What’s New
We did much more than a branding refresh.
Over the past twelve months, we added two core team members, promoted two partners and formed an equal partnership, and also raised the fourth and largest fund so far with over €72 million in commitments from amazing, longtime LPs of ours.
These changes catalysed a process in which we articulated much more clearly what we are about and how we want to operate. After a decade of working under the name Enern, which reflected a very different context when it was first given, we saw this inflection point as a great opportunity to capture our evolved identity through a new name. And so, we’re excited to present to you: KAYA VC!
As a team, we stand for candor, fortitude, and responsibility in the way we relate to the founders and teams we work with. This means we are supportive but direct, unwavering in challenging times, and principled in the way we want to build value. After all, we helped create seven start-ups ourselves through the venture studio approach, so understand viscerally what conviction in the face of adversity means and how messy beginnings can be. Through our collective experience, we are much more peers to our founders than bosses in our armchairs or cheerleaders on the sidelines, and we knew a new name should reflect this relationship.
Finding that name was a fun co-creation process for the entire team, often lighting up slack at odd hours. A few weeks in, the suggestion of ‘kaya’ came up and we embraced it immediately and with enthusiasm. It is one of the very few names that has an unambiguously affirmative meaning across different cultures around the world. Kaya can loosely be translated as ‘rock’ in Turkish, ‘sanctuary’ in Japanese, and ‘prosperity’ in Bahasa Indonesia. Kaya could be the name of your best friend’s son or daughter. In fact, in Hopi, a Uto-Aztecan language, it means ‘elder sister’ — someone caring and responsible. Kaya encompasses diverse shades of meaning that reflect the way we aspire to work with our founders and their teams: to be enabling, positive, and reliable.
These may be lofty goals, but we are confident we can live up to them consistently, as we have done over the past decade of our existence as a VC. Going forward, while intuitively straightforward, we want to define more specifically what ‘responsibility’ means with respect to the environmental, social, and governance standards we want to uphold. We know both we and the teams we support have big opportunities for improvement in that arena. We look forward to embracing this challenge and sharing our progress with you.
We are excited for what’s ahead, now as Team KAYA! Please visit us at kaya.vc
Ana, Jakub, Martin, Pavel, and Tomas x 2
