Welcome back to a new episode of the European VC Podcast!Today, we are celebrating one of the finalists in the Exit of The Year category at this year’s European VC Awards, this episode dives deep with Marc-Olivier Luecke, General Partner at Atlantic Labs, and Christian Siewek, co-founder and MD at Vimcar.

Atlantic Labs is a 110M EUR fund with 300M under management, based in Berlin, Germany. They focus on pre-seed rounds but occasionally go for seed rounds. They focus mostly on Climate & Energy, AI & Data, and European Deep Tech. Some of the most notable investments from their portfolio are: Choco, Zenjob, Wandelbots, Again, and of course Vimcar.

We’re going to dive deep into the exit of Vimcar that happened in January 2023, together with Marc and Christian and make sure to touch on things like:

• the thesis of Atlantic Labs and why they invested in Vimcar
• the challenges of building a company like Vimcar
• the journey of going from pre-seed to Series B and exit to Battery Ventures
• … and more that we invite you to discover below.

Go to eu.vc for our core learnings and the full video interview 👀

Chapters:

00:23 Overview of Atlantic Labs
00:49 Vimcar's Journey and Exit
04:13 Investment Thesis and Founding Story
05:24 Early Challenges and Solutions
08:19 Series A Fundraising Journey
13:48 Series B and Expansion
21:38 Reflections on VC and Founder Dynamics
37:22 Investor Alignment and Ambitions
40:10 Series B Funding and Expansion
40:37 Challenges During the Tech Reset
43:07 Strategic Decisions in 2022
44:02 Reflections on Growth and Sales Strategies
51:14 Engaging with M&A Advisors
55:53 The Acquisition Process and Challenges
01:04:44 Post-Exit Integration and Leadership