Start-ups in Europe have traditionally found it more difficult than those in the USA to secure growth capital. Venture capital companies are of course key in this process – but investment by itself isn’t enough.
The longest-lasting and most successful VC players such as DN Capital rely on a strong combination of capital, expertise and a strong network that they bring into their support for the startups they invest in at the earliest stages.
The company’s portfolio paints the picture: over 60 successful exits show that the DN Capital strategy works. But what exactly is the approach that turns promising European start-ups into unicorns?
Capital alone is not enough – what firms like DN Capital do differently
DN Capital was founded in 2000 by Nenad Marovac and Steve Schlenker and has since established itself as one of the leading European venture capital providers.
With offices in London, Berlin and Menlo Park, the company focuses on seed and Series A investments in the areas of FinTech, B2B software, marketplaces and digital health solutions. DN Capital’s approach goes beyond the provision of capital:
- Operational support: Active support for portfolio companies through board seats and strategic advice
- Network access: arranging contacts with potential customers, partners, key strategic hires and follow-on investors
DN Capital deliberately pursues a thesis-driven investment approach: instead of reacting to short-term trends, the team identifies long-term developments such as in of agentic enterprise AI, core banking software or consumer technologies like education or marketplaces.
From the seed phase to the unicorn-tier exit: staying power as a success factor
DN Capital is known for closely supporting portfolio companies over many years – even in phases when other investors would have long since exited or forced a sale:
- Endeca: Sale of the e-commerce tech pioneer to Oracle in 2011 for over 1 billion USD; DN Capital held on to the company despite initial difficulties having endured the bursting of the dot-com bubble and supported it for years to a successful exit
- Auto1: Series A investment in 2013; according to Nenad Marovac, the most successful deal in the fund’s history. DN Capital remained on board for the long term and provided strategic support – the multi-billion Euro IPO followed in 2021
- Cognigy: $955m acquisition by NiCE in 2025, at the time Europe’s largest ever AI acquisition, having invested in 2019 at Series A long before the LLM hype
Why the German market plays a key role
Berlin is more than just a secondary location for DN Capital, it’s a critical European operations and investment hub. With the office having first opened in 2021 and Partner Gülsah Wilke joining to oversee German business since 2024, DN has focused much of its invesment attention on Germany – supporting some of Europe’s most significant outcomes:
- Cognigy: AI platform for agentic customer service, acquired in 2025 in the largest European AI acquisition at the time
- Mister Spex: online optician; early investment by DN Capital; supported until IPO in 2021
- Numa: leading operator of digitally-enabled hotel experiences
- AUTO1: Germany’s largest used car marketplace, Nenad led its series A in 2013 and AUTO1 listed in 2021
With targeted sourcing, in-depth operational support for portfolio companies and decades of nuanced local market understanding, DN Capital is building a pipeline for the next European technology leaders from Berlin.
An optimistic outlook
Nenad Marovac sees potential improvements in Europe’s VC landscape in 2026. On the one hand, due to languishing economies, European policymakers are increasingly recognising the importance of strong startups to deliver growth – whether in the recommendations of the Draghi report or in improving the management of stock options
On the other hand, as frontier artificial intelligence models might – at least for the most part – be developed elsewhere, Marovac sees Europe’s tech talent and deep pool of enterprise customers as ideal ground for developing companies that work on the application layer of AI for enterprises.