of this method with a brand new €160 million fund ($187.5 million), the agency instructed TechCrunch.
“We see the world actually falling into three important spheres of financial exercise, of political exercise — the U.S., Europe, and China,” Sebastian Peck, companion at Kompas VC, instructed TechCrunch. “We definitely see immediately that these three domains observe very, very completely different trajectories.”
Kompas has staked its status on backing startups that sort out core industrial competitiveness challenges, from manufacturing and provide chains to crucial infrastructure and sustainability. These themes haven’t disappeared, however completely different areas emphasize them to various levels.
“There was lots of enthusiasm round these themes again in 2021,” Peck mentioned of the yr that Kompas was based. “In 2026, we’re in a really, very completely different paradigm. It’s all about AI, it’s all about quick development, very explosive development. A number of massive matters that we partially play to but additionally should not actually a part of what we stand for.”
“Our focus is within the bodily world, something round producing bodily items,” he added, saying that Kompas focuses on startups engaged on decarbonization, productiveness, and danger administration. “We’ve discovered our area of interest.”
That area of interest seems to be fairly broad. Reshoring is en vogue in practically each market, and relying on the startup, these markets usually have greater than sufficient scale for a agency like Kompas.
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Although dwarfed by some enterprise funds today, Kompas’s newly raised second fund ought to give it ample alternative to guide early stage rounds with checks starting from €3 million to €5 million.
As a European fund, Kompas has entry to a variety of founders and startups within the area. But it surely should weigh how international fragmentation would possibly restrict the potential for some to ship enterprise returns. Peck cites prefab housing for example. The method is broadly utilized in Scandinavian nations, however it isn’t as frequent in Germany or the remainder of Europe, not to mention america.
“It looks like such an intuitive resolution. It’s a product that’s successfully an industrial product. It needs to be extremely scalable,” he mentioned. In the end, the rationale it doesn’t resonate exterior Scandinavia has extra to do with “cultural conditioning” than the know-how itself, he mentioned. “In that trade, if the U.S. isn’t the market you may go to, it’s essential to look very, very fastidiously at whether or not there’s a big sufficient addressable market.”
The fragmentation extends past housing. For instance, in Europe, sustainability continues to be broadly enticing, in distinction to the U.S., the place the theme doesn’t have the cachet it did a number of years in the past.
Nonetheless, loads can change shortly, Peck acknowledges. “We’re investing over 10-, 15-year horizons. That’s a number of legislative intervals to bridge, and generally issues swing in surprising instructions.”
The shifting panorama poses a problem, but additionally a possibility for a smaller investor like Kompas. “I feel there’s an incredible house for extremely targeted, extremely specialised, smaller funds like ours to be the primary check-in and convey sweep up sure themes and sure founders,” Peck mentioned.
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