It has been known for a while that Holtzbrinck Ventures has wanted to involve additional investors into their funds. Holtzbrinck Ventures is one of the most active VC firms in Germany, being involved in a wide range startups from Brands4Friends down to Zalando.
“The goal is to invest larger sums of money into individual projects and at the same time, to increase the number of investments.”
(from German article)
This week it became known that Harbour Vest Partners will come onboard with Holtzbrinck Ventures.
“The publishing house Georg von Holtzbrinck has brought a financial investor on board for its daughter company Holtzbrinck Ventures.
The American private equity firm Harbour Vest Partners intends to come onboard with the investment arm of the Stuttgart media house. A corresponding application on intent has been submitted to the Federal Cartel Office.
Holtzbrinck and Harbour Vest want to create an own fund for which both partners will hold shares.”
Holtzbrinck is following the footsteps of Hubert Burda Media, which opened up more investment capacity two years ago by using external capital to start Acton Capital Partners.
While Holtzbrinck with its Holtzbrinck Ventures was making a excellent name for itself in the past years, things have flopped for their incubator concept Holtzbrinck eLab (GE/EN).
For new and bootstrapped startups, Holtbrinck has anyways in the last two years leaned heavily on Rocket Internet who have led startups such as Zalando, 7Trends, FP Commerce, Enamora and CityDeal (now Groupon).
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
Comments