By Sifted’s count, over a dozen European solo GP funds have closed this year — and the latest comes from Kevin Costa, founding partner of Belief Capital, which today announces a final close of a $20m fund.
Belief will invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies in Europe and the US, paying particular attention to young technical founders building in AI, robotics and infrastructure.
“If you look at many of the most interesting venture outcomes of the past few years, companies like Cursor, Mercor or Midjourney, they’re all built by young, deeply technical founders, often between 18 and 30, running extremely small high-leverage teams,” says Costa.
“These founders are AI-native, less constrained by legacy thinking and willing to pursue non-consensus ideas. As tech becomes a larger % of global GDP, we believe this is just a glimpse of how the future will be built.”
Portfolio companies so far include Tallinn-based Ark Robotics, which is building an infrastructure layer to connect fleets of robots, and Popcorn, a New York-based startup building a ‘next-gen telco’.
Investors in the fund include general partners at VC firms Hummingbird, Point Nine and Adjacent, along with founders such as Wise’s Taavet Hinrikus and Pitch’s Christian Reber, and San Francisco-based fund-of-funds GREE.
The strategy
Belief will invest $500k-3m in 10-15 startups, in exchange for a 5-10% ownership stake. Costa says there will be “significant follow-on capital reserved”.
“A lot of our best dealflow comes from the internet, particularly platforms like X, where young technical founders share ideas early,” says Costa.
Costa, who’s been angel investing since the age of 19, adds that he also gets a lot of referrals from founders he’s backed previously — and spends time close to universities like Oxford and Imperial in the UK, and Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech in the US.
Belief was one of 20 emerging funds selected for Mountside Ventures’ inaugural VC accelerator programme earlier this year. He was previously an investor at La Famiglia, the Berlin-based early-stage fund which merged with General Catalyst in 2023, and head of operations at pet tech startup PetsApp.
