Satellites, Biology and Big Machines - My Investment Activities in 2019

I had 17 companies in my portfolio at the beginning of 2019. Consistent with my pace in previous years I made three new investments across a wide spectrum of B2B software spaces: 

• Geosite is an enterprise SaaS platform for spatial data that leverages the proliferation in satellite imagery sources and distributed sensor systems.
  Founder and CEO Rachel Olney came up with the idea when she studied the impact of the availability of small satellites on the military. Geosite now is on a mission to make geospatial data available to a broad range of businesses.
  
  
  
• Turbine models the inner mechanisms of cancer to discover novel protein targets and precision biomarkers.
  I was introduced to Szabi and the team via Jens-Philipp Klein from Atlantic Labs in June 2018 and was simply blown away by the team’s vision to radically change drug discovery. 

• Remberg digitizes asset service processes for manufacturers, service providers and operators.
  Fellow angel investor Manuel Grossmann introduced me to co-founder and CEO David Hahn and the team back in April 2018. David, Hagen, Cecil and Julian quickly navigated through multiple pivots and are now acquiring customers at lightning speed.
  
  
  

Throughout the year I met with hundreds of startups and had in-depth discussions with about a dozen. Finding the right market and building a true MVP often takes longer than the founders are anticipating, and being able to distinctly describe the use case - buyer, user, value proposition and ROI - is as challenging as ever. The majority of interesting companies are bringing software to new industries and new buying centers, although I also met a few interesting founders who have invented a better mousetrap (Zoom, anyone?).

I worked with many of the more recent investments and helped in positioning, fundraising, hiring, mentoring, GTM, and intros to my network.

Fewer companies than expected from my portfolio raised additional funding: Assuming that there should be a funding event every 18 months, I could have expected up to eight raises in 2019. Yet only three of my existing portfolio companies raised and I was invited to participate in two of these. Decisionnext raised a Series A, and two other companies raised bridge extensions at significantly higher valuations. There were no markdowns in my portfolio. 

On the downside: Employeechannel (formerly known as Navera formerly known as Trustnode) called it quits eight years after founding and multiple funding rounds. 

My resolutions for 2020: Keep investing and find teams and companies that address previously unexplored spaces and have the potential to own a category. 

Image sources: wikipedia, NIH, hydraulicpress.com