Daniela Raffel, Principal at Dawn Capital, will take the stage at the highly anticipated 0100 DACH conference in Vienna, set to take place from February 18-20. She will participate in the panel discussion: State of Regional Venture Capital Ecosystem: LP-GP Perspective, alongside industry leaders Andreas Nemeth, CEO at UNIQA Ventures, and Michael Szalontay, Co-founder at Flashpoint VC. The panel will be moderated by Yannick Müller, Investor in PE/VC at Wille Finance.
Dawn Capital is Europe’s leading B2B software investor with $2bn in commitments. The firm backs founders from Series A and B, helping them scale globally. Notable investments include companies such as Mimecast, iZettle, and Tink, which have achieved major exits through acquisitions and IPOs.
At Dawn we’re focused on European B2B software winners. Our strategy is to back founders building category-defining software across the technology stack, from infrastructure to end-user applications which is why we’ve always been excited about DACH.
We’ve seen the area lead in emerging tech with fantastic universities (the AI talent coming out ETH in Zürich is one particularly impressive example) that encourage entrepreneurship as well as providing a number of long-established, distinct hubs for industry - it’s led us to back companies like BRYTER, Billie and Quantilope.
It’s the intersection of those two strengths that are DACH’s super-power and we’re excited to see play out particularly in hard to solve markets such as manufacturing.
These are problems that aren’t easy to solve with just simple UX, although that is important, and the real renaissance of early-stage startups in Munich, for example, shows how the co-location of technical know-how, entrepreneurial spirit, and industry can create a hotbed of innovation.
There is of course talent spread across the region.
Absolutely - our relationships with other VC firms are critical and this is certainly true in DACH, which has a very strong set of funds at the early stage.
At Dawn we tend to come in at Series A or B, so the stronger the early-stage ecosystem is, the better for us. We therefore do invest time in closely cultivating our relationships with firms in DACH - in-person as much as possible - as they are very close to the next wave of top-tier founders in the region. To those early stage funds we don’t yet know - please do reach out!
My key piece of advice for scaling globally is to ascertain which is your largest market - and go for it.
The US is, of course, often that market - at Dawn, we have supported more than 60 leading European software companies through US launches
Sometimes DACH founders will treat the UK as a testing ground for the US. Whilst the UK may be an important market for your business, it is not necessarily the right move to view it as a stepping stone to the US, and can take just as much work to crack as cracking the US.
Having an experienced European fund with a proven track record of supporting US expansion by your side can help with everything from navigating variances in capital allocation, to advising on differences in compensation for US hires, and where to build your first hub in the US. We’re a European fund but we have a US Lead, Talent and Networks, based in the US, who helps companies navigate the market.
DACH is on the right course and has all the critical fundamentals in place, with a large number of top-class universities and numerous hubs of tech and industrial excellence. Entrepreneurial founders who want to find solutions to difficult problems will benefit from patient capital from investors who also bring the right expertise.
he third edition of 0100 International — organized by Zero One Hundred Conferences in partnership with the Milan City Council’s Department of Economic Development and Milano&Partners — brought together the global private markets community for a high-signal, execution-focused gathering held from October 27–29.
François Candelon, Partner for Value Creation & Portfolio Monitoring at Seven2, shares how the firm aligns every investment around a clear “exit animal”—a vision of the company at exit—and uses disciplined execution, AI-driven transformation, and sustainability as levers for resilience and premium valuations. From reengineering core processes with AI to embedding decarbonization into business strategy, Candelon explains how Seven2 builds companies that are not just exit-ready, but future-proof.
Private markets are entering a new era where trust, compliance, and technology converge. While public markets enjoy automation and transparency, private assets still depend on paper-based, fragmented systems. Antonio Chiarello, CEO of Weltix, argues that the next leap forward is not just digitization, but the creation of digital infrastructures that redefine ownership. In this conversation, he discusses why friction is structural rather than technological, how regulation enables innovation, and how programmable liquidity and transparency can channel more private capital into real economic growth.
