New Forge

New Forge

New Forge is an angel investment club formed by a tight-knit group of serial entrepreneurs. Founding Partner Mirko Novakovic previously co-founded application performance monitoring firm Instana and IT consultancy codecentric. His co-investors come from the same alumni base: Fabian Lange and Raphael Weiner held VP roles at Instana, while Rainer Vehns and Lars Rückemann were co-founders and directors at codecentric. This concentrated operator experience defines the group's posture. The firm writes personal checks into pre-seed and seed-stage B2B technology companies, primarily across the DACH region. Portfolio composition reveals a heavy emphasis on developer tools, enterprise SaaS, and AI/ML infrastructure. Named positions span over four dozen startups, including HiveMQ (IoT messaging), Steadybit (chaos engineering), and QuestDB (open-source time-series database). Sectors tagged on the firm's website include InsurTech, FinTech, SpaceTech, HealthTech, LegalTech, and Blockchain, though the core density clusters around enterprise infrastructure, analytics, and MLOps tooling. New Forge lists eight partners on its website, most of whom are active founders or executives at their own companies. The group does not disclose assets under management or a deployment target, consistent with an angel syndicate operating outside a traditional closed-end fund model. Recent portfolio activity includes support for HiveMQ's Series A round and the launch of Steadybit's chaos engineering platform. The firm's structure acts as a commingled operator network rather than a managed investment vehicle. Its partners are themselves product and engineering leaders, which New Forge uses to market deal flow and post-investment support. The architecture mirrors a rolling holding company of technical founders — no external LPs, no stated fund lifecycle — making it functionally a private investment club for ex-Instana and codecentric leaders.