Speedinvest

Each of Speedinvest's six sector teams operates with its own dedicated general partners who hold investment committee authority. Oliver Holle serves as managing partner and CEO, but sector leads — such as Michael Schuster for Fintech or Rick Zullo for US deals — make the core deployment calls within their verticals. This is a deliberate architecture choice, aiming to replicate the autonomy of a boutique sector fund inside a multi-asset platform.

Speedinvest combines a traditional network-driven approach with what it calls the Speedinvest Pirates ecosystem — an invite-only network of founders, operators, and LPs designed to surface referrals. The firm also embeds platform-specialists in each team who build relationships with university spinouts, accelerator programs, and corporate venture units across its five European offices. Its sector-partner structure means each GP builds their own proprietary sourcing channels inside their industry, rather than relying on a centralized funnel.

Speedinvest is a traditional venture capital firm that manages third-party capital from institutional limited partners, not a family office. The entity — SPEEDINVEST GMBH — is the management company for a series of closed-end venture funds. Despite being headquartered in Vienna, which has a concentration of family offices, Speedinvest is exclusively a VC fund manager.

Speedinvest is primarily a direct investor making equity investments from its own funds into startups at pre-seed through Series B. It does not operate a fund-of-funds program and is not known to make LP commitments into other venture managers. The platform occasionally co-invests alongside other VCs and corporate investors in later-stage rounds for existing portfolio companies through dedicated follow-on vehicles.

Speedinvest deploys across pre-seed to Series B, with a heavy concentration at seed stage. Its initial check sizes range from EUR 500,000 to EUR 2 million for first institutional rounds, with significant follow-on reserves for breakout companies. The firm's 2022 flagship fund raised EUR 500 million, enabling larger initial positions and more follow-on capacity than its earlier, sub-EUR 200 million fund families (per the firm, 2022).

Speedinvest does not publicly list explicit sector exclusions, but its six dedicated team structure defines its affirmative focus — Enterprise Software & SaaS, Fintech, Health & BioTech, Climate & Industrial Tech, Marketplaces & Consumer, and US early-stage. Sectors outside these verticals, including deep biotech therapeutics, pure hardware without a software component, and defense-tech, are not known to be active mandates. The firm has also indicated it does not invest in cryptocurrencies or blockchain infrastructure as a standalone strategy.

Speedinvest is deeply embedded in the European tech infrastructure through multiple vectors. Oliver Holle was a co-founder of the Austrian Angel Investors Association and the firm has close ties to Factory Berlin, the German startup campus. Several Speedinvest partners — including Michael Schuster — run active angel syndicates that feed the seed pipeline. The firm also operates as a key institutional anchor for Central and Eastern European founders seeking a bridge to Western European and US venture markets.