Innovation Nest

Managing Partners and co-founders Piotr Wilam and Marek Kapturkiewicz lead the investment committee. Wilam brings founder-operator experience from scaling and exiting Onet.pl, Poland's largest web portal at the time. Kapturkiewicz contributes deep technology and cross-border operational expertise. The partnership model centralizes investment decisions through their joint oversight.

Sourcing leverages the founders' multi-decade networks in Polish and regional technology ecosystems, including the alumni networks of companies like Onet.pl. The firm's Krakow base and status as an early institutional CEE venture investor provide access to startup communities in Poland, the Baltics, and the broader Visegrád region. This local embeddedness offers insights into engineering talent pools and early-stage B2B companies before they attract broader international venture attention.

Innovation Nest operates as a venture capital firm managing pooled funds from institutional and private limited partners, not a single-family office. It has raised multiple early-stage funds, including a €25 million second fund in 2017 dedicated to CEE B2B software. The firm invests and reports as a standard venture fund manager.

Innovation Nest invests through direct equity deals in seed and early-stage B2B SaaS companies. Its primary model is direct venture investing from its own funds. There is no disclosed allocation to external fund commitments or a fund-of-funds strategy. Selected follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies are part of the deployment approach.

The firm focuses on seed and early-stage investments, with initial check sizes ranging from approximately €200,000 to €1.5 million. It targets companies that have built an initial product and are gaining early commercial traction in B2B software markets. Capital reserves are maintained for follow-on rounds as companies scale toward later-stage financing from larger international venture investors.

Innovation Nest is concentrated on B2B SaaS and enterprise technology, with no disclosed investments in consumer social media, hardware-intensive deep tech, life sciences, or pure marketplace models. Its portfolio reveals a disciplined avoidance of capital-intensive industries requiring substantial upfront non-software development costs, in favor of asset-light recurring-revenue software businesses.

The firm is rooted in the Polish entrepreneurial community through co-founder Piotr Wilam's role as a founder of Onet.pl, Poland's largest web portal acquired by Ringier Axel Springer. Innovation Nest was among the earliest institutional venture firms in Poland, helping shape the local startup ecosystem alongside accelerators and emerging regional funds. Its portfolio companies frequently attract later-stage capital from Western European and US venture firms, positioning the firm as an early bridge between CEE technical talent and global growth capital.