We are RKKVC!

Have you ever wondered how many tech startups there are in the world? If you ask Uncle Google about it, you will probably find out that up to 1.35 million of them are created each year!

Honestly, it’s really difficult to quantify and we’ll never know the true number of startups. One thing is for sure: most of them would not exist and would not have developed without their best friends, investors. I don’t write it ironically. Can you imagine a world without Facebook? Facebook would never have gone beyond Stanford’s dormitory if it weren’t crafted for investors. Or the world without Uber? Without investors, you would probably never see a new „gig-economy” ambassador like Uber drivers on the streets. Most startups, especially those set up by beginning entrepreneurs, need money at some point, and this is where we, their best friends, come in.

RKKVC was incorporated in 05.2020 as a family office VC backed up and managed by professionals. The timing for venture capital investment in the tech ecosystem is just right. While RKKVC is based in Poland, we plan to build a true European VC with a focus on the EU region. We believe the gravity of VC ecosystems is changing, and it is going towards the Central Europe region.

We have established our first fund during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, which raised a lot of questions in our minds. The investment world seems to have the same questions as they seem to have pressed pause on some of their activities. Despite the uncertainty and macroeconomic obstacles, we kicked off in May and within a few months, we made our first investment! On the other hand, the Covid-19 pandemic helped us with our strategy and investment thesis. Extended lockdowns shifted consumer behavior towards increased technology adoption and usage. Businesswise, companies also started to cooperate more closely with AI startups. We feel quite confident in those segments.

RKKVC fund is backed with capital that comes from an experienced and successful LP who is a strong advocate of pushing technological advancement and is supporting our efforts and those of our portfolio companies. We cooperate with best-in-class advisors who also co-invest in some of the companies with us.

Our investment team consists of people experienced in investment and consulting. Each of us used to run our own business so we know the problems founders may run into, the challenges they may face, and the opportunities that may appear before them, the opportunities they can create.

The RKKVC is from founders to founders.

The portfolio

Our portfolio consists of companies founded by smart and passionate entrepreneurs who are determined to solve major problems for both enterprise & consumer buyers. We join the growth journey in every company we invest in to co-create sustainable and fast-growing companies.

At RKKVC, we are industry agnostics, but we primarily seek companies that have data science gen, the companies who has strong AI/ML/CV elements.

Our investment focus

We want to support new and seasoned founders with a clear vision and a lot of ambition. We invest in companies that:

1. Already have an MVP;

2. Operate in the fields of SaaS, marketplace, deeptech, data science;

3. Have gained at least some initial traction;

4. Their product is easy to scale without the regulatory risks associated with; internationalization;

5. Have a strong team of founders, preferably those who meet the 3H founders’ rule: Hustler; Hacker and Hipster (more about it here);

6. Have a healthy cap table (but we can also work with companies on, for example, secondary buybacks).

Even within each of these verticals, RKKVC invests only in sub-sectors where we have relevant networks and have developed expertise. This helps us make an informed decision and allows us to understand how exactly a company might benefit from using our expertise.

We are based in Poland and we invest in companies from the EU region. We can lead, co-lead or join larger syndicates.

What we give

Every time we evaluate a company, we assess how can we bring additional value to our funds. Therefore, we always work with companies on four dimensions. Those are:

1. Capital

We invest between 100k EUR and 1M EUR in a single company. Since we are a fully private VC, we can support founders with a cap table repairment, secondary shares buyout, and loan repayments. We want to prepare the company for accelerated growth without any second thoughts.

2. Strategy

The strategy is no longer just a lean canvas, at RKKVC we see strategy as: i) business development — that means complex cooperation daily to prepare a company to meet industry standards and, in case the company is in the early stages of growth, helping founders turn their product into a healthy and profitable business; ii) value chain — the company needs to grow in every aspect of its operations, the goal is to create long-term value for an organization by being customer-centric, making data-driven decisions, taking advantage of existing business and professional relationships and building new ones; iii) product-market fit — we work closely with the product team to develop the company’s product in line with consumer needs and market trends while also planning for foreseeable shifts on the market.

3. Talent

We connect founders with a wide network of RKKVC stakeholders to facilitate growth and help founders acquire and retain talent that will drive initiatives focusing on everything from operational excellence to market expansion.

4. Speed of execution

We strive to analyze & decide fast. As ex-entrepreneurs, we know how much time fundraising can take so we aim to accelerate this process. Simple transaction documents and quick funding.

want to know us better? talk to me: mateusz.bodio@rkkvc.com