Rob Barmann

EV develops a long-term investment strategy with their entrepreneurs. Their investment objective is to grow firms and to create a market leader in a new field. They focus on developing businesses active in industries including information technology, biotech, medtech and cleantech. They concentrate on various stages such as early to expansion-stage as well as spin-offs and restarts. Their geographic focus is pan-European. Specifically, their technology-sector investments are concentrated in Norway, Sweden, Finland, UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and Portugal. Beyond these countries, they also consider taking a co-lead or a syndicate role. For their life sciences investments, they primarily target Switzerland, France and Germany. Four key investment criteria they consider before investment are hyper-growth market potential, world-class technology, capital efficiency and ambitious management team. EV's preferred role is to be lead investor or possibly co-lead. They also consider being syndicate partner on some occasions. EV's investment horizon is generally 10 years, with that timeframe extended for firms in hyper-growth stage. On average, their investments typically take five years to mature. The majority of their exits are through a listing in one of the main markets while many of the VC-backed firms are acquired.