Investment Climate Podcast

Episode 108: Rockstart: Arnout Dijkhuizen on Bypassing "Grant Traps" and the Art of Professional Pre-Seed Agtech Strategy 
In this episode, I sit down with Arnout Dijkhuizen, Principal at Rockstart, a leading early-stage accelerator-vanguard and venture capital fund anchored out of Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Arnout, an agtech investing veteran, opens up about what it truly means to deploy professional capital into pre-seed startups. He explains why Rockstart prioritizes founder "coachability" and deeply grounded industry insights over dense financial plans, and breaks down the exact mechanics behind their selective €100k–€150k initial check model. He also drops some hard truths regarding the European funding landscape, warning founders about the subtle dangers of falling into "grant traps" that can turn a commercial business into a slow-moving, administrative vehicle.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Arnout explain how they helped guide the Indian marketplace Tractor Junction all the way to its massive later-stage rounds, why an exit doesn't need to cross the unicorn threshold to achieve superior venture returns, and how physical AI is optimization-proofing legacy systems like industrial slaughterhouses.
Key Facts: Rockstart
Arnout Dijkhuizen: be.linkedin.com/in/arnoutdijkhuizen
Websites: rockstart.com
Regional Base: Active physical hubs in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Copenhagen, Denmark.
Target Profile: The ultimate first institutional capital in a company's life cycle. Primarily focused on North-Western Europe but structurally built to back elite teams globally, with active portfolio winners in the US and India.
The Math: Deploying €100k to €150k initial checks at the ultra-early, pre-seed junction. Crucially, Rockstart reserves significant capital to protect, defend, and follow on their positions directly up through Series A.
Blurb
ROCKSTART operates on the unwavering principle that founders are the true rockstars of modern industry, positioning the fund as an embedded operational engine rather than a passive source of capital. Investing at the absolute beginning of an architectural idea—frequently partnering with founders fresh out of research labs or native family operations—Rockstart pairs rapid, multi-week investment decisions with an expansive, a-la-carte network of mentors, commercial architects, and agricultural experts.

Episode 107: Cardumen Capital: Alberto Criado on Why Execution-First Models Beat Capex-Heavy Tech and the Rise of "Coffee-as-a-Service"
In this episode, I sit down with Alberto Criado, Principal at Cardumen Capital, an elite European venture capital firm that has rapidly scaled its assets under management from €50M to nearly €400M. Alberto walks us through Cardumen's highly opportunistic and execution-driven approach to the AgriFoodTech sector. He reveals the math behind their recent investment in Barcelona-based Incapto, explaining how they are completely dismantling the single-use coffee capsule market through an innovative "Coffee-as-a-Service" subscription model. Alberto also pulls back the curtain on portfolio risk management in a capital-scarce environment, discussing why clear exit viability, predictable recurrence, and fast tracks to profitability rule the market today over purely binary technology risks.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Alberto break down why Starbucks isn’t specialty coffee, how they reverse-engineer target exit valuations between €250M and €500M, and how Cardumen uses its dedicated M&A and value-creation teams to act as a true service company for its entrepreneurs.
Key Facts: Cardumen Capital
Alberto Criado: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertocriadom/?locale=en
Website: cardumencapital.com
Headquarters: Madrid, Spain and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Goal: Investing in deep tech, cybersecurity, AI, and AgriFoodTech pioneers across Europe and Israel, actively managing a high-performing portfolio of over 40 companies (including alternative protein leaders like Oshi).
Ticket Size & Strategy: Deploying €500k to €1M initial tickets across Europe and the entire food value chain. Structurally flexible, acting primarily as an intensely supportive follow-on investor that strives to be the most active partner on the cap table..
Blurb
CARDUMEN CAPITAL is an active, cross-border European venture capital firm that avoids rigid, immovable investment theses in favor of agile, opportunistic execution. Recognizing the harsh funding climate facing capital-intensive food tech sectors like precision fermentation, Cardumen strategically balances its portfolio with high-margin, highly recurrent, and low-capex businesses that solve concrete bottleneck inefficiencies for modern enterprises.

Episode 106: Capnamic: Nils Eiteneyer on Spotting "Unsexy" Multi-Decade Themes and Why Vertical SaaS Still Rules in the Era of AI
In this episode, I sit down with Nils Eiteneyer, Partner at Capnamic, a premier early-stage venture capital firm based in Germany. Nils brings his background as an ex-operator and McKinsey advisor to explain Capnamic's rigorous approach to early-stage investing through their fourth fund. He shares a masterclass on navigating the intersection of deep tech and structural pressure, explaining why "unsexy" agricultural problems offer the biggest market opportunities, how to build a defensible data moat against big tech, and why the current AgriFood funding winter is actually creating the highest-quality, economically resilient companies we've seen in years.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Nils break down the mechanics of vertical software integrations, why horizontal SaaS is exposed to AI democratization, and how Capnamic collaborates intensely with a select handful of founders each year to build the next generation of category leaders.
Key Facts: Capnamic
Nils Eiteneyer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nils-eiteneyer/
Website: capnamic.com
Headquarters: Cologne, Berlin, and Munich, Germany.
Goal: Backing category-defining B2B tech, deep tech, and early-stage infrastructure startups from the German-speaking region (DACH) and broader Europe.
Investment Profile: Investing out of their fourth fund (~$215M / €190M+). They enter early as a lead or co-lead investor, moving deliberately and selectively by backing only 4 to 6 new companies per year to maintain intense, close partnerships.
Ticket Size & Ownership: Typically €2M–€3M initially (ranging from €500k for pre-seed up to €5M–€6M for late Series A). They structurally target ~15% ownership to satisfy fund-return mathematics across generations.
Blurb
CAPNAMIC is a powerhouse European early-stage venture capital firm designed around hyper-selective concentration and hands-on operational support. Rather than spreading capital thinly, Capnamic purposefully caps its new annual investments to ensure its partners can act as embedded allies to founders.

Episode 105: Navus: Jaap Zijlstra on Why "Process Tech" is the Missing Link in Scaling AgriFood and Why Family Offices Beat VCs in the Hard-Tech Winter
In this episode, I sit down with Jaap Zijlstra, representing Navus, a Dutch family office-backed venture firm. Unlike traditional VCs, Navus leverages the technical heritage of a world-leading dairy robotics family to build clusters of sustainable food and energy companies. Jaap explains why the "AgriFood winter" is not a death knell for innovation, but a necessary maturation phase that favors patient capital over hyper-speed software models. We deep-dive into why Navus doubles down on process technology and hardware-enabled IP (like their investment in Cosaic), and why agriculture will always follow the laws of physics, not the speed of software deployment.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Jaap’s candid take on why family offices are the natural home for hardware-heavy biotech, how they leverage in-house patent offices to vet deep-tech, and why they prioritize "real-world" adoption cycles over "get-rich-quick" exit timelines.
Key Facts: Navus
Jaap Zijlstra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaap-zijlstra-48b69319/
Website: https://navusholding.com/
Headquarters: Netherlands
Goal: To build clusters of successful tech companies in sustainable food and energy, leveraging the family's deep-rooted experience in global machinery and robotics.
Investment Profile: Roughly 25 portfolio companies. Invests from the family office balance sheet (not a traditional fund), allowing for multi-stage, multi-year holding periods. Ticket sizes vary from $1M–$2M (Seed/Series A) to significantly more for private equity-style deals.
Blurb
NAVUS is a Dutch family office-backed investment vehicle specializing in controlled environment agriculture, robotics, automation, and alternative ingredient production technology. By operating outside the constraints of a standard 7-to-10-year fund cycle, they provide the "patient capital" required to navigate the harsh realities of physical-world agriculture and energy hardware.

Episode 103: Opalia: Jennifer Côté on Navigating a 14-Month Biotech Seed Round and Making Whole Milk from Mammary Cells
In this episode, I sit down with Jennifer Côté, CEO and Co-Founder of Opalia, a Montreal-based biotechnology company pioneering animal-free dairy by producing real whole milk from bovine mammary cells. Jennifer shares a transparent, reality-check account of what it takes to close a $3.2M CAD Seed round in the challenging 2026 funding climate. She breaks down the technical differentiation that separates cellular dairy from the struggling cultivated meat sector, explains how to leverage non-dilutive government grants, and details the grueling process of filtering a pipeline of 400 investors down to a committed, high-quality cap table.
🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Jennifer’s take on building a "Type A" hyper-transparent data room, how she fields macro environmental objections, and why real transparency beats over-inflated hype when partnering with sector-specific venture capital.
Key Facts: Opalia
Jennifer Côté: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-cote/
Website: opaliafoods.com
Headquarters: Montreal, Canada.
Goal: To eliminate the intensive global reliance on cattle by manufacturing authentic whole milk (with matching functional proteins, fats, and taste) using a highly capital-efficient, mammalian cell-based bioreactor system.
Milestone: Raised $6M CAD total over 6 years (with remarkable capital efficiency compared to peers raising hundreds of millions) and recently closed the first $3.2M CAD tranche of their Seed round.
Blurb
OPALIA is a Canadian cellular agriculture company pioneering a new era of sustainable dairy. Instead of using precision fermentation (yeast/bacteria) or slaughtering animals for cultivated meat, Opalia isolates mammary gland cells from cows just once and initiates lactation continuously inside custom, low-cost bioreactor vessels.