Future-oriented financial markets
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Built by innovation capital
Private markets do not just finance innovation - they have built the architecture through which innovation takes shape, scales and integrates across Europe. This chapter examines what that architecture has produced: the culture, the infrastructure, the governance and the market structures that innovation capital helped create. These are the system-level outcomes that sit beneath everything else in this Playbook.
Entrepreneurship as a career
Innovation capital backed founders before outcomes were visible and kept backing them through uncertainty. Over time that consistency changed the culture. Entrepreneurship became a credible career path - attracting talent, producing repeat founders and building the ecosystems that make the next generation of companies possible.
Fragmentation bridged
Despite regulatory and market fragmentation, innovation capital raised capital cross-border, invested cross-border and connected markets. European finance reached European companies across borders. The market was fragmented in structure. Innovation capital operated as if it were not.
Governance bar raised
Innovation capital brought active ownership, aligned incentives and accountability into companies long before they reached public markets. LP-driven sustainability requirements reinforced those standards. Governance expectations that began in private markets spread more broadly.
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The systemic friction holding us back
"We have built the infrastructure to fund the future."
But the system that surrounds that infrastructure still needs to develop. Three forces act as a brake on what innovation capital can deliver:
Risk misclassification: Early-stage uncertainty is still often treated by investors as systemic weakness, shaping mandates and regulatory treatment before performance is even assessed.
Impatient "patient" capital: Long-duration value creation is measured through a short-term lens. Patient capital cannot wait for results.
Fragmentation: Differences in rules and supervision across member states create friction for cross-border capital and growth, duplicating effort and limiting scale.
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Necessary shifts: how GPs see it
"The company that gets the financing is not the customer - the capital is the customer.”
That mindset shift changes everything. When capital is the customer, the system is designed around what capital needs to flow effectively: transparency to build trust, mandates that reflect its natural time horizon, and structures that make participation straightforward. These are the shifts we see as essential.
Transparency = trust
The evidence exists. Performance data, impact data, sector-by-sector outcomes. But data is held unevenly and reported inconsistently, reinforcing the perception of lack of transparency. We can change that perception. Portfolio returns published by fund managers. Data standardised and centralised.
"It's not about overregulating, but about ensuring that all funds follow standard valuation guidelines. Lack of transparency and self-regulation harms trust."
Time is the asset
The capital exists. European pension funds and insurers hold long-duration liabilities that align naturally with what innovation capital needs. The perception that long-duration investment sits outside their mandate stops the conversation before it starts. Duration gets seen as friction. Illiquidity gets seen as weakness.
"Innovation capital lets us believe in founders before the world does."
That belief requires time, and long-term institutional investors have it. The perception shift is straightforward: duration is not the problem - it is the point. When mandates reflect that, the most natural pool of capital in the ecosystem becomes accessible.
"Innovation capital helps us scale companies that can transform economies and society at a magnitude and on time horizons that simply wouldn't be possible without it."
Solve the frictions
The investors exist. The barrier is real: innovation capital has been illiquid, complex and difficult to access. We recognise that. The question is how we evolve to meet investors where they are - through simpler structures and genuine innovation in how funds are designed.
"We should simplify and standardise structures. We need to take the initiative to make it easier for LPs."
There have been efforts to respond - with structures that tackle the lack of liquidity head on. But the agenda is wider than that and could include structures that offer downside protection to investors who need greater certainty before committing or ways to reach retail investors who may have the appetite but have never had the entry point. That innovation in fund design is as important as the innovation in the companies we back.
No single structure solves all of this, but what matters is that the industry keeps building towards investors, not just asking investors to stretch towards us.
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Future outcomes if the shifts hold
If financial markets are reoriented towards long-term value creation and the barriers to participation are genuinely addressed, we believe Europe's trajectory would change. Capital would begin to fund innovation, scale and strategic sectors at home rather than leaking abroad.
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