As a Co-Founder at venturerock, Marc Wesselink is on a mission to advance technology, science, and innovation to co-create and grow the next generation of global tech companies. venturerock is a digital venture capital platform and ecosystem of founders, backers, and venture builders who share a vision of changing systems, augmenting human reality, and setting the infrastructures for tomorrow’s economy. In our interview with Marc, check out what’s new with venturerock and Venture Studios.
1. Hi Marc, thank you for agreeing to do the interview. What have you been up to since our last chat?
Thank you for having me. When you are in the venture-building business, everything is very dynamic. A lot has been happening since our last chat in 2022, but one of the recent news I can share is that we have signed a Term Sheet to invest in Leapfunder. We are very excited to have them as a part of the venturerock Value-Chain Disruptors venture studio.
2. What’s new with venturerock, your early-stage venture building and venture capital platform? Tell us about the investment opportunities.
Indeed, venturerock is an all-in-one venture investment and building platform. We’ve set on a mission to advance technology, science, and innovation into the next generation of tech companies – from idea to series A and beyond.
We have just launched a €50M venturerock Seed Fund for Family Offices that is automatically co-investing with expert angels via another platform of ours called FundsUp. We have also launched a venturerock Fund for Studios of €250M for institutional investors. So we have an ecosystem of different types of funds that enable us to invest in companies from pre-seed to Series A+ based on transparency & evidence in a very scalable and almost automated way.
3. Tell us about the founders, backers, and builders at venturerock. How did you hack the system to create the ultimate venture-building machine?
We are fortunate to have the support of a growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, venture builders, techies, scientists, domain experts, and strategic partners. These are the founders, backers, and builders who joined us on our mission.
The ultimate venture-building machine is what we refer to as the way venturerock builds ventures. Our approach is built on decades of learning by doing, firsthand, and best practices from the industry. All of our ventures go through our VROS© venture-development program and are supported throughout their growth journey from pre-seed to series A with talent, technology, network, and tooling. We are also building a co-pilot, using AI, that will help our founders make smart, data-driven decisions, avoid critical mistakes, and speed up time to series A.
4. At venturerock, you’re obsessed with turning the problems of tomorrow into successful companies. Tell us about the Venture Studios.
Currently, we have 3 Venture Studios: Value-Chain Disruptors (Amsterdam, NL), Game Changers (Los Angeles), and Urban (Dubai). Each Studio will contain 20 companies max and are structured as an evergreen.
Value-chain Disruptors is the first venture studio we launched, which builds companies that focus on rewiring global and hyperlocal value chains for resilience, adaptability, and sustainability. One of the value chains we are focusing on is Startups hence our investment in Leapfunder. We now have the first 3 ventures in this studio that have reached series A readiness following our methodology – WE.VESTR, UNL, and Compleye.
Game Changers is based in Los Angeles and invests in ventures in sports tech, media, and culture. Startups in this venture studio are reimagining sports beyond the game, from game data infrastructures, like POGR, (AI-driven personalization and player/athlete-driven in-game economics). Our Urban studio is currently working on 3 projects, Drop-ET (shared last mile logistics), Gus.earth (creates business models around green parks in cities), and Buildpass (decentralized passport for buildings to register all the materials in a building)
We are preparing the launch of two more venture studios in 2024 – br. AI.ns focused on Gen AI and its applications in Singapore & South East Asia, and a DeepTech studio in the Netherlands.
5. What do you think is going well in the startup ecosystem in the Netherlands at the moment? Which challenges is the ecosystem facing?
Access to seed funding is still a challenge as the startup landscape is fragmented and there still needs to be more collaboration between local ecosystems.
Our goal is to bridge the gap between startups and capital and bring much-needed transparency to all stakeholders. We do so through our all-in-one platform. We navigate startups through their growth, measure their performance, and allocate capital based on evidence and audible data. In doing so, we reduce risks associated with the early stages and safeguard venture success… show us the evidence and the capital will follow. We use it ourselves to show it works to inspire a lot of other parties to use the same methodology & technology.
Additionally, we foster synergies within each portfolio and cross-studios. By sharing technology, resources, and talent, we help startups avoid “reinventing the wheel” in silo and reduce time and costs by building on top of each other’s technology.
Thank you very much for sharing what’s new. We wish you & venturerock the best of luck.
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