What does it take to build a lasting legacy in venture capital?

Robin Haak: It’s great to have you with us today, Rainer! Getting right into it, I wanted to start with the fact that the last years were quite a rollercoaster for startups. 2023 was a particularly tough year for startups and founders. There was a huge amount of unemployment and a lot of redundancies across the tech world. How was 2023 for you and for HV Capital? Have you seen a new kind of founder emerge?

Rainer Märkle: Yeah, it’s a great question to start with. As a firm around for 25 years, we have been through several cycles, know how to work our way through, and see the positive sides of corrections as well. 2022 and 2023 were tougher years as corrections of the hype cycle in 2021, but since then, we’ve seen many positive developments and changes. Just to highlight two, from very different perspectives.

First, I’d say in 2024 and into 2025 proved that European entrepreneurs and investors are ready to step up—to build groundbreaking technologies, step changes in innovation with the potential to truly transform industries, sectors, maybe even the world for the better. You could see the ingredients building up before, but 2024 is when it really came to life. And that’s something we hadn’t seen in previous years—or even in the decade before.

Second, on the transactional side, 2022 and 2023 were relatively quiet when it came to larger financing rounds in the growth segment. But from 2024 on, you’re seeing clear momentum and acceleration. So basically, the market is back, and that’s visible across the board in transactions. Those are the two things I’d highlight.

What do you think it is about the current moment that’s making people want to build really large, relevant companies that matter, often with real impact?

I think it’s, first of all, people realizing that the real problems aren’t solved by just marginal improvements in the consumer or enterprise space. Instead, these challenges, driven by discussions around sustainability, sovereignty, Europe’s place in the geopolitical and macroeconomic world, require step-change technologies.

And those topics have become more and more top of mind for entrepreneurs. Maybe in the first wave, it was people who were deeply convicted and just wanted to do something, even leaning more toward impact investing. But now, it’s top of mind for all market participants. And it translates into a very lucrative investment and business-building. It’s turning into a top priority for entrepreneurs, and I think that shift is very real.

And how do you marry that with the need to be profitable more quickly, which is what a lot of startups are feeling right now?

I think you have to differentiate between business models. There are deep tech and AI investments that have the potential to get relatively close to revenue and profitability. But then there are others—like a fusion company we recently invested in—that are still very, very far away from revenue, let alone profitability.

I think investors are realizing that maybe there's a paradigm shift in how some of those technologies are built. Maybe they won’t be part of it when it’s generating revenue or profit, but there will be milestones along the way where they can bring on board new stakeholders, or potentially sell their shares. And that’s important when you consider the limited lifetime most funds have, and the way the industry is structured.

So I think that's one change. But then there are also companies applying those technologies and delivering groundbreaking innovation, while reaching revenue and profitability relatively early in their lifetime.

And as a General Partner at HV, you fund all different stages of startups. What do you personally specialize in?

I’m more of an early-stage investor. I think I have a strong skill set on the analytical and structural side, so I could qualify for growth investing—and I do work with several companies at growth stages—but my heart is more with early-stage investing, I must say.

You also worked on an internet startup at some point. So, you know what it means to found a company.

Very briefly, but yes, I did.

I joined a big European venture capital platform—3i—and when they decided to focus only on PE investing, I realized that wasn’t for me. So I left and joined a few friends who were building a people search engine back in the day. I wasn’t on the founding team, but I supported them early on. So I saw firsthand, for a short period of time, what it takes. It was a valuable experience.

And when you’re investing now in early-stage startups, what is it that you look for—that thing that makes you think, “okay, this is something”?

We’re mostly looking for the same core ingredients. First, it has to be a large market with a clear market need—ideally, a market that’s changing dynamically. You want a space where you have enough of an opportunity to find product-market fit, but then if you build something great, the market will actually respond and provide potential for a very large company. Second, the team. That’s always a key ingredient, especially at the early stage.

There are so many unknowns and uncertainties in your investment hypothesis that you need strong founders to pull it off, even when things get tough. And third, it’s the product itself: what is the real product, is it unique, and does it have the potential to be defensible? Those are the three key building blocks. But the large market is always first.

At HV Capital, you’re really set up to invest for the long term, right? And last year, the firm went through a generational transition. Could you tell us a bit more about that and what it means?

I think generational transition is a big topic for venture capital firms, and it often happens too late, or when it does happen, it’s not talked about publicly. But we set out to build a firm for the long term. And when you do that, you quickly realize that it also needs to be multigenerational. You need a firm that can operate independently of specific individuals, where you can offboard partners who may be stepping back or pursuing other things. So we built the firm with that DNA, with a long-term vision in mind, and we developed a structured transition model that allows younger partners to come in and older partners to step back.

We actually went public with it—we were very transparent and vocal about completing our first full transition. The founding generation of general partners left the operational side of the firm a few years ago, though they’re still committed in special functions, and the next generation of general partners has now stepped in.

Personally, I sit in the middle—I was at the firm relatively early, though not in the first generation. I took over from them, and now we’ve already onboarded the next generation. So we’ve proven that this kind of transition can work, and we think it’s essential for building a venture capital firm that lasts.

Yeah, and as a long-term fund, you’re in a position to support startups that won’t see profitability for quite some time, right?

Absolutely. We started off only doing seed and early-stage investing, and then we raised larger funds to support follow-on rounds for those companies. Later, we added growth capital to the mix so we could also invest in later-stage companies where we hadn’t been involved from the beginning.

The next iteration was that our growth fund could also invest in companies that came from another one of our vehicles. And one of the latest additions was raising a continuation fund back in 2021. That allowed our investors to stay on board in companies even after the original fund reached its end of life.

So normally, a venture capital fund runs for 10 years plus a couple of extension years. But eventually, you need liquidity solutions. So at the end of that 10-year lifecycle, we raised the continuation fund to give our LPs the choice—either take money off the table or roll their holdings over into this new structure. I think you’ll see more and more of that across the industry. We were actually the first GP-led continuation fund here in Europe.

And were you involved in the deal with FlixBus and the money coming into HV Capital?

I was involved at the IC level, but not personally with the company and the deal. The original investment was led by my partner, David Kuczek, at a late stage, then handled by my colleague Christoph, one of our founding partners. FlixBus is one of the companies that went into this continuation fund on the transaction side. It was an early investment from one of our Fund V vehicles. When that fund reached the end of its lifetime, we rolled the investment over into a continuation fund, which Christoph and the other founding partners now manage. That’s where FlixBus sits.

Now they’ve completed a highly interesting transaction last year. FlixBus was pursuing a dual track—either going public or taking on private equity. In the end, there was an opportunity for an IPO, but they saw more advantages in going the private equity route.

So EQT and Kühne Holding came on board with almost a billion euros in capital. There was a secondary component—so some early investors could take money off the table—but most of it was reinvested into the business. For me, aside from being a big proof point for our fund, it also showed that private equity is now very much interested in tech and willing to put real money to work. So, it’s great.

Could you tell us about your investment in Zalando, since you took it from seed to IPO, from your third week at HV Capital? What was that journey like?

That’s still our biggest VC achievement to date. I got very lucky in the early days—as you said, I joined HV when the decision to invest had more or less already been made. I remember coming in and the team said, “We’re about to invest in this company—why don’t you meet the team, and if you're also positive, we’ll go ahead.”

So I met the founders, and HV invested just three weeks into my time at the firm. Of course, when you're putting in €250,000 for a 10% stake, and then another €250,000 for an additional 8%, you don’t think it’s going to become one of Europe’s most important tech companies—but that’s what happened. It was an incredible journey, full of different stages and stories. I’m still close with the founders. I think it’s every VC’s dream to accompany a company from seed through IPO. It was hugely rewarding.

What are some of your other highlights from your career?

Well, I’ve spent most of my career at HV, so naturally those are the stories that come to mind. Another big one is HelloFresh. Similar story—we were the first institutional investor, and worked closely with the team through some very tough times. That’s what people often forget: in retrospect, it all seems obvious, but HelloFresh came very close to failing, twice. Fundraising was incredibly difficult.

At one point, we secured what was one of the last shots at survival. Then, after Insight Capital Partners came on board, it became clear that this was the category winner, and from there, it just took off, especially with U.S. market domination. So that was another incredible journey.

And another one I’d mention is Scalable Capital, a company I work with closely here in Munich. They started as a robo-advisor, offering wealth management solutions, and later expanded into brokerage. HV put the first €1m VC cheque in before launch. Today, they have over a million customers and are growing towards €30 billion in assets under management. The idea that a million people would trust their personal finances to a platform that didn’t even exist a decade ago—that’s the kind of scale that fascinates me in this business.

You've said before that your job is an absolute privilege—one that you have to honor every day. What is it about venture capital that you see as a privilege?

There are many aspects. First of all, I mean, it takes a lot to be a successful venture fund. That's a privilege in its own right. There are many people trying to start venture funds—it's terribly difficult.

How I define it is: yes, we have investors who are our customers, and we have entrepreneurs who are our partners or customers, but there’s nobody really telling us on a daily basis what we need to do. The agenda setting is done by us. We set up fund products, we win investors to invest in them, and they give us trust and confidence to then implement the investment strategy. From there, we select the founders we want to work with. And you already hear why I consider it a privilege—we decide what to do in the future, whom we invest with, and whom we invite to work with. We also recruit the talent to our platform—people we decide to work with every day. So those are the privileges.

And by doing this, we try to change the world for the better, building big businesses from scratch. That’s a privilege. But on the flip side, it brings a big responsibility. First, there’s the fiduciary duty toward our LPs. But then, you shouldn’t take this privilege lightly. We help entrepreneurs change sectors, industries, products—sometimes the world. If we don’t do it, nobody does. So we shouldn’t play around with meaningless things—we should focus on things that really matter. That’s what I mean by privilege—and the responsibility that comes with it.

What do you want to do more of in your professional or personal life?

I mean, it’s interesting. I’m a VC—before HV, I had two different VC jobs. So I’ve been a VC now, let me count… 22 years and counting. The majority of my professional career. Originally, I trained as an engineer, but I changed after three years to a job in VC.

And what’s interesting is, the VC job changes dramatically over time. As a young VC, you do nothing but look for deals, meet founders. As you grow up, you work with portfolio companies, helping build them toward exits. Once you’ve done that, you work more on securing LPs and on your platform.

So the job itself changes all the time, and I actually liked what I did at every stage of my career. Right now, I’m not spending a lot of time identifying new founders and businesses. And sometimes, to your question, I miss that—especially when you see fascinating deep tech founders and technologies, you think, “Maybe I should do more of that, and less of the company and investor relations and media…”

But I’m a happy man. I enjoyed it at the right points of my career and life, to be honest. Would I be fascinated talking to hundreds of founders every week right now? Probably not so much anymore.

Yeah, fair enough. And I also heard that you’ve done some pretty extreme athletic events?

(laughs) Yeah—some people jokingly say I’m a very tough performance person in what I do professionally. You have to be, as a VC. And all I did was basically translate the same qualities into my personal life. I became an endurance athlete. I got into triathlon. And it was clear: I wanted to do an Ironman distance. When I did the Ironman distance, it was clear I wanted to go to Kona, Hawaii, for the world championship, which I did, ten years ago.

I went to another world championship five years later. By then, I declared that as basically my retirement from triathlons. And I chose the next one, which was ultra running. So I got into ultra running, and last year, I did the UTMB, which is the largest trail run in the world series, in Chamonix, where you run 180 kilometers with 10,000 meters of vertical gain. In one piece.

That was the latest gig. But now, as I turned 50 last year, I promised myself to maybe retire from those things. Let’s see how this works out.

So, what are you doing these days to kind of satisfy that side of your personality?

Yeah, good question. I’m actually trying to calm down a bit with those things. I have other sports passions already for decades such as skiing and surfing . Also I’m actually trying to play more piano, which I did a lot when I was younger, but let it rest for a couple of years. So I’m trying to calm down now in my 50s. But I’ll report back later on whether that was successful, or whether I get into some more sports stuff.

Do you think there’s a link between working in venture capital and pushing yourself physically?

Absolutely yes. I think there’s a high correlation. More often than not, you see former athletes being successful in venture capital. And when we look at the profiles of candidates, no, not everybody needs to be an athlete—we have a very strong and diverse background across the team—but the personality traits align nicely.

Going the distance, training hard, being structured, and being rigorous with yourself—those are qualities that matter. And you often see venture capitalists getting into endurance sports, extreme sports, pushing limits. It’s what we do professionally, day in and day out. Some people choose to apply that to their personal lives, too. Others balance it with something very different, which is maybe the wiser option! But I think there’s a pretty clear link.

It also goes the other way around—when you do those extreme endurance things, you continuously learn how to push your limits. When you think it’s the end, that it’s impossible to go any further, you learn there’s still a long way to go, and you can go further. And that can feed back into your professional work. It goes both ways. For me, it works nicely. But I wouldn’t stress the analogies too much—I don’t want to talk people into doing endurance sports. It’s definitely a very committed part of life.

So, outside of your job, you said you're playing piano again—but you also have a family.

Yes, a fantastic family with a wonderful wife and three kids. Teenage kids. Plus, a Labrador dog, my running companion. It's definitely a balancing act. I’m a proud husband and father. It’s not always easy, but I’m really proud that the five of us have built something exceptionally strong together. That’s not my achievement—it’s a family achievement.

How do you find a balance between being a general partner at HV Capital and your family life?

For me, it's always been about managing the triangle between family, work, and sports. Those are the three core pillars in my life. When I was younger and deep into Ironman racing, I told myself I could juggle all three without sacrificing any of them. I tried to solve that equation by sleeping less and going out less in the hard training months. But in the end, there's always a cost—an opportunity cost to everything. Thankfully, a few years ago I started prioritizing more sleep again—more than four or five hours a night—and that’s helped restore a better balance.

Generally, I try to be fully present with whatever I’m doing in the very moment. Whether you call it mindfulness or just being intentional, I think it makes a big difference. I’m not a fan of the phrase "quality time" when it comes to family—I believe in being there for all of it. The good moments, the normal ones, and the challenging ones: the illnesses, the homework, the everyday ups and downs. Many years, to be honest, have been more work-heavy, which meant less time for family and sports. But right now, I feel like I’ve recalibrated. Balance is a big topic in our industry—we're in a high-performance environment. There's always someone working harder, someone working smarter. If you cut corners too much, you fall behind. But you also can’t go all-in, all the time. Everyone has to find their own version of balance.

Thank you so much for your time, Rainer. From seed rounds to endurance runs, your journey has been inspiring and packed with lessons.

Thank you, Robin.