Why henQ chooses the roads less travelled: Inside the Dutch VC’s new €67.6 million fund for the “odd ones out”
Venture capital investor henQ out of Amsterdam has successfully launched its fifth fund, having raised €67.57 million out of their €90 million target – with the intention of investing in 8-12 B2B software teams across Europe, with initial check sizes of €1-10 million.
For this fund, henQ substantially increased its base of entrepreneurial LPs with, among others, founders of companies such as Optiver, Exact, Mendix, SEOshop, Zivver and inSided, the latter four being henQ alumni. henQ’s investment philosophy is guided by their interest in investing in the “odd ones out” in European B2B software.
Mick Mackaay, Partner, on why henQ prefers to invest in markets that other investors see as boring or irrelevant: “there is a tendency among venture capitalists to focus on market predictions and macro analyses, and to invest based on rather specific takes on the future or ‘market theses.’
“At henQ, instead, we focus almost exclusively on the level of execution of the founders, here and now. All other investment criteria are trumped by this, they can never sway us to invest. Therefore, we are able to make very fast decisions, often in markets that are temporarily undervalued.”
The launch of henQ 5 aligns with a broader pattern of European venture funds in 2025 focusing on B2B software and adjacent enterprise-tech segments.
In the UK, Notion Capital announced a €114 million growth fund aimed at AI-driven software and FinTech, while Evantic Capital launched a €341 million debut fund to support B2B-AI companies.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands – henQ’s home market – DFF Ventures secured €50 million (out of a €60 million target) for investments in vertical AI, recommerce and marketplaces.
Against this backdrop, henQ’s decision to build an independently funded, moderately sized vehicle focused on early-stage B2B software startups illustrates a more concentrated and entrepreneur-driven approach within the same ecosystem.
Rob Rousseau, Principal & Head of Investor Relations, shared with EU-Startups: “At henQ we do not want to scale through fund size or the number of people on our team. We will stay as lean and small as we can. At the same time, we want to get better every single year. And the quality and entrepreneurial background of the LPs in henQ 5 help us to do just that.”
Founded in 2004, henQ is venture capital fund for B2B software startups that support European founders with initial checks that range from €1 to €10 million. The VC remarks that they like “boring” or “too small” markets, unconventional business models, or any early-stage company that’s just a little different in one way or another.
henQ invests throughout Europe in Seed and Series A rounds of B2B software startups, and was an early investor in, among others, Mendix, Mews, Sendcloud, Zivver, Wemolo and imagino.
It is run by fund managers Mick Mackaay, Coen van Duiven, Rob Rousseau and Jan Andriessen.
Jan Andriessen, Partner, said: “A common misunderstanding is that a European top performing company looks exactly like its American counterpart, whereas it’s considerably more complicated to scale from Europe than it is in the US. Due to the complexity of running a European company, focus and founder time to unlock new geographies and products are key, and oftentimes simply deploying more money hurts more than it helps.
“In practice this means that, from a certain critical size onwards, many European B2B software companies can actually scale up rather cash efficiently and without much external funding. This fits perfectly with a more concentrated portfolio.”
henQ 5 has achieved almost the same size as its predecessor fund in its first close already (henQ 4), despite the fact that its team decided to raise the fund without institutional or government sponsored money, which constituted almost half of the committed capital for henQ 4.
That decision reflects henQ’s commitment to independently make investment decisions that are solely focused on long-term returns, as well as their view that a great fund with commensurate returns should not be dependent on public money.
But the proven formula will remain intact, meaning the same type and number of investments, in the same phase, with the same team.
henQ intends to deploy the fund in the next 5 years, by investing in 8-12 world class B2B software founding teams across Europe, with initial check sizes of €1-10 million – ideally in markets that most other founders and investors see as boring or irrelevant.
This means an average of two new investments per year, only a handful compared to other players in the same phase. henQ’s aim is for every deal to have an interesting return profile in and by itself – not that returns of the fund are driven by only a tiny fraction of the portfolio.
EU-Startups has previously featured henQ in several contexts, including its role within the Amsterdam startup ecosystem (EU-Startups, 2019) and as an investor in Formulate, a Stockholm-based AI retail promotions startup that raised €3.7 million (EU-Startups, 2020).
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