Europe now has a small, but growing, number of solo general partners — folks who’ve opted to raise and run a VC fund all by themselves.
One of the most famous is podcaster-turned-investor Harry Stebbings, who raised over $100m straight off the bat in 2021.
But most are managing much smaller funds of around €10-20m — and in the more capital-constrained environment of 2023 and 2024, several are struggling to close their funds at target.
Running a fund solo not an easy life — it gives the investors a lot of freedom (they are the sole person who decides which deals get done), but it also carries higher risks and responsibility than working in a team of partners.
And it’s not a career path that’s attracted many women yet.
So, who are Europe’s solo GPs? We’ve snooped around and think we’ve found them all.
Here, we list those that have already raised their funds (or at least the first part of one).
This article was originally published on November 17, 2022, and last updated on April 23, 2024.
Harry Stebbings
Stebbings raised his first two funds as a solo GP in 2021 — a $33m early-stage fund and another $107m growth fund — at the ripe old age of 24. It wasn’t his first shot at investing; in 2018, he set up another VC firm, Stride, with former Accel partner Fred Destin.
He’s since brought on a partner, Kieran Hill, who focuses on seed investments, and has invested in companies like Ledgy, BeReal, Remote, Atlantic Money and Kevin. Alongside VC-ing, London-based Stebbings continues to podcast weekly and tweet often.
Finn Murphy
Murphy, a former partner at Irish VC Frontline, is raising a $20m fund called Nebular, based in New York. It’ll back a roughly equal number of startups in the US and Europe, writing cheques of $500k-$.15m. Amongst the investment ‘themes’ Murphy's keen on are: dev tools for non developers; ‘local AI’ (small models on portable devices); and startups tackling the “second order effects of demographic change”. He's closed $15m as of September 2023.
Sarah Drinkwater
Ex-Google employee, former Atomico angel and prolific angel investor Sarah Drinkwater announced a first close of her £10m fund Common Magic in June 2023. It backs European and US startups at pre-seed and seed building “products with community at their core”. The fund plans to support around 30 companies with cheques of £100k-150k, with a preference for a startup's first funding round. As of April 2024, it has made 10 investments. LPs include Atomico, Phoenix Court Group’s fund-of-funds, Basecamp, Taavet+Sten, Hugging Face CTO Julien Chaumond, Stripe CTO David Singleton and WeTransfer cofounder Nalden.
Ian Sosso
Monaco-based Monte Carlo Capital is a multi-stage fund backing startups across the US and Europe. Its founder Ian Sosso, is a former investment banker and current board member of angel investor association EBAN. He's raising his first fund with a target of €15m, of which €9m has been committed.
Declan Kelly
Kelly, an Early Web Summit employee, has a €6m micro-fund, Foreword. It invests around $100k at pre-seed and seed, primarily into European startups. Portfolio companies include Sorare, Wayflyer and Localyze. Kelly's LPs include over 80 founders and operators.
Gloria Bäuerlein
Gloria Bäuerlein is a VC turned operator turned angel investor who's raised her own fund of €21.5m — one of Europe's first female solo GP funds, and nearly twice the size she originally aimed for. Out of the 100 LPs Bäuerlein approached, 95 of them agreed to put money into the pot. Her investors include founders and operators from large scaleups such as Personio, Kry, Stripe, Coinbase and WhatsApp.
Nathan Benaich
Benaich is the sole partner of Air Street Capital, an AI and life sciences investor. His second fund, of $121m (or, to be more precise, $121,212,121), was announced in September 2023. His first fund, raised in 2019, was $26m. LPs in the second fund include US endowments and foundations, AI researchers and entrepreneurs.
Benaich's portfolio includes Lambda Automata, Intenseye, LabGenius, Gourmey, Exscientia and Graphcore. He’s helped on the legal and ops side by Paula Pastor Castaño, who used to work at Berlin-based early-stage fund Point Nine, and on platform by Alex Chalmers. Benaich coauthors an annual State of AI report with another prominent early-stage investor, Ian Hogarth.
Ramzi Rafih
A former director at investment firm KKR, Rafih closed his $11m fund No Label Ventures in December 2023. It invests in pre-seed and seed stage startups with at least one immigrant founder, writing cheques of $150k-250k.
Max Claussen
Claussen was one of the very first solo GPs in Europe. He runs Berlin-based System.One, a pre-seed VC firm focused on enterprise technology which launched in 2016 with €10.5m fund. In 2020, Claussen raised a second fund of €27m. His LPs include family offices, institutional investors and individuals, and the portfolio includes LabGenius, Prisma and Twain. He has a head of finance who works with him on finance and ops, and the occasional intern.
Robin Haak
A former founder and ex-GP at growth fund Revaia Capital, Haak is raising a new €10m fund called Robin Capital. The Berlin-based fund backs B2B SaaS startups across Europe at pre-seed and seed that “address meaningful problems”, and has done 20 investments since its first close of €3m in June 2023. It writes cheques of €100k-600k.
Manuel Grossman
Yet another Berlin-based solo GP, Grossmann launched Amino Collective in 2020. His first fund, focused on health and biotech, was €10m; his second is “significantly larger”, he says. Both funds are backed by EU and US funds of funds, family offices and high-net worth individuals. Grossmann works with three venture partners, and one of his portfolio companies, Austrian cancer cell screening company Allcyte, was acquired by Exscientia last year. Before launching Amino, he was a director at Swedish healthtech giant Kry, and an associate at German VC firm Earlybird.
Bogdan Iordache
Romanian Iordache, founder of one of central and eastern Europe’s biggest tech conferences, How To Web, closed his first solo GP fund of €20m in 2023. He invests in startups from the region, focusing on his native Romania and Bulgaria.
Mike Chalfen
Chalfen hasn’t announced any of his funds, but confirmed to Sifted that he has over $200m in assets under management, and works on his lonesome. His LPs are university endowments, fund of funds and entrepreneurs. He mainly invests in pre-seed to Series A business software startups.
Alexander Lange
Berlin-based Lange is the founding partner of Inflection, a $40.7m fund which invests in crypto, Web3 and blockchain startups. First cheques range from $500k to $1.5m. Lange was previously an investor at Germany early-stage VC Earlybird. He now has a team of seven working with him, although he's still the sole partner.
Annelie Ajami
Ajami, a Dutch national who gained her venture experience working in investment in the Middle East, has closed a first fund of $10.6m to back early-stage B2B software startups. London-based Anamcara Capital plans to invest in 25-30 pre-seed and seed-stage startups across Europe. Ajami will write $200k angel-sized cheques, collaborate with other investors, never leads rounds and won’t take board seats.
The firm has also created an advisory network of B2B operators who can support portfolio founders on topics like engineering, sales and product.
Neil Murray
Copenhagen-based Murray is one of the growing troops of media folk turned investors. He’s founder of The Nordic Web, a publication that covers the Nordic tech scene, and is also founder of The Nordic Web Ventures, a fund that invests in early-stage Nordic startups. He’s currently investing out of his third fund, which has a €3-5m target. His backers include 100+ entrepreneurs, operators and VCs from across Europe, such as Skype founder Niklas Zennström, Cherry VC partner Sophia Bendz and Point Nine investor Christoph Janz. Murray works by himself, but says he leans on his LPs for dealflow and due diligence.
Stefano Bernardi
Self-described “crypto-anarcho-eco-capitalist” Bernardi raised his first solo fund of $25m in 2022/2023. It’s called Unruly Capital and it invests in “weird stuff”, according to Bernardi, primarily in climate and deeptech. Becoming a solo GP is just the latest in a long string of jobs for him: he’s been a writer for TechCrunch, an early startup employees, a founder, an angel investor and a VC. Unruly writes cheques of around €250k, leading pre-seed rounds or joining in on seed rounds.
Siim Teller
Tallinn-based Teller, a former startup operator, has a microfund called Lemonade Stand. He describes it as “an evergreen family fund” — it’s his money, plus that of some Estonian business angels — but he says he thinks in terms of discrete funds. He’s currently on his second, of €5m. He has a part-time lawyer and part-time CFO who help him out, and primarily invests in B2B software startups in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Marc McCabe
Rodrigo Martinez
Another former Point Nine-r, Martinez has been running pre-seed and seed stage investor Helloworld since 2020. Martinez didn’t get back to Sifted to confirm the size of his fund.
Edoardo Ermotti
Switzerland-based Edoardo Ermotti has $30m to invest in B2B SaaS startups in Europe and the US, with a specific focus on fintech and future of work. His fund, 14Peaks Capital, closed in April 2024. He was previously an investor for a US family office, and an angel investor.
This article was last updated on April 23, 2024.
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