New Renaissance Ventures - The Year 2 Update

New Renaissance Notes is a monthly newsletter where we share insights about the intersection of culture, creativity and technology. See our previous edition, ‘As AI Enter the Creative Arena, Co-Creation Must Lead the Way’. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join our journey here:

We’re turning 2! 🎉 As we celebrate our second anniversary, we want to take this opportunity to update you on our journey and share our insights into the industry’s future.

We are structuring the Year 2 update through the lens of the 4 Ps of Venture (nope, that’s not a known concept but I’ll just establish it with this piece ;) ). The 4 Ps of Venture are

• Performance - We can pick winners

• Process - We are disciplined and consistent

• Platform - We have proprietary access

• Partnership - We have trust to build and scale

But before we dive into the 4 Ps, I want to share a few personal notes on the journey so far.

We introduced New Renaissance Ventures to the world as the first dedicated venture fund for the Cultural and Creative Industries. Believe it or not but no one has built a fund with a similar thesis before. While Top-Tier VCs are betting big on the CCIs, they have no distinctive strategy. But the quiet trend is clear: The CCIs make up ∼10% of the portfolios of leading VCs like Sequoia, a16z, Index or Accel. I’m talking about companies like Figma, Canva, Spotify, Unity, Farfetch, Roblox and more recent breakout companies like ElevenLabs, Runway, Mubi, Recraft and many many more.

The very best founders build tech companies in music, film, gaming, design, photography, entertainment, and publishing, driving the Great Rebuilding of the CCIs. This is our thesis for the ignition of a New Renaissance and the inspiration for the naming of the fund.

We are seeing both the rebuilding of creative workflows and its distribution. From centralized, high-cost studio production to decentralized, AI-augmented and user-generated creation. And from gatekeeper-controlled labels, publishers and studios to algorithmic, community-curated and direct-to-fan models.

While New Renaissance Ventures might sound like a large asset allocator, we are just the antithesis of it. We are building a firm at the grassroots level of the New Renaissance, supporting founders at the earliest stages of their journey. I am proud to invest alongside global tier-1 funds and also act as a first check investor when founders are still overlooked from the mainstream venture crowd.

While we invest broadly across the spectrum of the CCIs, what unites all founders building at this intersection is a deep understanding that the cultural and creative industries lie at the heart and soul of our society, and that technology is constantly reshaping how we create, distribute, and consume culture.

We launched New Renaissance Ventures as a $10M micro-fund, establishing ourselves as the first tech fund dedicated to the CCIs - building a home for tech founders driving this tectonic shift. With this, we’re happy to dive into the 4Ps of Venture.

New Renaissance Ventures has now built a portfolio of 15 companies. We’ve been the first-cheque investor in 6 of these companies, while in others, we’ve invested alongside industry leaders like a16z, LocalGlobe, Firstminute, Seedcamp, Shine VC and Speedinvest. 5 companies already achieved significant up-rounds from investors such as Atomico, Balderton, and Cathay, pushing the fund’s performance into the upward-swooping part of the infamous J-curve.

We’ve partnered with creative tech founders who are scaling companies that are revolutionising various sectors, from music creation and empowering storytellers, to developing Hollywood-style content and redesigning language learning. They are also enabling game designers to build virtual worlds, guiding users into altered states of consciousness, and much more.

Picking winners and achieving outsized venture returns only works if you have set up the right foundation and processes. We are proud to have been very disciplined in following our own fund model, hitting

• the pace of 8 deals a year (one more deal is committed and will bring the total portfolio to 16 companies)

• a pre-seed vs seed ratio of 65% <> 35%

• an average ticket size of € 180k at an average valuation of € 11.3m pre-money valuation

We also remain committed to our core investment thesis: investing in the very best tech founders within the Cultural and Creative Industries. This foundational focus continues to guide us, and we’re pleased to have refined it even further as you can read in our latest blogpost where we go deep on the thesis around AI creative tech.

Our clear thesis and niche positioning ensure we remain a top-of-mind choice for founders and investors alike, generating high-quality deal flow referrals. It’s simple, we are speaking the same language as the founders building in that space, and investors tend to remember us because we are pursuing a differentiated thesis in a crowded market. This approach allows us to cultivate a diverse portfolio, deepen our domain expertise, and strengthen our brand within our vertical.

Our vision is big. New Renaissance Ventures will be the go-to platform and ecosystem for the world’s most ambitious founders building at the intersection of culture and technology. To make sure we can execute on this, we are building a domain-specific signal machine that works as a sourcing engine for category-defining companies that emerge from culture and creativity. A positioning no one else has taken in the VC game. And we love it.

We’re just getting started, but the groundwork is laid. Our social channels include a monthly newsletter on Substack, weekly updates on LinkedIn, and founder interviews on Spotify. We’ve built a community of almost 3,000 followers across these platforms, the backbone of New Renaissance Ventures.

To bring it all together in real life, we have been fortunate to host events in spectacular locations across Europe, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Manchester Square Gardens in London or the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. Given the very limited budget as an emerging solo-GP, we are incredibly grateful to our partners who helped make these events possible. We will keep doing this and building tight-knit communities across Europe, so expect some exciting events coming soon.

Speaking of exciting events, this month also marked the second annual CultTech Summit in Vienna. As a close partner, we were delighted to host a panel on “Investing in the Future of Creative Tech” at this conference, which gathers investors, founders, artists, and senior stakeholders from the CCIs to explore the intersection of culture and technology.

As a first-time solo fund manager, I am incredibly grateful for the deep trust my limited partners have placed in me. It’s a privilege that my LPs have taken a chance on me, believing in my ability to build something meaningful and achieve strong venture returns. In reality, LPs have 99 problems reasons not to invest in your fund. Earning their trust comes with significant gratitude and responsibility.

And, ultimately, there is the trust from the founders to work with us. We consistently secure positions in highly competitive and oversubscribed investment rounds, so getting a seat at the table is not a given.

As a solo GP with end-to-end responsibility and ownership, I’m able to cultivate deep relationships and genuine trust. I’m proud (and confident) that every founder in my portfolio would gladly vouch for New Renaissance Ventures.

This month, hosting our first (small but intimate) founder retreat in Vienna, reminded me why I love this job so much. It’s this privilege to collaborate with such brilliant minds and supporting their crazily ambitious visions to reshape the world. Having a front-row seat to the Rewiring of the Cultural and Creative Industries is truly amazing.

Looking ahead, I’ve always envisioned this journey as a shared one. While New Renaissance Ventures will remain boutique and niche, I intend to build a team in the long run. This will allow us to build together, scale operations, incorporate diverse perspectives, and most importantly, share the emotional highs and lows of venture capital. Stay tuned. 💙

I’m very grateful to have the support of so many of you on this journey. Your insights, encouragement, and trust have been invaluable as we build this platform.

Happy Halloween 🎃

Severin
New Renaissance Ventures