We are
general partners
from across Europe’s venture capital, private equity and private credit ecosystem. We came together at the 2025 Ugly Duck event — EIF’s flagship forum for GPs — to reflect on the state of the European market, share evidence from our portfolios, and discuss what Europe must do to compete at scale.
From Dublin to Tallinn, Lisbon to Bucharest
This year, we joined from 30+ countries, representing the full geography of Europe’s innovation economy.
We represent every part of innovation capital:
- early-stage venture,
- growth equity,
- deep-tech and climate funds,
- specialist managers,
- and the leading private credit providers backing Europe’s scale-ups.
Together, we are the practitioners who turn breakthroughs into businesses.
Across 5 workshops
We challenged each other, refining assumptions, and testing the strength of our shared conclusions.
That’s 30 days of continuous debate, distilled into this Playbook.
Guiding the Conversation
Each workshop was guided by 3–5 co-leads — investors drawn from across our community. They did the critical pre-work: grounding the sessions in the real-world outcomes delivered by European private markets, and setting a frame that encouraged all of us to think beyond our own funds, portfolios or best-performing companies, and instead consider what innovation capital enables at a system level. Their role was simple but essential: to ensure that what emerged was a set of grounded, practitioner-led insights focused on what innovation capital can achieve for Europe — if the right conditions are in place.
Workshop 1: Innovation & technological leadership
Fatou Dagne Bootstrap Europe
Craig Douglas World Fund
Lise Rechsteiner
Vsquared Ventures
Simon Turner
Sofinnova Partners
Tom Vanhoutte
imec.xpand
Uli Grabenwarter
EIF
Nicolas Perard EIF