Q3 Update — News from SquareOne
Hi! ✨ It’s been exactly a year since we started operating under our new brand and name, SquareOne. What hasn’t changed is our DNA: investing in B2B tech founders who are obsessed with solving complex problems in vast markets. Some of these stories you can find in this update.
To keep in touch and stay informed about the latest portfolio, industry, and team news, remember to follow us on LinkedIn.
Cheers,
Team SquareOne
Portfolio News
- Welcome to the SquareOne family, Anytype! With their revolutionary, peer-to-peer web builder, Anytype is designed to put the power of our digital lives back in our hands. We are thrilled to participate in this €12.4 million round led by Balderton Capital alongside Inflection and prominent angels such as Trent McConaghy (Ocean), Jutta Steiner (Polkadot), Luis Cuende (Aragon), and Adam Wiggins (Heroku). Read more on EU Startups
- Confidential computing is on the rise — and a few months ago, we invested in the leaders in the space, Edgeless Systems, together with amazing angels, including Paolo Negri (Contentful), Mirko Novakovic (Instana), Evan Weaver (Fauna), Gil Goren (83North), Mathias Biilman and Chris Bach (both Netlify).
The team always plays a crucial role in our investment decisions and we rarely come across such a strong founder-market fit. Just one of the many things why we invested in Edgeless Systems. But there’s more. Get the full picture in our investment thesis
No surprise the team is currently getting quite some media attention: Check out a guest article for Business Punk by Edgeless’ Co-Founder & CEO Felix Schuster, or dive a bit deeper into the German administration cloud strategy and the role of confidential computing in this interview with IT-Zoom.
It’s even more exciting to hear that Edgeless Systems is expanding and looking to fill some important positions. They are currently seeking a Head of Marketing and a Chief of Staff to join their mission of making the cloud the safest place for sensitive and protectable data. - We are thrilled to share that C1 is making industrial history! Green methanol is the most promising carbon-neutral alternative fuel to marine diesel. Up to 1.1 billion tons of CO2 can be saved in this way. That’s why the German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport is funding the Leuna100 pilot plant with €10.4 million. This is a huge step only 18 months after founding the company. Read more on Handelsblatt
- PartsCloud announced its expansion to the US in partnership with Gebrüder Weiss, the oldest logistics company in the world. Congratulations on this important milestone! Read more on Startbase
- Germany is one of the countries with the highest density of robots. But that’s primarily due to large companies; Moritz Werner, CXO of Coboworx, sees a lot of catching up to do in the SME sector. In one of Germany’s most prominent tech podcasts, Moritz explains how Coboworx helps SMEs get a jump on automation. Listen to “So techt Deutschland”
- Made in Berlin, Xolo is one of the most exciting 3D printing companies in the world. And we’re lucky to be a part of their journey! Der Tagesspiegel has visited the team and talked to Georg Stockinger about the seed investment. Read more on Tagesspiegel
Squad Stories
Over the past few months, we’ve been getting more and more involved in the open-source community. Together with crowd.dev, Federico Wengi co-hosted the Berlin Open Source drinks (when it was still summer!); a great success, with a large turnout of founders and operators of open-source startups.
We’re confident to say that Berlin is on its way to becoming a vital hub for open source, and our first Open Source Fireside Chat gathered some of the brightest minds in the community. Federico moderated an engaging discussion with the most entertaining panelists Nikhil Dinesh (Lead Solution Architect Alexa, AWS Head of Biz Dev), Scott Chacon (Co-Founder of GitHub, CEO and Co-Founder of GitButler, Co-Founder of Berlin accelerator SCNE), Malte Pietsch (Co-Founder and CTO of Deepset), Jan Oberhauser (Co-Founder and CEO of n8n), and Jonathan Reimer (Co-Founder of crowd.dev), talking about the intrinsic value of software companies in the rise of AI and open source. As software development becomes increasingly accessible, will future software products still be truly unique?
Born and raised in Milan, only a few things get Federico as excited as talking about the Italian tech ecosystem. However, he acknowledges, “There are still a few challenges that prevent the Italian ecosystem from truly shining.” In an interview with EU Startups, you can read about these challenges and find out why we believe Italy is an attractive investment destination. Read the interview
Speaking of Italy: Over 100 people joined the Tech Sundown event Federico co-hosted with Cavalry Ventures in Milan. It was truly inspiring to witness such a large gathering of Italian and international founders, angel investors, and VCs coming together to build this ecosystem further.
Georg Stockinger was featured as a “Top AI Investor” by Business Insider Deutschland! In an interview with Gründerszene, he shares his view on the market and what he’s looking for in AI startups right now:
“It is highly challenging for startups to compete with the tech giants in the general use cases as the latter have access to relevant training data, financial and computing resources. So, I usually seek two things: Firstly, AI applications that are highly focused and use proprietary and defensible data pools. Secondly, I look for second-order effects triggered by the AI revolution, such as necessary tooling for AI developers, infrastructure like databases, monitoring and compliance solutions, and solutions for specialized use cases, like federated learning.”
Last week, Charlotte Baumhauer joined Stage Two as a jury member, the largest pan-European competition for early-stage university startups, organized by RWTH Aachen University and HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. As a sponsor, we’ve been giving away a Fast Track to IC: the winner will get the opportunity to pitch directly to our investment team. (Photo credits: Stage Two)
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