Newcomer of the Year

Six months ago, we launched Ruya Ventures. We had a thesis and a deep belief that Europe's deep tech founders were being underserved — not in capital alone, but in the kind of patient, specialised support that turns a breakthrough in the lab into a business that can actually scale.

This week, Ruya Ventures was named Newcomer of the Year by Isomer Capital and EUVC — judged by a panel that included Adams Street, GP Bullhound, HSBC, Isomer Capital, LGT, and Sofina. I am genuinely grateful for the recognition, and I want to use this moment not to celebrate, but to say something about why we built Ruya the way we did.

Deep tech is not like enterprise SaaS. You cannot iterate your way out of a materials challenge in a sprint cycle. You cannot A/B test your way to a working battery chemistry. The timelines are long, the capital requirements are heavy, and the failure modes are different — most deep tech companies do not fail because the science was wrong. They fail because nobody helped them figure out how to manufacture it, how to build the supply chain, how to cross the gap between a working prototype and a product a customer will actually buy.

That is the gap we are built to close. We come in at day zero. Often before a company is incorporated and we stay close through the hardest transitions: from research to pilot, from pilot to production, from a European base to global markets. We do this for a very small number of companies, because depth requires focus.

The award recognises funds "bringing something different to the European venture landscape." What we are trying to bring is not a new financial instrument or a clever portfolio construction. It is a genuine commitment to the work that happens after the cheque is written: the commercialisation, the manufacturing strategy, the global network, that most early-stage investors are not set up to do.

To everyone who has backed us and believed in this from the beginning: thank you. This is a long game. We are only at the start of it.