👋 Hi, I’m Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with data and AI.
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Munich Re Ventures’ finance manager wanted to map every co-investor relationship across the portfolio. With clean, structured portfolio data already available through Standard Metrics, the team used Claude to build a network graph in under 10 minutes. Their network graph is one of several tailored workflows the team built in-house on top of Standard Metrics.
🥨Third DDVC Investor Track at Bits & Pretzels in the books
After months of preparation, we just hosted our third DDVC Investor Track together with my friend Felix Haas and his team at Bits & Pretzels in Munich this week.
We welcomed more than 1,700 GPs and more than 300 institutional LPs, with 60+ speakers from leading investment firms across 20+ sessions. For the first time, we also streamed the program online for everyone who couldn't join us in person. Unlimited access to the recordings via The Lab Learn & Run here.
In addition to the main stage, we hosted several events, including a GP/LP breakfast, an exclusive LP50 Oktoberfest dinner, and our DDVC Community breakfast.
My 10 Key Takeaways
#1 Bifurcation of Seed
We opened our "Mega Seed" panel with fresh Carta data: the top 5% of seed valuations tripled from $70m to more than $200m in just one year. Paul Murphy (formerly Lightspeed) explained why. When he led Mistral's round, three founders could do something nobody else could. These were N of 1 founders. Today, talented but far less unique teams raise just as much. These are N of 1000 founders.
Run a true benchmark and if you find N of 1 founders, partner with them. Otherwise, continue hunting for the hidden gems. It’s possible to play on both ends of the barbell.
#2 AI gives super powers to investors, so we need less of them
Last year I concluded that it's day 1 for AI in VC. Our Data Driven VC Landscape 2026, based on 345 funds, shows how fast that has changed. The number of data-driven firms is growing exponentially while total engineering headcount flattens, because AI has lowered the barrier to build.
Token and data spend has caught up with engineering headcount spend, at almost 1:1, down from 2:1. About half of firms plan to hire engineers, while 45% plan to cut junior investor roles. Said differently, one junior investor today has the superpowers of five, so the bar for hiring them goes up.
#3 Alpha comes from proprietary data, networks, and judgment
In my panel with Moustafa from Kleiner Perkins, Dominik from Headline and Vic from RRE Ventures & Originalis, we asked where alpha comes from when everyone has access to the same tools & AI.
The answer: proprietary data and network. Headline has turned 15+ years of internal memos and call notes into about 1.5 million facts that Claude can structurally work with. Moustafa had the line of the day, though: conviction does not have an API. That part of the job still belongs to us.
#4 Look where AI can't easily follow
Our "Beyond AI" panel, hosted by Alex from the ETH AI Center, went hunting for what everyone else is overlooking. Fabian from HV Capital argued that as intelligence gets cheap, value moves to what AI can't replace: energy, raw materials, trust, customer access and the physical world. Anna from GIZ made the case for Africa, which still receives just 1 to 2% of global VC, significantly underserved on per capita and potential.
#5 The best deals are won before there is a price
Evgenia from Dawn Capital opened Day 2 with a great story. Before she ever met the CEO of inforcer, her team had already interviewed 50 of the company's customers. By the time Dawn offered a term sheet, the deal was already won. Rob from Balderton shared a lesson from a deal he lost because another VC had built the founder relationship first, a lead he found very hard to close. When everyone's money looks the same, preparation and relationships win.
#6 Quantum is moving from "if" to "when"
We've heard "quantum is still years away" for decades. This year, Quantinuum's IPO and Pasqal's NASDAQ listing suggest something is shifting. Olivier Tonneau, Co-Founder & Partner at Quantonation, judges quantum on three tests: deployment, capital and usefulness.
Deployment is well underway, with about 120 machines running in data centers. Capital is ramping, with roughly $12bn invested last year. Usefulness is still the gatekeeper. The surprise for me: about $5bn went into publicly listed companies, which explains why IQM and Pasqal went to NASDAQ. His estimate for mainstream utility: after 2030.
#7 Europe has the talent but still lacks local growth capital and too often the ambition for global dominance
In our Europe vs. US panel, my partner Hendrik from Earlybird and Philip from NEA agreed that the talent in Europe is at least on par compared to the US. Yet, the valuations tell a different story.
Alex from KfW shared that median European Series B pre-money valuations sit about 45% below the US. Growth capital and liquid exit markets at scale remain the bottlenecks. Hendrik named the other gap: if we don't aim to build a trillion-dollar company, we never will. European founders too often still think too small.
#8 Secondaries are a concentration play
Secondaries are on the rise. To create liquidity but also to use them to buy bigger stakes in the few breakout companies already proving themselves. That’s according to the data shared by Tom from StepStone.
His reasoning is simple: The biggest venture exits have roughly doubled in size every five years, and this cycle could see them quadruple. Secondaries let you back those winners once you can actually see them. In Tom's words, now more than ever, it's critical to be in the companies that matter.
#9 Be on WhatsApp with your LPs, specifically as an emerging manager
Emerging managers spend on average 16 months raising a fund; and many of them never raise fund 2. In our panel, Magnus from Left Lane set the bar: show that you executed on the strategy you promised.
But execution and performance in a sense of up-rounds alone won't carry you. Michael from Allocator One knows managers with a 3x DPI Fund I struggling to raise a successor fund. His advice: keep your Fund I LPs close enough to text on WhatsApp, and know every portfolio company well enough to answer any LP question within a day or two. Relationship and proximity are key.
#10 Your edge is what nobody can buy
A few themes I’d elevate because they capture the broader investor conversations I had off-stage:
From signal overload to better judgment. Investors increasingly have more data and signals than they can realistically process, making the challenge less about finding information and more about separating signal from noise. A recurring question is how to establish a useful baseline for investor judgment and benchmark companies consistently without outsourcing conviction to an algorithm. The most valuable tools seem to be those that sharpen human judgment rather than attempt to replace it.
Claude is increasingly becoming the interface, not just another tool. Rather than switching between dozens of point solutions, investors are starting to think about Claude and similar models as the natural-language layer through which they interact with their data, CRM, research, and workflows. That shifts the question from “which AI tools should we adopt?” toward “which workflows should we expose to an AI interface?” It could ultimately make much of today’s VC software stack invisible.
The bottleneck is becoming organizational, not technical. The technology is moving faster than adoption across most investment firms. Getting an entire team to change established workflows, trust new systems, and consistently contribute data is much harder than building another AI workflow. The firms that differentiate may therefore not be those with access to the best tools, but those that manage the cultural change required to actually use them.
Thank you so much to everyone who joined us in Munich and online! It was amazing to meet so many of you in person and really looking forward to the next edition.
👉 If you’re in London next week, make sure to join our DDVC Builders Workshop 7th Oct with HSBC.
Stay driven,
Andre
