European Solo GP Robin Capital closes first fund with €15M to play with | TechCrunch

Robin Capital — the Germany-based, Solo GP-led VC fund by former entrepreneur Robin Haak — has hit its final close of ‘Robin Fund One’ at €13 million. Combined with its additional growth-focused investment vehicle of €2m, the fund now has a total of €15 million to play with. In the realm of European Solo GPs, who typically raise a lot less than their US equivalents, this is a decent figure. 

Launched in 2023, Robin Capital is aimed at European B2B mid-market enterprise SaaS startups, focusing on the DACH region, at the Pre-Seed and Seed stages. It’s deployed across sectors such as HR, AI, Fintech, Climate, DevOps, Robotics, and Industrial Tech. 

Some 28 companies are now in the portfolio, and half of the fund has already been deployed into companies such as Kombo Dev (Germany) and Phacet Labs (France).

Robin was founded in December 2022 by Haak, a former co-founder of Jobspotting (acquired by SmartRecruiters Inc. out of San Francisco in 2017), who put the first check into German neo-bank N26.

Haak’s fund has 70 Limited Partners, and includes GPs from Private Equity and Venture Capital firms, as well as founders and operators.

He has also managed to rope in some venture partners including Renaud Visage, former CTO of Eventbrite and current founder of Slate.VC; Jerome Ternynck,  founder of SmartRecruiters and the Rypples VC; and Lea Vajnorsky, co-founder of Wo\men Inc.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Haak said it had been quite a difficult environment to raise the fund in. 

“These one and a half years were probably the toughest times in venture, in history, due to the macroeconomics. I don’t have institutions in the fund, I don’t even have the EIF.”

However, he thinks the advantage has been having a wide network to draw on: “The LP base I have today are 70 people, and all of them are professionals… The good part now is it’s an amazing value-add community.”

Robin Capital joins the movement of other Solo GPs in Europe, many of whom have previously held roles as fund partner, entrepreneur, startup operator, or content creator (read: podcaster).

While Solo GPs can sometimes make faster decisions compared to full-blown, multi-partner funds, they typically operate more like Angels on steroids. But it can also mean faster access to their network, expertise, and audience, especially in the case of creators who have developed a personal brand.

Hypernova, a $25 million fund of fund soft-launched in 2022 to invest in Solo GPs in Europe.  

TechCrunch has identified 28 ‘Solo’ GP VCs launched in Europe over the last couple of years, although one or two (like 20VC and Unruly Capital) are now large enough to have brought in other partners, and are slowly exiting the ‘Solo’ phase:

14Peaks Capital
GP: Edoardo Ermotti

20VC
GP: Harry Stebbings

Air Street Capital
GP: Nathan Benaich

Amino Collective
GP: Manuel Grossman

Anamcara 
GP: Annelie Ajami

Backfuture Ventures
GP: Alex Theuma

Booom 
GP: Felix Plapperer 

Chalfen Ventures
GP: Mike Chalfen

Cocoa 
GP: Carmen Alfonso Rico

Common Magic:
GP: Sarah Drinkwater

Day One Ventures
GP: Masha Bucher

Entropy 
GP: Sam Cash

Firedrop 
GP: Pietro Invernizzi

Foreword 
GP: Declan Kelly

Helloworld
GP: Rodrigo Martinez

Inflection
GP: Alexander Lange

Lemonade Stand
GP: Siim Teller

Monte Carlo Capital
GP: Ian Sosso

Nomad Capital
GP: Marc McCabe

No Label Ventures
GP: Ramzi Rafih

NP-Hard Ventures 
GP:Anke Huiskes

Nebular
GP: Finn Murphy

OpenseedVC
GP: Maria Rotilu

Puzzle Ventures
GP: Gloria Baeuerlein

System.One
GP: Max Claussen

The Nordic Web
GP: Neil Murray

Underline Ventures
GP: Bogdan Iordache

Unruly Capital
GP: Stefano Bernardi