About This Fund
SpeedInvest II is the second flagship fund of Speedinvest GmbH, the Vienna-based early-stage venture capital firm founded by Oliver Holle in 2011. Closing at €90 million (approximately $100M USD) in December 2015, the fund was the largest venture capital fund ever raised in Austria at the time of its final close — a milestone that signaled the maturation of the Central and Eastern European startup ecosystem. The fund launched in early 2015 and attracted capital from more than 100 entrepreneurs and private investors averaging approximately $1 million each, with notable individual LPs including Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz and the founding teams of Runtastic (subsequently acquired by Adidas), Busuu, and Shpock. Institutional backing came from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which committed $5 million to the fund and reserved an additional $50 million for direct follow-on financing into Fund II portfolio companies — a structurally unusual arrangement that gave Speedinvest a powerful co-investment partner for breakout investments.
SpeedInvest II invested at the seed stage with initial cheques of up to €500,000, focusing on opportunities in fintech, deep tech, and consumer technology across pan-European markets with particular emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The fund's strategy was distinguished by its operational model: each of Speedinvest's 12 partners worked hands-on with one to two portfolio companies at a time, receiving salaries benchmarked to founder compensation rather than the traditional management fee-driven GP model. This structure was designed to align incentives tightly with portfolio outcomes and to provide genuine operational input — in areas such as business development, corporate partnerships, and international expansion — rather than purely financial board-level governance. Geographically, the CEE emphasis was deliberate: Speedinvest observed that the region's engineering talent density, lower burn rates relative to Western Europe, and underserved seed market created a structurally advantaged entry point for pre-Series A capital.
SpeedInvest II made a total of 74 investments over its deployment period, building a portfolio that contributed directly to Speedinvest's status as one of Europe's most prolific seed investors and catalyzed several of its most recognized outcomes. The fund's 2015 vintage coincided with seed-stage investments in companies that subsequently became European unicorns or near-unicorns, including wefox (insurtech, valued over $4.5B), GoStudent (edtech, valued over $3B), and contributions to the firm's relationship with Bitpanda (crypto-fintech, later valued at over $4B). Curve (London, financial super-app) and FairMoney (digital bank) also trace roots to this fund generation. The fund's success provided the foundation for Speedinvest III (2020, €190M) and ultimately Speedinvest 4 (2024, €350M), demonstrating a consistent step-up in fund size and LP sophistication across each generation.