Introducing Contrivance Ventures
We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, share the story of how Contrivance Ventures was created and commit to our long-term goals and values. Most of all, we would like to thank everyone who has joined us on our journey and invite everyone who shares our passion about investing in Central and Eastern Europe to reach out.
What is Contrivance Ventures?
Contrivance Ventures is an early-stage, industry-agnostic angel investment network with a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
As there are a few definitions of which countries comprise the CEE region, we are looking to back start-ups and founders from the following countries (not in any particular order):
Central Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary
East Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova
Southeast Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia
This is an extended list of Central and Eastern European countries, but we believe that these countries offer great investment value at affordable prices.
This is a long list of countries, do you consider some as high priority?
We have not assigned priorities across the different countries, but we do note that some have a more developed start-up ecosystem than others and this is often reflected in our deal pipeline.
Does this mean the majority of a start-up’s operations should be in the region?
No, we are very happy to back ventures that have the majority of their operations outside of the CEE region, in fact we love market expansions.
What does early-stage mean?
We tend to come after you have bootstrapped / collected a family-and-friends round and before it is already clear to everyone that you are on a unicorn trajectory. In other words, pre-seed and seed stages.
Why industry-agnostic?
The degree of sophistication of the start-up ecosystem varies across different countries and narrowing the scope of the investment thesis to certain sectors results in missing out on good opportunities. While we are not narrowly focusing on technology companies, we realize that a lot of scalable growth is often strongly tech-enabled. Despite the openness to different sectors, we remain humble about our industry knowledge and tend to focus on sectors in which the extended team (including our angels) has strong expertise and can add value.
Who are the angels in the network?
Our angels are diverse in their backgrounds, interests and regional concentration. We are currently open to welcome more angels and partners onboard, so feel free to reach out.
Why did we launch Contrivance Ventures?
Similar to how many start-ups are born, Contrivance Ventures started as a solution to a problem encountered by its partners. Bjoern and Evgenii saw an opportunity in the region and started investing their own capital in the beginning of 2020. After four successful deals, they encountered a problem well known to venture capitalists and investors — insufficient capital to invest in all the deals that met their selection criteria. Naturally they expanded the team and the operation to what currently is Contrivance Ventures.
There are a few reasons why we are positive on venture investing in Central and Eastern Europe (we even published an article about it).
Macro view: The past year emphasized the importance of venture-backed start-ups in enabling us to continue our lives in a business-as-usual manner (think about how you woke up today, joined a few Zoom calls, participated in an online yoga class and ordered some food from the local delivery app). Most importantly, venture-backed start-ups enabled business continuity on an enterprise level (think of e-commerce tech, supply chain tech and telehealth). In summary, we are firm believers of private capital deployment at an early-stage level.
Regional view: Early-stage private capital investment in the CEE region is lagging behind private capital investment in Western Europe, which is lagging behind private capital investment in the US. But the gap is slowly closing and what better place to add value than in a fairly underserved market.
Bottom-up view: The above listed arguments would not mean much if it was not for the emergence of high-quality founders and start-ups from the region, which we have observed in the past couple of years. We believe that a great idea, founding team and product can emerge from anywhere and it is our goal to support them along the way.
Who is the team behind Contrivance Ventures?
We come from strong backgrounds in investment banking, consulting, and research… and yes, we are aware that every investor and emerging fund manager has this written on a slide in their pitch deck.
Among the three partners we have a diverse set of skills that complement each other. Bjoern is a go-getter and operator with a strong risk tolerance. Evgenii is a serial entrepreneur with strong organizational and research skills. Viktoria is a serial investor in multiple asset classes with strong attention to details. Most importantly, we have an amazing extended team that is passionate and committed to support our portfolio companies and select the best opportunities for our angels (if you don’t believe us, you can join our weekly deal flow meeting at 9am on Sunday morning).
We would like to thank our supporters — angels, advisors, founders and experts. If you are an angel who wants to join our network, a start-up looking for funding and advice or just an enthusiast sharing our passion, please reach out to Contrivance Ventures at info@contrivanceventures.com.
