Add Partners

Michael de Giorgio and Charles Illingworth jointly lead investment decisions as Managing Partner and Partner respectively. Both spent their earlier careers at Intel Capital before founding Add Partners in 2004. The partnership structure has remained stable for over 20 years, with the two principals driving all deal sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management without a large investment committee or rotating leadership. This concentrated decision-making enables the firm to move quickly on growth-stage opportunities.

Add Partners sources primarily through its long-standing founder networks built over two decades of European venture investing. The firm's repeat-founder relationships are a notable advantage — founders who worked with de Giorgio and Illingworth in previous ventures often return to Add Partners for their next company's growth round. Add Partners also benefits from its position as a bridge to US growth investors; European founders who want to prepare for eventual Silicon Valley crossover rounds seek Add Partners' imprimatur. The firm does not operate a scout network or content-marketing funnel typical of earlier-stage funds.

Add Partners writes first institutional cheques at the growth stage, typically €5M to €20M per round. The firm leads or co-leads rounds and seeks a board seat where possible. It targets companies that have achieved product-market fit and initial revenue traction, stepping in after angel and seed rounds but before the large US crossover funds that have increasingly dominated European late-stage venture. This is the structural gap Add Partners was founded to fill.

The firm concentrates on Western and Northern Europe, with a particularly strong track record in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Nordics. Portfolio companies such as FINN (Munich) and Marley Spoon (Berlin/Amsterdam) reflect this regional concentration. Add Partners does not invest in Southern or Eastern Europe as a core strategy, nor does it pursue direct investments in North America or Asia — its role is to back European companies until they are ready to attract global growth capital.

Add Partners runs a single, unified fund strategy. The firm does not operate separate seed, venture, growth, credit, or secondaries vehicles. All capital is deployed through a concentrated growth-stage technology fund. This singularity differentiates Add Partners from multi-product platforms and means limited partners gain exposure to a single, focused investment thesis rather than a family of funds with varying risk profiles.

Add Partners regularly co-invests alongside other growth-stage specialists and will syndicate rounds when appropriate, but the firm prefers to lead or co-lead transactions where it can shape governance. The firm does not operate a dedicated co-investment vehicle for limited partners. Its co-investors frequently include US-based crossover funds that enter at later stages, making Add Partners' early growth-stage positioning a complementary rather than competitive relationship with Silicon Valley capital.

Add Partners does not invest in therapeutics, medical devices requiring FDA or CE mark clinical trials, deep hardware requiring heavy capital expenditure before revenue, or consumer social platforms. The firm's portfolio reflects a preference for capital-efficient business models — enterprise software, digital marketplaces, fintech infrastructure, and climate-related technology — where the path to unit economics can be demonstrated before significant growth capital is deployed. It also avoids pre-revenue biotech and defense technology.