Ivan Fernandez Lucas on the Rise of Europe’s Next Generation of Funds

Ivan Fernandez Lucas is Founding Partner at Enzo Ventures, the Spain-based pre-seed firm backing founders across Southern Europe, with a focus on under-digitised industries.

Ivan is a fellow emerging manager, young and quick to move, which is a combination we like and do not see often enough. He has been building Enzo since 2021.

Fund I backed 28 companies across 9 countries, including Orbio AI, Murphy AI, Complaion, Opereit and Karumi. This month they announced Enzo Ventures II, a €20M fund, with the first three investments already made and more coming. He runs the firm with Edgar Vicente and Nadhila Wardhana.

His thesis is blunt. Southern Europe has never had a talent problem. What it has lacked is belief, a winning mindset and the ambition to build world-class companies from day one, and he thinks that is changing right now.

A new generation of European funds is being built by people who are young, close to founders and willing to move before anyone else does. We sat down with Ivan to talk about what that generation can do that the established firms cannot, what is actually shifting in Europe, and why this is a good moment to be an emerging manager.

Q&A

1. Congratulations on the launch of your €20M Fund II! Raising a fund has been tough for most people over the last few years, and you have just launched yours with a €20M target. Why is this a good moment to be an emerging manager in Europe, and what are LPs seeing now that they were not seeing three years ago?

I think we’re entering a generational shift in European venture capital.

For years, the industry was dominated by established firms with strong brands, large teams and institutional relationships. Those advantages still matter, but the venture landscape has changed dramatically. Today, access to capital is increasingly commoditised, while access to exceptional founders, conviction and the ability to move early are becoming much more important.

LPs are recognising that emerging managers can offer something fundamentally different: greater alignment, a more focused strategy and access to opportunities that larger funds often overlook.

Three years ago, much of the conversation was about track record and institutional credibility. Today, we’re seeing more investors willing to back differentiated managers who have demonstrated an ability to identify exceptional founders early and build meaningful relationships with them.

At Enzo, we launched our first fund in 2022 with a clear conviction that Southern Europe was an underserved market for early-stage venture capital. Four years later, we’ve built a portfolio of around 30 companies, including Orbio, Murphy and Complaion, and launched our second fund with a €20M target.

I believe this is one of the most exciting moments to build a venture firm in Europe, precisely because the next generation of leading funds is still being defined.

2. You focus on under-digitised industries. Why there, and what does a good company in that space look like at pre-seed?

We believe the largest opportunities in technology often exist where technology has historically had the least penetration.

Industries like financial services, healthcare, logistics, industrial operations and enterprise services represent enormous markets, yet many still rely on fragmented software, manual processes and outdated infrastructure.

AI is fundamentally changing the economics of digitising these industries. For the first time, startups can automate complex workflows that previously required large teams, expensive implementations or significant operational infrastructure.

At pre-seed, we’re looking for three things.

First, exceptional founders with deep insight into a problem, whether that comes from having experienced it themselves or understanding the industry better than anyone else.

Second, a massive market with a clear structural inefficiency. We particularly like opportunities where technology doesn’t simply improve an existing workflow by 10%, but fundamentally changes how the industry operates.

And third, global ambition from day one. We want founders who are building category-defining companies, not local solutions.

Murphy is a great example of applying AI to debt collection, while Complaion is transforming compliance workflows, and Cori Clinical is addressing inefficiencies in clinical trial infrastructure.

The common denominator isn’t the industry. It’s the ambition to use technology to fundamentally redefine how that industry works.

3. You claim that talent was never the problem in Southern Europe, and that what has been missing is belief, a winning mindset, and the ambition to build globally from day one. What is changing on that front right now, and what made it change?

Southern Europe has always produced exceptional engineers, entrepreneurs and technical talent. The problem was never capability. It was ambition, exposure and access to the right ecosystem.

Historically, many founders built companies with a local or regional mindset. They would start in Spain or Italy, establish a strong position domestically and only then consider international expansion.

That mindset is changing dramatically.

We’re now seeing founders in Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and Lisbon thinking about the US market from the very beginning, competing for global customers and raising capital from the best international investors.

I think three things have accelerated this shift.

The first is the emergence of successful European founders who have demonstrated that world-class companies can originate here. Success creates role models, and role models change expectations.

The second is the circulation of talent. More Europeans have worked at global technology companies, particularly in the US, and are now bringing that experience, ambition and network back into the ecosystem.

And the third is AI, which has significantly lowered the barriers to building and distributing technology globally.

At Enzo, we’re seeing this transformation firsthand. Companies like Orbio, Murphy and Complaion are building internationally competitive businesses from their earliest stages.

Our ambition is to help accelerate that change. We want the next generation of Southern European founders to believe they can build global category leaders, because they absolutely can.

4. 28 investments across 9 countries, and now a second fund is a wide spread for a team of 3. How do you source and make decisions at that size without spreading yourselves thin?

The key is understanding where a venture manager creates the most value, and being extremely disciplined about everything else.

At pre-seed, our competitive advantage isn’t having the largest investment team. It’s being close to founders, developing strong conviction early and making decisions quickly.

We’ve built Enzo around a highly network-driven sourcing model. Our founders, existing portfolio, investors and relationships across the European ecosystem are a critical part of how we identify opportunities. We also spend significant time on the ground in our core markets and increasingly in San Francisco.

This allows us to operate with a relatively lean team while maintaining broad access to opportunities.

On the investment side, we have a structured process designed to reach decisions in approximately two weeks. We combine internal analysis with the expertise of our advisory committee, which brings complementary operational and investment experience.

We’re also very intentional about portfolio construction. At pre-seed, the distribution of outcomes is highly asymmetric, so diversification matters. But diversification should never come at the expense of conviction.

Ultimately, our job isn’t to be involved in every operational decision our founders make. It’s to select exceptional people, support them where we can genuinely make a difference and give them the freedom to build.

5. A wave of new European fund managers is being built by people in their twenties and thirties. Where is the genuine advantage in that, and where does it stop being an advantage?

I think the biggest advantage is proximity to the next generation of founders.

Many of the most ambitious entrepreneurs building companies today are in their twenties and thirties. We often share similar experiences, networks and ways of thinking about technology.

That creates a natural relationship. Founders see us as partners who understand their journey rather than simply as capital providers.

There’s also an advantage in having fewer institutional constraints. We’re building our firm in a completely different technological environment from the one in which many established venture firms were created. We can adopt new tools, rethink traditional processes and build a more agile organisation from the ground up.

But youth itself is not a competitive advantage. Being young doesn’t automatically make you a better investor.

Experience matters enormously in venture capital, particularly when navigating difficult situations, supporting founders through challenging periods and managing capital over long investment cycles.

The real opportunity is to combine the energy, proximity and adaptability of a new generation with the discipline, judgment and long-term thinking of an institutional investor.

At Enzo, we’ve been intentional about surrounding ourselves with experienced investors, operators and advisors who challenge our thinking.

The goal isn’t to build a young venture capital firm. It’s to build a great venture capital firm that can last for decades.

6. The established firms still have things you do not: established brand image, deeper cash balance, and more follow-on capital. When you and one of them are chasing the same deal, what makes you win?

We don’t try to compete with established funds on the size of our balance sheet. That would be playing the wrong game.

At pre-seed, what matters most is the relationship you build with a founder before the rest of the market recognises the opportunity.

Our approach is based on three things: speed, conviction and genuine founder alignment.

We can get to know a founder early, develop an independent investment thesis and make a decision without going through multiple layers of institutional approval.

But speed alone isn’t enough. Founders want investors who genuinely believe in what they’re building, particularly when their vision still looks unconventional to the rest of the market.

We also take a very personal approach to our relationships. When we invest, founders work directly with the people who made the investment decision. There’s no distance between the partner who sold them on the fund and the person supporting them afterwards.

And while our initial investments are relatively small, we’ve developed a co-investment strategy that allows us to mobilise additional capital for our strongest portfolio companies as they scale.

Ultimately, the best founders don’t necessarily choose the investor with the largest fund. They choose the people they trust, who understand their ambition and who they want alongside them for the next ten years.

That’s where we believe we can win.