DFF Ventures (Dutch Founders Fund)

🎉 We are excited to announce that our portfolio company METYCLE raised a €14.1m Series A round, led by 2150 and continued participation from DFF Ventures (Dutch Founders Fund), Project A, Partech and Market One Capital. Ever since we co-led the pre-seed round in March '23, Sebastian and Rafael have been redefining how metal recycling operates—making it smarter, greener, and much more efficient ♻️ While metal waste is a major driver of CO₂ emissions, secondary metal remains a highly valuable resource that can be repurposed efficiently. Via its AI-powered marketplace, Metycle connects metal collectors with recyclers and smelters while handling quality assurance, logistics, and payments. The result? Up to 95% lower carbon emissions and a much more sustainable and transparent secondary metal industry. A perfect fit for our recommerce thesis, METYCLE shows how B2B Marketplaces 2.0 can maximize the value of secondary materials while reducing environmental impact. Congrats to Rafael Suchan, Sebastian Brenner, and the METYCLE team on this milestone! 👉 More info on the round via the article in the comments https://lnkd.in/e3H-vctU

💥 Today, we are excited to announce our new name and brand: DFF Ventures (Dutch Founders Fund). Since starting DFF in 2018, we have always had one simple goal: to be the VC we would have loved to work with when we were raising funds for our own companies like Just Eat Takeaway.com, Treatwell or WeTransfer. Whether that meant partnering from day 0 with the Vintage Cash Cow team in Leeds, to working together with Jarell Habets from our old office to build the best global digital freight forwarder with Shypple - or with Mehmet and Zeynep Uygun who are building Turkey's leading trade-in solution at Getmobil - we have been partners to founders building digital solutions for non digital industries all over the world. 📍Our new name and brand fits that global scope much better. Come and check us out, we'd love to chat to anyone who is building Vertical SaaS/AI or marketplaces for critically underdigitized industries. www.dff.ventures From Amsterdam, to the world 🌎 With Laurens, Hidde, Patrick, Maarten, Mart, Federico, Bas, Maarten, Sjoerd, Remco.

🌐 Ever been abroad? Then you must know the pain of switching to a new ( e ) sim to avoid hefty roaming bills. Th experience remains expensive, inefficient, and annoying. Firsty.app is here to change that .   We are very happy to announce our investment in Firsty, a new telco player that offers free worldwide connectivity, perfect for travelers, expats, and anyone needing reliable on-the-go internet.   Since its launch, Firsty has attracted over 400,000 users, the majority of whom came via word-of-mouth growth. With major partnerships with Uber and Corendon, Vince Vissers and Gauthier Thierens have built the go-to platform for anyone who wants to enjoy reliable and global connectivity.   Excited to be joining our friends at Speedinvest in this round - we can't wait to see what's next. 👉🏻 More info about our new investment in the article below https://lnkd.in/gtKQd4b2 cc Jeroen Arts, Maximilian Wilhelm, Sameer Singh, Sebastiaan Vaessen

The DFF team is going to icy Helsinki again this year. Meet us all at Slush! From 19 November onwards, Laurens, Hidde, Maarten, and Bas will be in Helsinki talking to founders building Marketplaces or Vertical SaaS propositions. 👉🏻 We're hosting Open Office Hours at the venue on Wednesday 20th November. Between 13:30 / 14:30, we'll chat to anyone building something exciting in (pre)seed stage. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/exj6bAPR Who will we be seeing in Helsinki this year? 🇫🇮

📣 We are happy to announce that NorthLadder raised $10m in Series B Funding, led by Tali Ventures by STC and with continued participation from DFF Ventures (FKA DutchFoundersFund) and Crescent Enterprises Ventures. At DFF, we firmly believe in global recommerce models and are excited to continue backing Northladder in this round. Over the past period, Sandeep, Mihin Shah, and the rest of the Northladder team have built the best-in-class trade-in platform for mobile devices. With the recent acquisition of Renewd® [acquired by NorthLadder], Telcos, retail, and OEM partners can now easily plug into their circular proposition on a global scale, saving millions of devices from landfills. The new round will enable Northladder to accelerate the roll-out of its infrastructure on a global scale. 👉🏻 More info on the round via the link in the comments below CC/ Hidde Hoogcarspel, Laurens Groenendijk, Sjoerd Nikkelen https://lnkd.in/dPcRdstx

Last night, we hosted the Embarc x DFF (Dutch Founders Fund) VC 101 panel discussion on diplomatic grounds: at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. With over 50+ (future) founders and tech operators, we chatted marketplaces, fundraising and the occasional banker-turned-tech-founder career trajectory (cc John Bentinck van Schoonheten and Primary Portal!). Thanks all for coming and apologies to those who were waitlisted - we will be organizing more events like these all over Europe, so keep an eye out on our socials 👀. Thanks Lieke Conijn for making this happen, as well as Paul Huijts who gave the opening keynote. Hopefully 'til next year! CC Bas Rieter, Mart de Haar, Laurens Groenendijk

The buzz around large language models (LLMs) and horizontal AI applications continue – for example the exciting recent announcement of Open AI’s o1 reasoning model.   These developments are powerful enablers for the work we do: building vertical AI applications. We at Slimmer AI continue to believe the broad transformation and massive real value creation will be realized through vertical AI (including LLM-native) – applications that use the latest AI tech to address a very specialized use case for an industry or business need.   Creating a winning vertical AI application and business requires more than just “slapping ChatGPT onto something”. These products are based on a deep understanding of the use case and workflow, a deep thinking about the data being used and collected, creating robust interfaces (with human users and other software), the smart utilization of the right AI models (in a modular way so that newer, more powerful models can be swapped in when available), and, equally important, figuring out a scalable go-to-market approach. These products address real needs of users with a proven willingness to pay (earning revenue as of product launch is not a bad thing! 💰).   Here are a few excellent examples of what recent LLM-native vertical AI applications look like (I’m rather biased in creating this list 😉): -      Qneiform: https://www.qneiform.com/ -      ClaimWise: https://lnkd.in/edpSftqJ -      mika: https://www.getmika.de/ -      EvidenceHunt: https://evidencehunt.com/   (For further reading see these links in the comments: Bessemer Venture Partners wrote an excellent series on “The future of AI is vertical” and Coalition Capital went into the importance of specialized data.) #peoplepoweredai

Join us for aperitivo and the casual marketplace/Juventus chat (even better when combined) on September 25th for the DRINK&DEAL event - co-hosted by B Heroes and yours truly 🙋🏼♂️ There are only a few spots left - so get involved and register through the link below. https://lu.ma/vh096e9n Hope to see you all there! Thanks to Qonto, Mamacrowd, Contents and Fionda Agency - the first agency specialized in brand communication for startups, scale-ups, and tech companies - for sponsoring the event! #BHeroes #DrinkAndDeal #Networking #Startups #ItalianTechWeek CC Federico Maroli

📣 LAST DAY TO APPLY, APPLICATIONS CLOSE AT 11:00 PM CET TONIGHT Together with Embarc, we have teamed up for a night about the ins- and outs of venture, raising capital and what makes a good vertical SaaS or marketplace proposition. The event will be hosted at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in London on Sept 19th. Join us and learn from scaling companies like Treatwell, Just Eat Takeaway.com with Laurens Groenendijk and get first-hand insights into raising €10m+ in venture funding with John Bentinck van Schoonheten, founder of Primary Portal. We've been told that the newly installed ambassador Paul Huijts will also be joining - one not to miss 👀 Sign up via link in the comments - applications are reviewed. Entrance only allowed with a valid and approved luma ticket. We prioritise (future) founders over investors. Everyone is welcome (you don't have to be Dutch!) 👋🏻 CC/ Lieke Conijn, Mart de Haar, Laurens Groenendijk, Ronan Chambers, Daniel Jones, Arya Tandon

We are excited to announce that our very own Laurens Groenendijk will be speaking at the first Italian version of Slush'd in the mountains of Trentino, alongside other investors from Earlybird Venture Capital, Primo Ventures and others. Will we be seeing you at the panel discussion "Building Ecosystems around the world?" CC/ Dr. Frédéric du Bois-Reymond, Gianluca Dettori, Alexandra Fattal, Federico Maroli