The harder the challenge, the more you have to find ways to tilt the odds in your favour. It’s no surprise to us that some of the most ambitious and challenging missions like DeepMind and BioNTech were built by founders who had honed their craft in earlier ventures (Demis with Elixir Studios; Uğur, Özlem and Christoph with Ganymed Pharmaceuticals). We’re drawn to founders solving seriously hard problems where Plural’s team of experienced founders- and operators-turned investors could make all the difference.

Technology starts off neutral, but is influenced by the values and standards of the society in which it’s developed. Over the past decades, the most significant and globally influential technology companies have mostly come from the US and China. European leadership strengthens our sovereignty and allows European values to shape key technologies. We admire Spotify’s commitment to parental leave, the way DeepMind released AlphaFold for free, and how Linux pioneered open-source.

With only a couple of exceptions (Y Combinator, Entrepreneur First), venture capital has failed to scale. As organisations, most VCs embrace a law firm-like, hierarchical pyramid. We believe in startup ecosystems where the successful generation of founders take an active role in giving back to the next generation of builders. We’re building a scalable network of peers to make this happen. This thinking requires product-building mindset, scale and inclusivity, not just typical finance thinking. This is how we hope to have GDP level-impact on Europe.