Pitch Me: what Europe's largest climatetech VC fund is looking for

“I was told with the World Fund, ‘this won’t work. You've been a journalist, Danijel, you've been working for Angela Merkel, and now you're raising the biggest climatetech VC in Europe? Forget it.’

“Just weeks ago, someone who had been my boss at a company I used to work for, told me; ‘you know what, Danijel? I would never have expected that something comes out of you because you've always been a dreamer.’

“And I was like, ‘Okay, think about this sentence. Maybe it’s because I'm a dreamer.’

Danijel Visevic is Co-founder of the recently launched?World Fund, Europe’s biggest climatetech venture capital fund.

To setup a climatetech fund of this scale, the World Fund would have to operate differently from the get-go:

“We did a pre-closing, that's something very unique.?Usually as a venture capital fund you have a first closing, then you invest, and you have a final closing a year later.

“But we knew if we want to raise 350 million Euros as a first time fund, we need a portfolio, otherwise, those institutional investors who can invest 10-20-30 million won't invest.?So we needed a portfolio and we decided to do a pre-closing and ask investors to give us money before the first closing so that we can build a portfolio.

“Basically, we asked the pre–closers to take risk earlier, not to take any interest rates from those who come later.?

“And everybody told us, ‘nobody will give you money and go earlier into risk,’ and we had more than 150 investors who in a pre–closing gave us 100 million. Now we are very close to closing another 100 million at the first closing,” says Danijel.

His motto? “Just do things. Don't listen to people who say it won't work, you will only know when you have tried.”

Since its October launch last year, the World Fund has on average 9xed the value of its investments; “we really have shown that we can make money out of money, says Danijel, “so that's super important to get the traditional investors on board.”

He puts the funds’ success down to its exceptional, award-winning team: “so Tim Schumacher, my Co-founder, was awarded Best Male investor in 2020. Daria Saharova was awarded Best Female Investor in 2020 by the German Startup Award Association. Craig Douglas, our fourth partner, has been in the climatetech space already for 15 years and they all have a huge track record.

Something else they did differently, which increased investor confidence in their ability to understand and accurately assess the potential of climatetech innovation, was to build a team that consists almost entirely out of scientists; “they all have a venture capital or investment background, but they are chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, we have a nuclear physicist, a chemist, a mathematician.”

Danijel’s route into climatetech investing was far from conventional. He had spent the better part of 20 plus years as a journalist and a Green Party member – eager to make a difference. But he gradually grew wary of the limitations of media and politics.

In 2018 he transitioned from writing about the investment and startup scene to working for one of the most successful venture capitalists in Europe, Project A.

“I asked myself how I can contribute best to help reverse global warming and the climate crisis and save humankind. And I knew that being a journalist and writing stories is inspirational, but you are still, in a way, passive. I learned from politics that even if you deeply understand the consequences of the climate crisis, you can't achieve what's necessary.?

“And I knew that entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas were the most powerful. I saw the huge investment gap in Europe, and thanks to the network I had, we decided to build the World Fund.”

It was after seeing Greta Thunberg’s Friday for Future marches that you say you had your moment of going down the rabbit hole and doing a lot of research and really seeing the full picture and how just absolutely urgent the climate crisis is?

Yes, it’s hard to describe in words. I mean, urgent – whatever word we use – can’t describe what is ahead of us. It’s just catastrophic. It can’t be compared to anything that has happened to humankind before and it already started.

What gives you hope in the face of the climate emergency?

I can boil it down to two things.?

1) I know that humankind is brilliant, we have brilliant minds.?

And I'm lucky to be in a position as an investor to invest in those brilliant founders, who develop technologies that can make a leap and make a difference already within this decade and the next.

So it's possible to reverse global warming before we reach the tipping points and it's super, super, super urgent. But I also see this technology and these people and I see how powerfully we can disrupt with these entrepreneurial ideas. So this is something that helps me and gives me more than just hope, it gives me conviction.?

2) ‘In between the disasters there will be wonderful sunny days where you enjoy life.’

Global warming won't be reversible before we reach 1.5 - 1.6 degrees of warming. That means that what we have today will accelerate no matter what we do. If you read the IPCC report, global warming is not reversible before 2055.?And what keeps me positive – it's a psychologist who said this in an interview about climate anxiety – even then, most of the time, there won't be catastrophic situations.

It's important for me because I have children; even then, they will have days and weeks of wonderful life. In between, there will be those disasters, but in between the disasters there will be wonderful sunny days where you enjoy life.

What sort of companies does the World Fund invest in?

We call it the CPP, the Climate Performance Potential, that we first assess before we dig deeper into a startup or a team of founders:?

We invest in companies that can save at least 100 megatons CO2 or equivalent in emissions per year.?

There's powerful climatetech out there that can already make a leap in this decade, and save more than 100 megatons. This is something we are excited about.?

Do you have examples of companies you’ve invested in recently?

I’m pretty proud of?Juicy Marbles, a company from Slovenia that has developed a steak fillet mignon that’s purely plant based – it has the texture of, and it's bloody like meat. You can grill it like meat, it tastes like meat and it is healthier. It's made of fermented soya. It's addressing meat eaters, those men who really like to grill.?

The?QOA?company – a female-led spin off from the Technical University in Munich – have produced something that’s the equivalent of the cocoa bean. Producers of chocolate or anything else that uses cocoa can now use this instead of cutting down rainforests or planting cocoa trees in monocultures.

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