Speedinvest

Speedinvest is one of Europe’s most active early-stage venture firms, with more than €600 million in assets under management, 40 plus investors, and offices in Berlin, London, Munich, Paris, Vienna, and San Francisco. Founded in 2011 in Vienna and now genuinely pan-European, the firm runs specialist investment teams across deep tech, fintech, industrial tech, network effects, digital health, and subscriptions, and has built a reputation as the European seed and pre-seed firm with the most credible cross-border network for scaling companies into the broader EU and US markets. Speedinvest’s Health and Bio team focuses specifically on digital health, biotech, and life sciences applications of AI, computing, and biology, and the firm has been one of the most active early-stage investors in European healthtech across the past decade.

The Health and Bio team is led by partners and principals based primarily in London and Berlin, including Daria Gherghelas, an engineer-turned-investor who covers early-stage health and bio in central and eastern Europe, and other partners with operating backgrounds at digital health and life sciences companies. The team has explicitly framed its thesis around backing founders who fuse AI and machine learning with deep healthcare workflow, regulatory, and incentive knowledge, positioning the convergence of computing, AI, and biology as a defining wave for European healthcare and life sciences. The portfolio includes companies across consumer health, B2B SaaS for healthcare, deep tech bio, and AI-enabled diagnostics and therapeutics. Notable investments include Second Nature, the consumer weight management platform; and a roster of B2B health software companies. Speedinvest has also published one of the most thorough public datasets on European digital health, analyzing 600 plus startups founded over the past decade, which gives the team unusual pattern-matching depth.

Check sizes typically run from €300,000 at pre-seed to €3 million at seed and selectively up to €5 million at Series A, with the capacity to follow on into later rounds when the company is breaking out. Speedinvest leads at pre-seed and seed and is one of the few firms that will write the genuinely first institutional check in European healthtech founders, particularly those in central, eastern, and southern Europe where seed capital is structurally underserved. The firm participates at Series A and beyond, frequently alongside larger European specialist firms (Octopus, Highland Europe, Atomico, Index) and US specialists (Optum Ventures, Echo Health, Define Ventures) on cross-border rounds.

Founders who should approach Speedinvest are European founders building digital health, biotech, healthtech infrastructure, and AI-enabled clinical applications, particularly those at pre-seed and seed who need a European lead before raising larger US-led rounds. The firm is well suited for founders coming out of central, eastern, and southern Europe who want a cross-border partner that can connect them to UK, German, French, and US co-investors. Founders building consumer wellness without a clinical wedge, or US-only companies without a European angle, should pitch other firms. Speedinvest is decisively an early-stage firm; founders looking for growth capital should look elsewhere.

Entry path runs through warm introductions from portfolio CEOs, the broader European venture community, and the Speedinvest team’s active presence at HLTH Europe, Slush, BIO Europe, and major continental conferences. The Health and Bio team is publicly accessible on LinkedIn and at events, and the firm runs an editorial blog that signals current thesis priorities. Cold inbound through the Speedinvest website is read and the firm has a relatively open posture toward direct outreach, particularly when the founder is in an underserved European market.

In a pitch, lead with the founder market fit, the European-or-global wedge, and the customer or commercial proof. Speedinvest partners think in terms of European companies that can compete globally, and they want to see ambition that extends beyond a single national market. Bring a clear plan for international expansion, including the EU and ideally the US, and a credible commercial narrative that does not rely solely on national-level public sector dynamics. The firm’s added value is most powerful for founders who use the broader Speedinvest network: cross-border syndicate building, introductions to peer European and US specialists, the firm’s deep operator and regulatory advisor base, and the unusually strong public-sector and policy connections in Brussels and major European capitals. Founders building from Europe with global ambition in healthtech and biotech will find Speedinvest one of the most strategically useful tier-one early-stage partners in the European ecosystem.