Johannes Burgard

This is a game changer for venture capital in Europe 🚀 Foundation capital can now be invested into VC! 🔥 Bavaria just did what many just talked about! On July 23rd, the Bavarian Parliament passed a breakthrough resolution: Public and private foundations can now allocate up to 5% of their assets into venture capital: via funds and fund-of-funds. Some time ago, I posted: “If we freed up just 10% of German foundation capital for VC, we’d have limited partners capable of writing €100M tickets. The capital exists, it’s just in the wrong places.” Now, we’re finally taking a step in that direction. This is a power move. This Bavarian resolution changes the game. It enables a long-term, risk-aware, diversified investment approach and encourages capital to flow into EU-based VC funds. Why this matters: 1. Walk the talk: government leading by example, not empty words. 2. Think European, act local: the resolution explicitly promotes EU-based VC funds. This is the kind of cross-border thinking we need if Europe wants to compete globally. 3. Long-term strategy: a serious, educated approach to venture as an asset class. No naive bets, but structured, risk-aware investing through the fund ecosystem. This is the kind of shift we’ve been waiting for and a signal to every region in Europe: you want a stronger start-up ecosystem? Enable capital to flow back to the ones building it. Feeling genuinely optimistic: for Bavaria, for Germany, and for Europe. Find the link to the resolution in the comments. #vc #venturecapital #startups #capital #foundations #europe

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Spoke with Brevo's Chairman of the Advisory Board. Steffen Schebesta led Brevo's M&A for 3+ years. Here's their acquisition playbook: Steffen founded Newsletter2Go back in 2011. And he kept building it for over 7 years until it became: One of the top email marketing platforms in the German-speaking market. In late 2018, Sendinblue (now Brevo) acquired them. (but it was almost like a merger) At that time, they were both figuring out how to merge the companies. And that's how Steffen became in charge of Brevo's M&A strategy: Phase 1: Geographic Consolidation (2018-2019) → Started by acquiring Newsletter2Go to crack the German market → But Europe isn't one market - each country needs localization → So they bought local players over organic expansion Phase 2: Product Extensions (2020+) After raising €140M, they shifted the strategy: → E-commerce focus: Chatra (chat), Push Owl (notifications), Metrio (analytics) → CRM expansion: Yodel (telephony), Meet Fox (scheduling), Captain Wallet (mobile) → Infrastructure: Mail Clark (email parsing) TLDR: Early on, they focused on geographic expansion through local acquisitions. When scaling, they shifted to product capability expansion. Now, they're into platform consolidation plays. And their next M&A activity? Likely after their next fundraising round. If you were leading Brevo's next acquisition strategy, what would you focus on? #acquisitions #saas #strategy

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