It only takes a few crazy ones to fix a continent. Let's be crazy. We invest in hyperambitious European frontier tech founders – and push Europe forward. 🚀
Europe
Joined August 2024
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PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
Yesterday @andreasklinger announced his new $15m @prototype_cap fund.
His previous funds have all been in top 5% of funds globally.
I interviewed him to get all the details.
Best Bits:
(01:25) - What does first cheque mean in Hardware/Robotics?
(03:35) - Sourcing strategy
(06:11) - Does Europe underfund hardware companies at the early stages?
(07:50) - Prototype Value-add
(09:25) - How Andreas analyses investment opportunities
(12:30) - Previous Funds performance and fundraising (16:10) - Why this fund is focused on Europe not Globally like the others
(21:40) - Biggest wins in venture to date 24:40 Quickfire (favourite AI tool, number 1 trait in a founder, biggest venture miss)
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
The one thing I've noticed with every world class founder + investor I know is that they genuinely never stop.
My friend @andreasklinger is a great example. He's the founder of @prototype_cap and helped initiate @euinc_petition
Prototype Capital:
- Solo GP Fund where all of his current funds are in their global 1%-5%
- Just launched €15m of a new €20m fund to back European founders working on robotics, automation and AI
EU-INC
- For the last two years they have pushed for creating a new pan-European legal entity
- Ursula von der Leyen (president of the European Union) announced in her speech in Davos that they're pushing through with it's implementation
- Most impressively they're calling it EU-INC
- Now European founders can incorporate once and raise from any European investor without the legal friction that currently kills cross-border momentum.
@andreasklinger has had a mega few days.
He's coming on @etnshow today at 11:30AM GMT
It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce:
We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe.
A small fund that punches way above it's size.
With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering.
First check. First round. As early as it gets.
Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics.
And yet…
We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity.
What should we do instead?
Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed.
What we will do:
→ Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com/
→ Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: youtube.com/@prototypecap
→ Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more.
→ And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide.
We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense.
This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better.
It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy.
Check out prototypecap.com!
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
Great news- @prototype_cap - my friend's @andreasklinger new fund just closed.
My partner @TodorBreshkov and I been invested in all of Andreas’ prior funds since 2019 — RFC I, RFC II (2021), and Growth Fund (2022) — and each has already returned capital with DPI > 1x.
Prototype reflects a vision i fully subscribe to- ambitious strategy focused on early, first-check bets in Europe and globally transformative companies.
Watch here: youtu.be/HQ5-fVu_n1c
It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce:
We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe.
A small fund that punches way above it's size.
With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering.
First check. First round. As early as it gets.
Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics.
And yet…
We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity.
What should we do instead?
Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed.
What we will do:
→ Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com/
→ Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: youtube.com/@prototypecap
→ Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more.
→ And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide.
We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense.
This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better.
It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy.
Check out prototypecap.com!
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
🔥🇪🇺 New Video!
Fun fact – the fastest-growing smartphone company ever is in Europe
It's @nothing !
We went to meet their founder Carl Pei in their design studio!
Nothing is different to all other phone company emulating apple. Instead of wanting to be like Apple, they want to be the next Apple.
They bet on radical design, strong community, specialized products for markets (eg india), and a product culture that actually feels different.
In the video: We go inside Nothing’s workshop, see how they design and build hardware, and how @getpeid thinks about the future of smartphones in the AI era.
Link to the YouTube video in the reply!
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
2025 was a completely crazy year for PROTOTYPE 🦾🇪🇺🔥
1) All of our current funds are in their global 1%-5%
Fund 1 (2019): 4.9x MOIC, 0.95x DPI
Growth (2022): 5.6x MOIC*, 2.75x DPI
Fund 2 (2022): 2.4x MOIC*, 0x DPI
(*) MOIC of F2 + Growth are lower bound estimates as we have two rounds closing atm
2) Our portfolio raised far over $1B in this year alone
Keep in mind that we invest almost only first-round.
3) Fund 3 raised in record time and due to LP demand had to extend another 25%
Most of the new LPs are hyper-european family offices and founders! Super excited for that. Some of the best people in our game that are genuinely excited to push stuff forward on every front.
We will announce Fund 3 properly in early January. Will be epic. ❤️
4) We started a Youtube channel that already gained 250k views
MUUUUCCHHHH more to come here in 2026! Like and subscribe! ;)
5) EU–INC is on it's way to become European Law 🇪🇺🔥
TBD if they will implement it useful as wished or designed based on some politician fever dream.
6) We invested in 15 companies this year.
Mostly robotics, automation, and first-round
All European.
7) And much more i can't yet publicly talk about!
Super excited for 2026 to come.
PS: I rarely ever @VCBrags about my fund – but it's EOY so LFG! 😉
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
China is now the dominant player in frontier tech manufacturing. And the west is starting to fall behind more and more in multiple industries – How did that happen?
The common narrative in the West is: "state grants" + "IP theft" – but that's not really the story.
The real story is supplier networks and massive investments from western companies.
China isn't the villain in this story. We are the idiots.
In multiple frontier industries we are repeating the same mistake:
First modern electronics, then phones, then EVs, now pharma.
You cannot outsource manufacturing of frontier tech without becoming redundant in all other parts of the value chain too.
Because whoever builds it, learns it, ultimately owns it.
In this latest video we explore:
1) Why the West invested multiple times the Marshall plan into chinese manufacturing ecosystem
2) What worked and what didn't for China – eg cars didn't really take off until Tesla came and helped building their own competitors
3) Why we didn't only pay them to become market leaders in modern electronics, EVs, but now also in Pharma.
4) What the West could try to reverse this? Should we have more chinese factories in the West? Under which conditions?
If we are serious about reindustrializing the West the first step is to understand better how we got to where we are now.
This video is part of our deep-dive series on this topic.
Full video-link in the reply 🔥
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
Excellent article about EU–INC by @JessicaGMendoza in Forbes today.
Fragmentation is the reason Europe fell behind the US in tech. EU–INC fixes that.
Link below
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
.@EU_Made_Simple just published a great explainer on EU–INC!
☑ One legal entity for all: EU–INC
☑ Fast, digital incorporation with a central: EU-REGISTRY
☑ Friction-less fundraising with standard investment docs: EU–FAST
☑ Hiring the best talent from across Europe: EU–ESOP
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
🔥Big news! Nilo raised a $4M seed round!
We started Nilo with a simple idea: making a game should be as fun as playing one. With this funding, we’re moving faster toward giving the next generation of builders the tools to create and share instantly.
I’m incredibly proud of the team, and enormously grateful to our partners @supercell, @speedrun, @Kfundvc, @flexcapital, @NextTier_vc, @EssenceVenture, @CoreNestVC, @ShillingCapital, @EarthlingVC, @PrototypeCap, @scriptcapital and our angels – @Blake_Hall , @MattBilbey75, @OfficialLoganK, @SafiBahcall, Marc Petit, Denes Ban
Big News: Nilo has raised $4M in seed funding to unlock a new era of AI-native 3D game development, led by @Supercell and @speedrun
Thread 🧵
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
“AC this, wash dryer that, US woohoo, EU boohoo” - Why are we eating this brand-warfare from the outside about us up?
Europe has the strongest precision manufacturing in the world, we have leading teams in AI, CV, robotics. Europe is a leader in Automation and Frontier Tech!
Not a single NVIDIA chip could be produced without European machines. Not a single American cloud, robotics, or deep-tech firm would operate without European manufacturing or suppliers.
But we are too humble. Brainwashed to never celebrate Europe. By outsiders and our local politicians.
Time for a change.
Europe is the birthplace of industrialization.
The home of frontier tech.
Time, we act like it.
Welcome to the real Europe! 🔥🇪🇺
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
Maybe the most ambitious company on earth right now is @proximafusion 🇪🇺
They are experts of the stellarator type of fusion reactors which provides stable plasmas for hours and eventually weeks, instead of seconds to minutes for tokamak fusion reactors.
No one else can do this.
PROTOTYPE 🦾 retweeted
🚨 Hey folks I got something to announce:
I am launching a new investment fund brand:
Prototype Capital 🦾
A globally-active first-check investment fund.
We focus on cool stuff that's technical hard to achieve, but also still new enough to be a bit weird – globally.
Think Robotics in Eastern Europe, AI in SF, Software remotely, OpenSource SaaS, Space-tech in India, Reindustrialization of Europe, AI Agents in Brazil, among many others…
- $100k-$200k
- we say we invest early and we actually mean it
- with every 5th investment we are the first to commit
- only 6% of all ivnestments were after seed
- the brand will be a larger umbrella for all kinds of stuff from our own prototypes 😬, to streams, to communities, to investinpublic transparency efforts
- this is legally speaking a rebrand of my previous solo GP fund so we got track record to proof
- we do about 15-20 investments per year
Link in thread! 🔥
Please RT if you got a sec – Appreciate your launch support 🙏❤️