Lakestar enjoys investing in Internet and technology companies, with a specific focus on business models that can achieve global scale quickly. Leaving alone the technical framework, historically they like B2C models and markets where the founder has a passion for changing the market in a considerable way. The Lakestar II fund, which they announced in 2015, will be used to invest in “all stages”, though it will particularly focus on early-stage and growth-stage investments across a “wide range of sectors”. Given the firm’s focus on the U.S. and Europe, it says it aims to “embrace” connections between the two regions — in other words, it wants to help foster relationships between complementary companies in its portfolio.

Experience

They have had tremendous success investing early in marquee billion euro brand names. In addition, they have invested at the founding stages of over 25 early stage companies. They take an extremely hands-on, or entrepreneurial, approach to investing alongside stellar management teams. They strongly believe that the key to successful investing is not just in finding the next marquee Internet brand – but in helping create it.

How much do they invest?

Lakestar announced in 2015 a fresh €350 million fund (Lakestar II), as the venture capital-firm looks to invest more money into European and U.S. startups. They can do €500,000, but they can also do €45 million as an investment. The two or three biggest companies in Lakestar I are the ones where they seeded and went all the way, or where they are still the only VC in.

This makes a difference to them

Lakestar invests in highly disruptive technology companies across all stages of their lifestyle – seed to growth – and across consumer and B2B business models. Most importantly, Lakestar has been a preferred partner for US entrepreneurs considering international expansion, as well as European entrepreneurs wanting to go global.