"Short" story squared ;-)

"You will recognize them by their exits" - this is the motto hanging on the board in our Wrocław office. However, in order for these dream exits, of which we already have three on our account, to happen, much more must happen - at the beginning, you need to choose the right investments, the right people and support them actively for years. Knowing our luck with founders...:) it's a simple condition, ... But you have to add much more "blocks" and some years to get closer to exit successes.

How did we build the investment portfolio?

For the first 3 years of its operation, WP2 Investments functioned as a classic family office with elements of venture capital and it was a time of intensive investment in scalable businesses from several market areas. All investments to date have been based solely on the private funds of the fund's founders, which gave the opportunity to freely and opportunistically shape the investment policy.

What do we take into account over the years of our fund's existence, looking at the market through the prism of promising investments?

Global trends, primarily technological, but also in the green energy market or in the global area of payment development, which shape the needs of the market, but also suggest ways to solve them in the form of new products or services, most often related to new technologies. Time has shown that over the last three years, each of these trends has developed significantly and created new business opportunities.

Our fund experience also shows how important the know-how and achievements of the founding team are in building a portfolio (because it is usually a minimum of 2 people), but above all the managerial profile of these people, an open mind, courage in taking challenges and decisions, high resilience and a well-thought-out ability to take risks.

The resultant of all these factors contributed to the fact that our fund history allowed us to create a portfolio in a few years, which currently consists of three investment pillars:

• groups of fintech companies,
• investments based on renewable energy solutions,
• start-ups with an impact character.

During the first two years of operation (2021-22), we built a portfolio of over 30 companies, which was probably the fastest built portfolio on the Polish capital market. Among them is probably the largest group of companies dealing with the digitization of payments as part of a single fund's investment.

As part of the second - green - pillar of our portfolio, in addition to our constant activity since 2021 on the solar farm market, in November 2024 we established  the first biomethane fund in Poland, DA VINCI VC ASI, with a capitalization of EUR 25 million. WP2 Investments took up a 20 percent stake in it and at the same time acts as a General Partner in this project.

New family members in 2024...

Last year was also full of several interesting investments, based on high-impact projects, as a complement to the third pillar of our portfolio. And so we purchased shares in two startups: 12.5% (some directly and part through Digital Ocean Ventures, a venture building company in which WP2 Investments has a majority share) in the startup Wycieczkomat, which plays an increasingly important role in digitizing the world of education, and in the same way 32% in Suplementio, which is a platform producing and developing supplements in the white labeling model for companies,  their own distribution chains. We have also invested in HighCulture! - a project supporting mental health based on herbal preparations.

We also have an interesting experience last year, intensively cooperating in the creation of a new fund as part of the first edition of PFR STARTER - Digital Ocean Ventures Starter. WP2 Investments took up 50% of private capital in the amount of PLN 3.8 million. The current management team of Digital Ocean Ventures is moving mostly to the new fund, and WP2 Investments is buying shares in four companies that were established in DOV (so far it was a venture building model developed in an entity controlled by capital by WP2 Investments) and becomes the leading, but passive investor in the new Digital Ocean Ventures Starter.

Staying on the subject of financing, it is worth mentioning that the past year was also exceptional for many companies from our portfolio, which took part in the calls for EU subsidies, which have been so long awaited on the Polish market, with very good results. In total, several portfolio companies raised PLN 36 million, with the support of a specialist from the WP KWADRAT team.

And finally, about exits! In the fourth quarter of 2024, we made the third exit in our history - WellBee was sold to the industry stock market investor Benefit System.

The previous two exits took place in 2023 - the sale of Primetric to the American Big Time group controlled by the VISTA fund and the sale of shares in CAD/CAM Solutions to Tar Heel Capital.

… and a change in investment policy from 2025!

We remain active in the venture capital market, but we are adding new elements to our strategy and the core of our business is a new business model assuming the development of 3 structures.

You can read more here:

Business is people

Probably a clichéd slogan, but one of the most true in today's market circumstances, saying that business is primarily the people who create it. We sign it with both hands! Our team consists of a dozen or so independent managers, mainly from the banking market. Why bigger than in most funds. First of all, because we have created a unique micro-institution within this ecosystem within the fund - ScaleUP. It is an original program through which we implement our "smart money" concept, which consists in supplementing the capital with the knowledge and experience of the WP2 Investments team in various aspects of running a business by founders.

As we have already mentioned - the personalities of the founders of the companies that make up our portfolio, their managerial profiles, knowledge and way of running businesses, looking at the technological world in the era of ubiquitous AI, noticing and catching the business opportunities they bring, openness to building new models and adapting to the new business reality - this is one of the most important parts of this puzzle.