Investments

Our pride and joy

Founders & Investments

We are real fans of our founders. Great personalities who have innovative ideas and pursue them with enthusiasm and consistency. Our portfolio is still young and looking forward to growth. We make our decisions quickly, but carefully. On this page we give a small insight into our existing investments. 

Less waste, fewer CO2 emissions

hey circle - returnable packaging in e-commerce

Make a contribution with every order

Did you know that there are 4.5 billion parcel shipments in Germany alone every year - and the number is rising? Every second, disposable shipping packaging adds up to 50 kg of waste!
 
hey circle is changing that: with sustainable shipping bags and boxes that can be reused around 50 times and are available in eight different sizes. The robust packaging is optimized for shipping and warehouse logistics - and simply looks cool. The patented folding technology serves efficient empty returns; features such as a seal, tamper-evident seal and tether ensure theft protection or reduce the amount of filling material required.
The independent environmental consultancy Ökopol has determined the benefits of using reusable cartons with hey circle: 94% less waste and around ¾ of the CO2 emissions are saved compared to single-use cartons in 50 cycles. And because the reusable solution becomes more sustainable with each rotation, hey circle uses a strong, downstream deposit system with its IT solution. Doris Diebold and her team consistently put sustainability at the heart of the Munich-based startup.

Changing women's sports in Germany for the long term

FC - Viktoria Berlin women's soccer

Leading a regional league team to the Bundesliga.

Yes, you read that right: we have invested in a women's soccer club! What sounds surprising at first has a clear goal: to help bring about lasting change in women's sports.
How did the investment in FC Viktoria Berlin come about? 
Former German national soccer player and two-time soccer world champion Ariane Hingst, entrepreneur Verena Pausder, co-founder and managing director of BRLO Craft Beer Katharina Kurz, former TV presenter and journalist Felicia Mutterer, brand and marketing expert Lisa Währer, and manager and multiple supervisory board member Tanja Wielgoß spun off FC Viktoria Berlin 's women's regional league team from FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin e.V.
The common goal: to lead the women's team into the 1st Bundesliga and, at the same time, to establish a successful brand that serves as a role model throughout Germany and internationally and leads to more fairness, visibility and equal opportunities for women in sports.
The project is supported by a large network of sports, politics, business and media - and us :-) .

We joined in the second round of financing with 94 investors and an investment of around 1.2 million euros, and together with 180 investors we now form a great network to lead the team into the Bundesliga. By the way: over 70% of the investors are women.

Employee relief through child and senior care

Hey Nanny - for Work-Life Heroes

The platform for family-friendly companies

Especially as a working mum, it is often difficult to reconcile work and childcare. We know the problem and were therefore immediately enthusiastic about heynanny

Simply put, heynanny has made it its mission to fill a gap in coverage. School or daycare already over, but you're still stuck at work... This is not only a problem for parents, but also for companies. 

heynanny makes it possible to easily chat with registered nannies, check their availability and then book them. But this is not only for children, but also for adult care!

Whether it's a child, parent, or other family member in need of care- everyone will find it on HeyNanny, with a wide selection of available professionals who are a perfect fit for individual care needs .

Companies can use the offer to provide childcare professionals for employees' children. With a double effect: happy employees and a market positioning as a family-friendly company. 

We have some exciting stories with the founders Julia Kahle and Anna Schneider and so it was a quick decision when we were able to grab one of the last Business Angel tickets. And of course we celebrate so much Female Power!

Measuring and managing mental health

upstrive - Wellbeing for students

The first system that can measure and manage wellbeing in real time.

Upstrive has become one of our heartfelt projects. We are concerned about the many reports of mentally disturbed children and young people. As parents of school-age children, we know how difficult it is for teachers to intervene in a supportive way. When Upstrive founder Sven presented his startup to us, we were immediately enthusiastic. 
 
Upstrive is a real-time system to measure and manage wellbeing in schools and companies. The philosophy is that Wellbeing is the foundation for any kind of performance and success. Upstrive covers the entire process of data collection, analysis, implementation of measures and long-term trend detection. 
Incidentally, Upstrive is our first Austrian investment, although founder Sven Maikranz is a real cosmopolitan and has worked in many metropolises around the world. He spent the last years in Dubai before settling down in Conny's hometown Salzburg. Accordingly diverse is his team co-founder Audrey and part of the team continues to sit in Dubai, while the others are scattered around the world. 
 
The focus of upstrive is currently on implementing the sophisticated system in schools. Companies are a second target group that can be served via an adapted version. 
 
 

Knowledge platform of the future

Whyzzer - sharing knowledge

whyzzer mockup

The social media app with real added value through high-quality educational content.

Whyzzer is a social media app to share and consume knowledge, expertise and experience. Creators are first verified before they are able to post their own content. Users discover short, concise, curated and above all personalized knowledge content on Whyzzer.
 
The founders of Whyzzer, Eric Garsleitner and Benjamin Buthmann, want to use the social media character of the knowledge app to increase the motivation to constantly educate oneself and thus bring lifelong learning into the everyday life of every user. At the same time, the Whyzzer app enables users to share content quickly and easily with their community and thus discover new topics together. 
Through Whyzzer, creators have the opportunity to make premium content available to closed communities in so-called Circles for a fee and thus monetize it in-app. This is intended to improve the conversion rate and at the same time increase the creator's reach through re-sharing within the app. 
 
Whyzzer 's goal is to make qualified knowledge and expertise quickly and easily available anywhere in the world. "Whyzzer will be the place where I follow an influencer or CEO not because she posted a nice vacation picture but because I want to learn what she knows and what she's educating herself with."

Intuitive operating room assistance for surgeons

Hellstern Medical - more health in the operating room

So that surgeons do not become patients! noac - the first intuitive surgical assistant for surgeons.

There is increasingly innovative equipment for treating patients, but unfortunately the surgeons' workplace today looks exactly the same as it did 100 years ago. Surgeons stand for hours in pain in oblique forced postures. Due to the current workplace conditions, they sacrifice their health for that of the patients! Facts that shock: 75% suffer from musculoskeletal disorders, 40% take painkillers permanently, every fifth uses performance-enhancing substances. There are real people at the operating table - their muscle fatigue correlates with declining surgical precision. A new solution is needed for surgeons and patient safety.

Hellstern medical GmbH is developing noac - the first intuitive surgical assistant for surgeons - around the dual leadership of Sabrina Hellstern and Claudia Sodha in an interdisciplinary team of surgeons, engineers, electronics developers and ergonomics experts. It has been scientifically proven that noac significantly reduces pain and muscle fatigue. noac takes over the holding work of the body for the surgeons during the operation. Many operations have already been successfully performed on patients with noac

Hellstern Medical is the second investment we have made together with the Gateway Ventures platform.

Sustainable products from algae

Carbonwave - Algae for all cases

Intelligent use of brown algae to protect oceans and climate

Carbonwave, our first investment in the U.S., is completely dedicated to algae, solving several problems in one fell swoop.

Due to climate change and rising ocean temperatures, there has been an explosion of brown algae in recent years. The Caribbean and Mexican coasts are particularly affected. There, the algae carpet is washed ashore and endangers tourism as an important economic factor.

Brown algae are not only extremely rich in nutrients, but can also be processed into a wide range of sustainable products.
Carbonwave takes advantage of this fact, collects brown algae that have washed ashore, and incorporates them into a wide variety of production processes. In this way, fertilizers, various textiles, packaging materials, sports shoe soles, cosmetic products and nutritional supplements, among other things, can be sustainably produced from algae. 

The team around founder Geoff Chapin is characterized by an exceptionally high diversity. 

Forest reforestation with the help of technological innovations

Skyseed - new solutions for our forests

Skyseed

New forest ecosystems through drones, sensors and artificial intelligence

SKYSEED combines technological innovation with in-depth knowledge of forest ecosystems to ensure healthy, bio-diverse forests. 

According to current studies, approximately 277,000 hectares of forest need to be reforested in Germany. Due to the consequences of climate change (droughts, pest infestation, etc.), the conventional reforestation method of planting seedlings by hand is proving more difficult than ever. This is because the young seedlings are not able to cope with the new requirements.

SKYSEED is taking a new approach. By using drones and artificial intelligence, forests are analyzed and the optimal seed determined. The goal is to build a mixed forest that can adapt to changing conditions in the best possible way and at the same time is economically viable in the long term. The sowing of specially developed pellets is done by drone with a self-developed dropping mechanism. An automated monitoring system ensures that the sowing process is checked. 

Skyseed was founded by Ole Seidenberg and Dominik and Simon Wind. 

Financing for African founders with potential

Uncap - more impact is not possible

Enabling African founders to access financing with automated due diligence process

98% of early-stage companies in Africa do not have access to finance. This limits the enormous potential of these young companies to contribute to economic development, to realize their growth and innovation potential, and to create important jobs.

Uncap 's mission is to provide access to funding for every good founder in Africa, regardless of origin, educational background or gender. Through an automated, data-driven and scalable investment process, Uncap is able to invest in thousands of entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. The due diligence process focuses primarily on measuring the entrepreneurial potential of the founders using an algorithm, investment contracts are standardized and adapted to the local context, and portfolio management consists of a mix of behavioral economics and data analytics.  

Uncap was founded in 2019 by Franziska Reh and Isabelle Mohr.

Decentralized identity & SSI

w3-ff venture builder - a successful new start

Helping others to build a company.

The future of each individual's personal data lies in its self-determined digital management. The w3-ff venture builder emerged from one of our first startup investments: myEGO2go - a digital, blockchain-based platform for self-sovereign identity management (SSI), i.e. the user can control the ownership of his personal data and determine to whom and what information should be shared with third parties. myEGO's understanding is based on the idea of open, secure and user-centered ecosystems. 

myEGO itself did not work as a start-up for various reasons, but it is a good example of how assets can be reused once they have been created.

And so myEGO became the w3-ff venture builder, with which we support others in building a company that relies on SSI technology. It is also a good example of an excellent founder-investor relationship. Almost all of the original investors followed founder Tanja Ludwig to venture a new start with the technology already created and the experience gained. 

For us, the Venture Builder is a new, exciting path for which we are still looking for fellow campaigners. 

The myEGO brand and app still exist and we are convinced that it will become a real success story again. Sometimes it just takes a few detours to get there. 

 

Health & Precaution

mediaire - AI Assistant for Radiologists

Software solution to revolutionize the everyday life of radiologists.

mediaire offers radiologists and neurologists a viable, economical solution for quantitative brain volumetry and lesion characterization. The mdbrain software solution is fully integrated into a radiology center's local IT system, enabling both rapid report generation within minutes and the highest possible level of data protection. Patient data does not leave the practice or clinic in any form.

mediaire's mission is to sustainably improve the quality of diagnosis and treatment for patients through more efficient image data analysis and improved workflows in radiology.

mediairewas founded in Berlin in 2018 by Dr. Andreas Lemke and Dr. Jörg Döpfert.

For the investment in mediare, we used pooling with the investor network Gateway Ventures

Rethinking pest control

Traplinked Ltd.

Making pest control environmentally friendly, sustainable, future-proof and cost-efficient

Our father always advised us to look for business "that no one wants to do." And pest control is truly not the first thing two ladies think of. Until we met Tim Kirchhof and his team.

The young founder offers a digital-systemic solution to a very real problem: getting rid of pests as quickly as possible. What is a nuisance in private life can threaten the existence of some companies.

Traplinked is not about the indiscriminate use of control agents, but about a clever monitoring system that ultimately leads to uncompromised food hygiene, a toxic-free environment and a new standard of quality of life. 

 

Sustainable technologies

Storybox Ltd.

Storybox

All-in-one solution for enterprises to easily create, share and make video content searchable in a structured way

With StoryBox, companies can create and organize smartphone-based videos for any application scenario. With the help of the StoryBox app, videos can be created and shared step-by-step by any employee using intuitive templates (so-called "storyboards"). Image settings and scene lengths are suggested independently by the app, as is automated creation including corporate design. Content can be stored via the DSGVO-compliant StoryBox cloud and accessed, filtered and analyzed from anywhere. Well-known customers such as Iveco, Erste Group, Evonik, Alten, KTM already rely on StoryBox.

StoryBox makes it possible to communicate more effectively with video. Companies can use video to explain processes, document procedures, train employees, record events, generate social media content or present products.

Health & Precaution

XO Life - Therapy efficacy and safety

XO Life develops the leading real-world evidence platform for evaluating therapy efficacy and safety in the general population

XO Life was founded in 2018 and aims to build the largest real-world evidence platform for patient insights for all medications and therapies. Together with one of Europe's leading research institutes for patient-centered research, the PROMIS Institute Germany of the Charité, and the industry, patient experiences are to be systematically recorded across a wide range of indications and therapies. Pharmaceutical manufacturers will also be given the opportunity to record specific patient experiences about their products via their own connected white-label apps and to provide content for educational purposes. The platform is becoming a state-of-the-art solution for long-term patient engagement.

Sustainable technologies

Blackwave GmbH

Carbon as an economically exciting alternative to complex metallic lightweight components

Blackwave GmbH specializes in the hot extrusion of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (Carbon-SMC).
With the Carbon-SMC process, Blackwave realizes complex components that cannot be produced with conventional carbon manufacturing processes. The low cycle time and the high degree of automation guarantee a very economical production of lightweight components.The two founders, Bastian Behrens and Raphael Setz, got to know each other during their studies at the Technical University of Munich and gained early experience in the field of manufacturing carbon fiber reinforced plastics. In April 2016, Blackwave GmbH was founded, thus laying the foundation for today's company. With 16 employees by now, Blackwave GmbH serves its customers from the automotive, aerospace, sports equipment and mechanical engineering sectors.

Fair chocolate

fairafric ltd.

Making a piece of cocoa history by building a modern, solar-powered chocolate factory in Africa

Only just under 6% of the global turnover with chocolate arrives where the cocoa has grown, namely in West Africa! Most of the added value is generated outside Africa, especially in Europe.

Fairafric and the committed Munich-based founder Hendrik Reimers want to counteract this imbalance. To this end, fairafric is building a modern, solar-powered chocolate factory in Ghana and achieving 10 times more sales in the country of origin of the cocoa bean than before. 

This can create 50 jobs and a sustainable annual income of over $1 million in a rural region in Ghana. 

The motivation for this - rather conservative & social - investment were immediately clear. We love chocolate and are big Africa fans. Helping this wonderful continent to help itself is a great concern for us. If this happens with the commitment of a young Munich entrepreneur and a great product, all the better. 

CK Workspace

Working in Unterschleißheim

Come and work with us in our new CK Workspace in Unterschleissheim!

We offer offices, desks, meeting and workshop rooms in a cool, modern and personal atmosphere. 

Our special: a 200sqm roof terrace to work, eat or chill!