Five years ago, we announced the launch of Carpfield. It’s been a roller coaster ride so far — just like it is for most of the start-ups that we link to investment clubs. That’s exactly how we like it: we come from the start-up world, we thrive in the unknown, and we’re passionate about iterating our way to success.
We started with a simple mission: we want to be the kind of link we would have wanted ourselves when we were in the start-up trenches. We’re now 5 years into this journey, and we’ve been taking time to reflect and put some of our deeply held principles on paper:
1. We come from the trenches. there’s nothing we love more than working with entrepreneurs in their own startup journeys.
2. We facilitate positive change. We want to help make the world more equal, in both opportunity and success.
3. We use data to assess our partners, just like the start-ups we work with. We’ve built our own data-driven investment platform, to constantly use the modern tech and data stack to improve everything we do at Carpfield.
4. We collaborate as a team, every day, to help the entrepreneurs and investors we back become global success stories. When entrepreneurs win, we win, and our awesome investors get extraordinary returns on their investments. With the entrepreneurs -centric approach, we can keep this flywheel going for decades to come.
5. We’re transparent and respectful.
It’s not always easy to live up these principles, but we try our absolute hardest to do so at all times. Like many links, we struggle with imposter syndrome sometimes, but when we step back and look over our first 5 years, we’re proud of how far we’ve come as a bridge between the entrepreneurs and the investors.
Looking toward the next 5 years, we predict that Carpfield will:
Back 100+ startup entrepreneurs, and build investments of billions of euros to enable mission-driven businesses to go for their dreams.
Always be a Lead link. We are high-conviction connectors, and when we find a business we want to back, we want to be a meaningful part of their journey.
Double down on investment. We’re a multi-stage connector, but with our partnership structure and operational focus, we think we can be most helpful at all levels of business growth.
Optimize for both entrepreneurs and investors success, which we believe is the precursor to our own success.
Continue our generalist approach to investing: we want to back entrepreneurs dreams and plans, regardless of sector or industry.
Thank you to all the teams who have been a part of our journey for these first 5 years, and we hope to continue the success with you for decades to come.
