Portfolio company spotlight

"Sorry, we don't invest in AdTech"

The founders of Passendo must have heard that phrase a thousand times in the months leading up to our first meeting. If you know anything about VC, AdTech has been pronounced dead for ages. But what is also a VC true-ism? "Contrarian and right" – meaning the best returns are made when you are right about something others do not believe. Email is the oldest and biggest application on the Internet. It is easy to forget, but email has been around longer than the web and has more users. It is massive. During our research, we discovered that email behavior is undergoing a big change, and this is a recent development. Today, almost all of the world's premier publishers (The Economist, Financial Times and The Information being amongst them) offer curated content straight to your inbox. For many of their paying subscribers, this is the preferred means of content consumption. They will read it on the subway on their way to work with undivided attention. It is a deliberate means of consumption. And if you know advertising, deliberate points of consumption are the most sought-after moments. That is why glossy magazines still charge high premium prices, even today. The founders of Passendo saw all of this before anyone else did, and they set out to do something about it. They have built the most sophisticated email ad server available in the market, and they also have the traction to prove it. We were not only impressed with Passendo's technical sophistication, but also their team, which is on a mission to change the world. That always gets us excited! At Newion we invest in B2B SaaS. And we do invest in great products and teams. We also invest in underserved non-competitive markets. But sorry, we don't invest in AdTech. Except when we do.