PROTOTYPE 🦾

It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce: We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe. A small fund that punches way above it's size. With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering. First check. First round. As early as it gets. Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics. And yet… We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity. What should we do instead? Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed. What we will do: → Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com → Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: @prototypecap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@prototypecap → Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more. → And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide. We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense. This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better. It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy. Check out prototypecap.com!

Europe is building momentum. We’ve been building @nothing out of London, proving you can build ambitious tech companies in Europe. Shipped millions of devices globally, crossed $1B in sales last year. @andreasklinger, co-initiator of @euinc_petition and host of “Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups,” came to London to visit Nothing’s workshop. We talked about competing with Apple and Samsung, why manufacturing in Europe would be challenging for our product categories, and how AI will make every phone’s OS personal to its owner. The tailwind is building for startups in Europe. For years, the narrative has been brain drain to the US, weak capital markets, startups relocating, and that is changing. Ursula von der Leyen announced EU-Inc at Davos this week, a pan-European company structure letting startups scale across all 27 member states under one rulebook. What started as a grassroots initiative co-initiated by Andreas is now becoming policy. €5B Scaleup Europe Fund launches this spring for AI, quantum, semiconductors. European Innovation Act coming in Q1 to remove barriers. The EU is moving. Check out my interview with Andreas: youtu.be/Vc5o9aD8vZE

It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce: We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe. A small fund that punches way above it's size. With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering. First check. First round. As early as it gets. Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics. And yet… We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity. What should we do instead? Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed. What we will do: → Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com → Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: @prototypecap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@prototypecap → Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more. → And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide. We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense. This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better. It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy. Check out prototypecap.com!

YouTube

It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce: We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe. A small fund that punches way above it's size. With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering. First check. First round. As early as it gets. Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics. And yet… We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity. What should we do instead? Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed. What we will do: → Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com → Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: @prototypecap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@prototypecap → Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more. → And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide. We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense. This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better. It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy. Check out prototypecap.com!

It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy… I got something to announce: We're launching PROTOTYPE: a new fund, fully focused on Europe. A small fund that punches way above it's size. With it we back what Europe is world-class at: robotics, automation, manufacturing, and anything that requires hard engineering. First check. First round. As early as it gets. Europe invented industry. We're the birthplace of precision manufacturing. The second largest manufacturing hub on the planet. Leaders in automation and robotics. And yet… We sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That's insanity. What should we do instead? Build the next trillion euro companies in robotics, manufacturing, automation right here: in Europe. Showcase to young founders what is possible and change the system around them where needed. What we will do: → Publish all our fund updates and build in public: updates.prototypecap.com → Showcase Europe’s Most Ambitious Startups on Youtube: @prototypecap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@prototypecap → Launch & support more projects like @euinc_petition. Enough talking about Europe. Time to build it: Startups, makerspaces, student clubs, and much more. → And most importantly, invest into the best founders in Europe. Same model as our previous funds that are in their top 1-5% cohorts worldwide. We won’t do a VC fund in the classic sense. This will be a community of hyper-ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better. It only needs a few crazy ones to fix a continent… Let's be crazy. Check out prototypecap.com!

Everyone's talking about US policy & industrial efforts. But this misses the real story. For 40 years, we – the West – outsourced our manufacturing to China, thinking we kept the "valuable" part. Well we were dead wrong. 😑 In this first episode we dissect Chinese industrial policy, and how they are now able to build so quickly and at such massive scale. How did they get there? Everyone screams “government subsidies” – ok, but how? Which ones? How much? And most importantly: Why did they actually work over there? In this, we video dive into dozens of case studies to find it out. Topics: - How they bought high-speed rail blueprints... then outbuilt everyone. - The real scale and role of government subsidies and five-year plans. - How BYD makes EVs, toys, batteries, trains, AND probably your keyboard. - How their EV market became the Hunger Games: 500+ startups until only killers survived. - Why "Designed in California, Assembled in China" is no longer a thing. - What “process knowledge” is and why you can’t buy it. - How outsourcing frontier tech ultimately made western R&D redundant. I am doing this video with @skagarroum who helped me with the research on it. Our aim is to learn from China. Not to become like them, but to learn practices that actually work and to learn from our mistakes. Let's reindustrialize Europe! Link to the full video as reply.