WE ARE THE EARLY-STAGE INVESTOR FOR PRE-SEED, SEED + SERIES A IN THE RHINELAND AREA
Brain
We are familiar with your business models and know everything about market entry, business development, tech boosting & Co and can assess whether the world is ready for your idea.
Cash
You need cash for your start-up! We have it. And also for all the steps that follow. Our network of strong co-investors is ready for bigger tickets.
PROXIMITY
We are close, VC neighbourhood so to say, because there are moments when real encounters are important. We are available for you at any time and on the ball in terms of content.
Brain / Team
We are founders, VC specialists and strategists ourselves, who develop startups with great passion. And not only with passion: Above all with brain! We dive deep into your business idea and help you develop a company that will survive on the market and in the world.
Get to know usCASH
When will the market entry be achieved? When will the first sales be generated? How long does it take to recruit a stable team? One thing is clear: Game changers need cash! And often more than planned at first: With our network of strong co-investors, TVF is also ready for larger tickets and longer trips.
Our investment focus is on Software & Platforms, Digitalization, New Mobility, MedTech, BioTech, Material-Science, IoT and anything with a fair amount of technology.
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55 learnings
from startups
55 million €
capital
16 slots
for startups
14 years
term, since 2020
€300k
min. ticket size
€6m
max. ticket size
Proximity
We are the investor in the Rhineland startup eco system
Success Stories
Silexica
Taxy.io
Protembis
CUREosity
Hemovent
MOQO
Silexica
Automated identification of parallelism in sequentially programmed source code and its automatic mapping to Multi-Processor-System-on-a-Chip (MPSoC). Who is supposed to understand this? Max Odendahl and Johannes Emigholz, the founders of Silexica! And we do – at least enough to start a joint project.
When Max and Johannes wanted to get started as a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University, the search for investors was not easy. Today everyone is calling for deeptech, but when it really gets “deep”, you often still stay alone with your startup. Luck, coincidence or systematic networking: We joined together with DSA Invest as seed investors. Because we have computer scientists on board. Even those who understand compiler construction, abstract syntax graphs and undecidability problems. But probably nobody wants to elaborate on that here.
In any case, we were able to work together really well. Discussing product and sales strategies, looking at different market segments (e.g. automotive) and finding better solutions for software developers as users of the Silexica toolset.
Silexica made the flip to the US with us. They also participated in the German Accelerator in Silicon Valley and made really big financing rounds with Merus Capital and EQT. And us – except that our contribution got smaller and smaller over time.
Unsurprisingly, Silexica was then bought by Xilinx, which now belongs to AMD, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world. And we are convinced that this technology is just starting…
Taxy.io
You probably have to know each other well since your school days to see the digitization of tax and legal advice as a hip topic for a tech startup. Like Sven Peper, Daniel Kirch, Steffen Kirchhoff and Sven Weber. After all, they saw it that way in 2018. And somehow, the tax and legal consulting market has probably seen that it also needs to become more digital. That’s why many well-known law firms and accounting firms are already among taxy.io’s customers, including “big fours.”
Who would have thought? We, for example. That’s why we were the first VC investor to invest in taxy.io and built the bridge for further VC investments. And it’s really hip to see how AI can filter out the right content from the mass of tax laws and cases for specific clients and use it to make tailored offers. Thus it was easy to find a few early customers in our network.
Since then, we have been in constant exchange. About the advantages and disadvantages of on-premise installations compared to cloud-based solutions, about virtualized development teams and how remote work actually works properly, about business models and B2B contracts, and about strategy. For example, whether to offer dedicated tooling for the property tax reform in Germany or not. You should! Because then you’ll have several hundred more law firms in your customer base.
Maybe tax returns will even be fun at some point. Just before it either fits on a beer mat or is completely automated.
Protembis
It is very gratifying that minimally invasive surgical methods for serious conditions are being developed and tested more and more frequently. This also includes minimally invasive aortic valve replacement, one of the most common heart surgerys in Germany. But as is often the case when something is new, not all side effects are recognized right away. During aortic valve replacement, for example, it is quite common for calcium deposits to break loose in the vessels during the procedure, reaching the brain and causing severe damage. 9% of the patients suffer a stroke, many damages are less striking, but lead to later secondary diseases such as dementia.
Problem recognized – but what now? Karl von Mangoldt and Conrad Rasmus, the founders of Protembis, have an idea! A filter is needed that keeps the dissolved particles out of the brain arteries and thus prevents damage to the brain. This is the birth of ProtEmbo®, a catheter-placeable filter, permeable to blood but a barrier to all dissolved particles.
We are a bit proud that together with Coparion, Abiomed and other investors we were able to finance the clinical trials for an approval of ProtEmbo® in Europe. So far, all results are promising. Thus an important innovation – minimally invasive aortic valve replacement – will also be a safe innovation for patients. Is there also a short form for this? Yes: Restore the heart. Protect the brain. The Protembis claim is the essence of this story.
CUREosity
What do you do when family members are affected by diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Down syndrome or paraplegia and you are not statisfied with the therapy options for your family patients, neither in quality nor in quantity? You found a company that solves this problem. That’s what Thomas Saur, Stefan Arand and Marco Faulhammer did in 2018.
The idea: transfer highly targeted therapeutic knowledge tailored to patients into VR glasses. This way, patients with neurological, neurodegenerative or musculoskeletal diseases receive a completely new, constantly available and highly motivating access to effective therapy.
The solution and the management team, which has been further strengthened with Caesar van Heyningen, convinced us so quickly and comprehensively in 2021 that we were eager to work together.
And that is what we are doing now. With over 30 highly motivated CUREosity experts from the fields of physiotherapy, medicine, software and game development as well as sales and marketing. The team is already bringing CUREO from Düsseldorf to many clinics and rehab facilities in the DACH region. The feedback is almost overwhelming and gives us courage!
And we bring a lot from our long established MedTech network to accelerate the journey to the European VR therapy market leader. Reimbursement, regulatory affairs, internationalization: we do what we can. Matter of the heart.
Hemovent
ECMO has been around since the 1970s. And it is an extremely important technology for supplying oxygen to people with lung damage. So it’s good to see founders like Christof Lenz and Dr. Oliver Marseille, who founded hemovent in 2013, rethink such an important technology and ultimately revolutionizing it.
Smaller. Lighter. More gentle on the sensitive blood that has to flow through it. And: completely without electricity. The system draws its energy solely from oxygen pressure. That is unique.
And when such a system becomes smaller, lighter, cheaper and more independent, it often opens up to other areas of application and gives more patients access to a technology that is vital to their survival. For example, patients with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), whose numbers are increasing worldwide.
So it’s no surprise that our partnership couldn’t be for life – the successful exit was unstoppable, so to speak. We are happy to stay on the ball and continue to follow this story, because it is far from over.
MOQO
Serial entrepreneurs have a good reputation with investors and should not be confused with serial offenders of a another type. Michael Minis and Markus Harmsen once started with tamyca in the field of private peer-2-peer car sharing. They then sold the resulting platform, and after a detour via fleetButler finally took off with MOQO as a software platform for mobility sharers of all kinds. Now it doesn’t have to be cars – but it can be. In addition, scooters, wheels and everything else that can be used to get from A to B faster.
And as is often the case when you start something new in the market, you first make a few detours. Who are the customers? Maybe companies that want to offer Car-Sharing for their workforce? Housing associations that want to avoid parking regulations? Municipal utilities that want to set up their own Car-Sharing services in the wake of electromobility?
With hardly any of our startups have we discussed strategy so intensively, reinvented ourselves again and again, conceived and wrestled with each other, and also tried one way or another and discontinued it again. Finally, with negotiation and contract expertise, we were then able to help secure crucial deals for MOQO.
And the result: MOQO is on its way to become Europe’s largest software platform provider for mobility sharing. Since Flinkster, Europe’s largest car-sharing provider, recently also started using MOQO, Michael and Markus are unstoppable. And we’ll be damned if we’re going to change that.
