Starting with curiosity

BlackWood began in Copenhagen in 2021, not with a fund, but with curiosity. Before anything was formal, we spent months talking to founders, angels, and other investors. The goal was simple. Understand what early-stage venture gets right, and where it fails.

One pattern kept repeating. Talent is everywhere. Access is not. The founders who look “institutionally obvious” tend to get pulled in faster. The most original builders often have to fight harder to be taken seriously, not because they are worse, but because they do not come through the usual doors.

That became the starting point for BlackWood. Build a firm that rewards originality over familiarity, and that stays human in an industry that often forgets what it is really investing in. People.

Building the engine

Instead of relying on closed networks, we built the system first. We started by assembling an operator and angel network across Europe, one relationship at a time. Angels sit with decades of lived knowledge, but most only see local dealflow and a narrow slice of opportunity. We wanted to widen that lens for them, and sharpen our own signal in markets where we do not always have boots on the ground.

We also tried to modernise how early-stage investing is done. This was before LLMs. We built our own internal natural language processing tool to help us listen better to founders at scale, including how they expressed conviction, uncertainty, and clarity. When foundation models accelerated, we adapted quickly and rebuilt our workflows around them. The point was never “technology for technology’s sake.” It was always about seeing more, learning faster, and staying honest about what we do not know.

Throughout that build, we kept coming back to the same internal principles. Curiosity. Pace. Mission focus. Craft. The belief that venture is both art and science. The idea that a firm should be built with intention and with personality. Those beliefs later became our Values.

Making it real

In late 2022, we received our EuVECA license from the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. In 2023, we launched Fund I and began backing pre-seed and seed founders across Europe in Fintech, Cleantech, and Web3. Now, we are investing out of that $25m Fund I.

The philosophy has not changed. Founders want a partner who shows up, helps, and does not get in the way. We try to move fast when it matters. That’s how we work.

BlackWood began as questions before it became reality. One question remains unchanged. What if capital did not just fund companies, but protected possibility?