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The industrial sector – producing goods through manufacturing, processing, and assembly – is undergoing a profound transformation. Driven by evolution of market dynamics, geopolitical tensions, and environmental goals, this transformation seems inevitable. Several waves of technological innovation seem poised to overlap and ripple through economies and value chains in a well-known pattern of boom-and-bust cycles.
The stakes are especially high for Europe. The industrial enterprises that it has relied on for centuries to sustain prosperous societies, economic growth, and social stability need to innovate to stay competitive. The continent has historically also mobilized less financial capital than other regions towards the development and deployment of novel technologies. On the other hand, Europe has undeniable strength and resources – prolific universities and research institutions, motivated entrepreneurs, production efficiency and quality, financially healthy enterprises, and an excellent reputation in the global business world for industrial goods.
We thus believe that we are at a crucial point in its history. The challenge is historical, but so are the opportunities to create a better future for the next generations. We choose to be optimistic and believe in the ability of Europeans to innovate, build, persevere, and act as a force for good in the world.
We believe in a renewed European industrial dynamism powered by technologies that matter.
Our mission is to back the future of European industry and empower innovative early-stage companies to reshape industrial value chains and become global leaders.
By providing capital and support to the continent's most ambitious founders, Matterwave aims to help build category winners that form the backbone of a thriving European industrial ecosystem.
Our role is to find, fund, and empower those entrepreneurs which turn technological advancements into hardware and software products fundamentally improving industrial value chains. These companies are usually categorized by other investors as Climate Tech, Deep Tech, or Industrial Tech. In our view, however, the dividing lines between these terms are rather blurred; many innovations can be assigned to more than one of these three areas. The technologies commercialized by our portfolio companies will create a sustainable, sovereign, digitalized, and more resilient European industry in multiple ways.
We are deeply committed to our mission because our investments impact the largest sectors of the European economy and our shared prosperity. If we are successful, we will not only create outsized returns for our investors, but also a much broader impact:
- Contributing to thriving societies and economies by increasing productivity, value creation and job creation in key industries
We provide our investors with exposure to the future we need.
There is no single successful strategy in venture. We have adopted one that reflects our view of the world, fits the market that we operate in, and provides value for the investors and founders that we partner with.
It goes without saying that we have invested decades and resources into building a strong network that brings us opportunities and insights. It is also part of our approach to go above and beyond in helping entrepreneurs at every step. But if we were to highlight why our strategy stands out in the VC crowd, it would be due to the set of criteria that we use for selecting the companies we invest in. These criteria derive from beliefs about the market that we have formed and refined over time.
We look for world-class teams combining ambition, execution power, technical prowess, and domain knowledge. We value strong technology IP that we feel comfortable assessing because we know that it is core to creating and sustainably building up customer value. We also emphasize capital efficiency because it allows a company to stay flexible and resilient across cycles.
We are very thoughtful about our portfolio construction. We try to optimize the relationship between economic potential and capital requirements of our companies. This approach enables us to build up a much broader and non-correlated portfolio of different technologies and business models that captures the full scope of the industrial transformation opportunity. In short, a diversified portfolio approach and not a strategy predicated hype and hope.
We also think differently about exits. We can’t time exit markets well into the future, so we focus on building inherently valuable assets that attract a broad set of potential buyers – large industrials, big tech players, PE funds, well-capitalized industrial SMEs. Trade sales are the most probable exits and, in such a case, valuations depend on the buyers’ cash positions, public trading metrics and the strategic priority to access the technology. When investing, we need to envision a buyer universe and a path to exit within our fund lifetime. We can generate excellent 3-5x fund returns from a string of 5-10x exits and a low write-off rate.
We can humbly claim that Matterwave Ventures has the necessary set of skills and approach required to execute this investment strategy successfully. We have the deep technical knowledge and experience to look past the hype and judge technical risk accurately to find winners with excellent risk/return profiles. Compared to monothematic small VCs, we invest across a broad array of non-correlated areas, thus offering portfolio diversification and capturing a bigger share of the industrial transformation opportunity.
To achieve our mission, we have assembled a world-class team and diverse team - not only from different European regions but also with different academic and professional backgrounds.
The Matterwave team combines deep technical expertise with decades of experience in investing in industry-shaping technologies. Our investment professionals hold advanced degrees in fields like engineering, physics, computer science, or economics. This academic foundation equips us to assess opportunities correctly and thoroughly, but also to be thought partners to founders executing on complex product roadmaps.
Equally important is our team's extensive professional experience as entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, and investors. Having built and scaled companies ourselves, we know firsthand the challenges of bringing technologies to market. Our operational expertise and industry networks help open doors to partners, customers, and future financing rounds.
Above all, we are enthusiastic about our mission and strive to be highly approachable, honest, and committed allies to our portfolio company teams.
As a group of professional investors, we have amassed 65+ years of experience, executed 70+ investments, and held 50+ board mandates.
Being in venture capital since 2000, we have weathered many market cycles and have seen most failure modes and some success patterns. Consistent execution has resulted in strong top-quartile returns, as can be seen for vintage 2012 of our portfolio – over 25% net IRR, over 2x realized MOIC, and significant upside remaining. Even though it’s still early to reap rewards, vintage 2018 companies show excellent operational development, a 0% write-off rate, and tremendous success in attracting follow-on funding and non-dilutive grants.