Europe’s start-up scene is pivotal to the continent’s economic future: turning the innovation of its technical talent and entrepreneurs into the defining companies of the future to help the continent compete.
This is where VC investors like Nenad Marovac operate. The co-founder of DN Capital has been driving venture financing for early-stage start-ups in Europe and elsewhere for more than two decades. His approach combines capital, network, and strategic support.
Let’s take a closer look at how investors like Marovac are shaping Europe’s tech ecosystem.
Nenad Marovac was born in Croatia but moved with his family at a young age to California. He studied at San Diego State University and later completed an MBA at Harvard Business School, where he met DN Capital cofounder Steve Schlenker. He gained his first professional experience at the investment bank Montgomery Securities in Silicon Valley.
In 2000, he co-founded the venture capital fund DN Capital in London with Steve Schlenker. The aim at the time was to support tech founders in the seed and Series A stages in order to build global category leaders, and this has remained the guiding model in the intervening 25+ years.
Today, the fund manages over one billion US dollars, has offices in London, Berlin, and San Francisco, and has recorded more than 60 successful exits, though the exact number may fluctuate over time.
Marovac follows a clear principle: smart, targeted support of the founders and businesses DN Capital supports, not just capital. Marovac and his team typically invest early, remain committed for the long term, and look for founding teams with the technical expertise and global ambition to tackle enterprise-grade problems.
In order to narrow down their selection systematically, DN Capital broadly defines four technology segments with significant addressable markets and potential for international expansion.
Marovac concentrates on four segments:
- Software-as-a-Service, including enterprise AI
- FinTech platforms
- Online marketplaces
- Consumer Internet
Each investment is carefully examined to see whether it has the potential to reshape a market and become a category leader. However, speed of decision-making is also a key factor in a competitive VC landscape.
DN Capital goes beyond investment to support founders:
- Strategic hiring guidance, tapping into its deep network to introduce potential early hires.
- Follow-on introductions to companies in its portfolio if the product fit seems appropriate.
- Introductions to investors for growth rounds at Series B and beyond, when appropriate.
- Guidance on international expansion, helping European companies explore possibilities to enter the US market and vice versa.
In most cases, DN takes a board seat.
This operational approach is intended to help portfolio companies navigate the most critical early growth phases and set the course for scaling. “Venture capital means connecting founders with capital, talent, markets, and opportunities,” explains Nenad Marovac.
25 years and counting in venture capital isn’t easy – it requires the ability to identify and help deliver outlier outcomes through multiple cycles. A few examples include AUTO1 Group, a Berlin-based used car marketplace. DN Capital invested at Series A in 2013, and Auto1 listed in 2021. The platform sells over 650,000 vehicles annually and employs more than 6,000 people.
Endeca, an e-commerce technology pioneer, received investment from DN Capital in 2000. Nenad helped steward the company through the dot-com bubble bursting until a 2011 sale to Oracle for over 1 billion US dollars. The technology still forms the basis for Oracle’s e-commerce search solutions today.
DN further invested into the digital foreign remittances platform at the seed stage, which was later listed in a 2021 IPO on the Nasdaq. The FinTech transfers more than 20 billion US dollars annually and serves five million customers worldwide.
Last but not least, DN invested into AI company Cognigy at Series A in 2019, before the LLM hype took off. The startup was sold for close to a billion dollars in 2025 in what at the time was one of Europe’s largest-ever AI transactions.
These cases demonstrate the breadth of industry expertise and the investor’s staying power.
DN Capital invests around two-thirds of its capital in European start-ups, particularly in Germany. With Nenad long having worked and invested in the DACH region, DN formally opened a Berlin office in 2021 to strengthen the company’s presence in German-speaking countries.
Gülsah Wilke has headed the office since 2024. Marovac sees Germany as a continued high-potential market for startups and technology: “Germany’s technical expertise and entrepreneurial mindset mean that it has the potential to consistently produce some of Europe’s most exciting startups.”
Nenad Marovac anticipates that falling interest rates may make growth capital cheaper again from 2026 onwards. His investment priorities for 2026 and beyond will include:
- Integrity SaaS, AI-driven tools to verify ID and protect against deepfakes and data manipulation.
- The education economy, including EdTech platforms with AI-supported personalization and learning materials.
- Enterprise AI, specifically platform-agnostic solutions that streamline enterprise business functions, which could present exciting opportunities for innovation.
