Credit: Nenad Marovac
Credit: Nenad Marovac

Much ink has been spilt about the challenges facing Europe's tech and tech ecosystem: languishing valuations, shallower pools of capital, and the underlying infrastructure for the next wave of tech giants being built in the US and China rather than in Europe.

Yet, for longstanding investors like Nenad Marovac, there's significant optimism that Europe's tech talent and established ecosystems will help it maintain an edge – to understand why, it's important to acknowledge the 25+ year early-stage VC career of investors like Marovac.

Early Life and Education: Building the Foundations

Investment expertise isn't inherited and isn't found overnight. For Marovac, growing up in a family of entrepreneurs and tech pioneers — his father, Professor Nenad Marovac, was a researcher into many of the technologies that underpin the modern-day internet — provided an early spark into the potential for tech to create outlier outcomes.

Marovac studied at San Diego State University and began his career with Bankers Trust, heading over from California to Europe to help manage assets in newly independent post-Iron Curtain states, and via an MBA at Harvard Business School, joined private equity pioneers Advent International.

Having met his DN Capital co-founder Steve Schlenker at HBS, Marovac set out into the venture capital investing world proper with the founding of DN in 2000, setting up what's now one of Europe's longest-standing and most influential funds.

25 years is a long time in VC – that means multiple tech cycles, market swings, and bubbles which have sunk many a fund, but for Marovac, that private equity discipline is part of what's helped DN and its portfolio navigate through.

Team, Timing and Scaling: The Marovac Method for Analysing Potential Investments

For Marovac, the most important questions to ask when analysing whether an early-stage startup is worth an investment aren't complicated:

  1. Team DNA – does the founding team have the drive it takes to solve an enterprise-grade problem better than an incumbent?
  2. Timing – is now the right time for the product – or can the founders create the right time?
  3. Scaling – does the company have what it takes to become a category leader in five years or less?

Processing those answers and the data that surrounds them into an investment decision is where the trick lies – and for Marovac, it goes beyond the numbers into the relationships between investors and founders.

As one portfolio company founder says, "When [Nenad] makes an introduction, everyone takes it seriously, because he has been around for a long time and he knows what good looks like".

People Over Pitch Decks – The AUTO1 Case Study

In the summer of 2013, Marovac went to Berlin to meet with the founders of a then-nascent car marketplace startup - founders Christian Bertermann and Hakan Koç, who launched AUTO1, which is now Germany's leading automotive marketplaces.

As Marovac recalls, the two founders heavily focused on the data and practicalities, rather than a shiny presentation or slick brand – which impressed Marovac and DN into cutting a check as part of AUTO1's Series A, leading to a significant outcome for DN's investors when AUTO1 IPO'd in 2021.

Building a Risk Tolerance

Few investments are a linear path to success, if any, but in venture, bigger forces can often play a part in derailing the progress of promising startups. Very early in Marovac's career at DN, portfolio company Endeca, an early pioneer of e-commerce solutions, faced significant pressure due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble.

Endeca was by no means the sort of vapourware that caused the dot-com bubble to rise and then collapse so dramatically – one of Marovac's core investment theses is to back credible startups working on complex enterprise-grade problems rather than flashy, hype-driven firms – but the market pressure nonetheless took its toll.

Rather than cut what were then major losses, Marovac:

  • Stayed on board;
  • Helped the firm restructure;
  • Then waited patiently.

And a decade later, software giant Oracle bought Endeca for more than a billion dollars.

Looking Beyond Core Markets

DN was co-founded in London and California, two traditional venture capital hubs on both sides of the Atlantic – but for Marovac and DN, a lot of success has come from Germany.

From consumer-facing platforms like AUTO1, HomeToGo and Mister Spex, to AI leaders like Cognigy, an agentic customer service business that DN backed at Series A and in 2025 was acquired in Europe's largest AI transaction at the time, Germany's deep technical talent and entrepreneurial spirit have been a major driver for Marovac and DN over the past decades.

In 2024, DN deepened its German presence by hiring Gülsah Wilke as Partner and Head of Germany.

Germany wasn't always a natural tech hub, and a lot of the early work for Marovac in the market was helping German startups and founders tap into international markets, especially the US.

Nenad Marovac's Outlook for 2026

With 25 years of venture capital investing under his belt and Europe facing ongoing turbulent times, what does Marovac forecast for its tech and seed-stage investment ecosystem in 2026?

"Widening cost arbitrage with booming tech salaries in the US, combined with the potential for falling interest rates over the coming year, and the lowering of barriers to entry for technical capability, should make for rich pickings for startups and early-stage investors" – that's Marovac's assessment for the year ahead.