Collective Ventures

Congratulations to encosa energy on closing their €25M seed round! 🚀 🚀🚀 #High #energy #costs have become a structural disadvantage for the German #Mittelstand. encosa's answer is straightforward: battery storage systems, delivered without the capital outlay, project complexity, and management overhead that have kept most companies on the sidelines. That removes the last real barrier to adoption, and it is a big one. What makes this round special is who is backing it. Five energy-intensive family businesses - WARSTEINER Brauerei Haus Cramer KG, WEPA, Blum Group, ROWE MINERALÖLWERK GMBH and LAT Gruppe - are not just investors, they are customers. They put their own capital behind a product they use themselves. There is no more honest signal of product-market fit than that. And a well-deserved shoutout to Sascha Koberstaedt and the team for being named Unternehmer des Tages by Handelsblatt. Recognition that reflects what they have built and the conviction with which they are building it. The full story is worth reading --> link in the comments. Congrats to Sascha Koberstaedt, Sebastian Becker and the entire encosa team! Cecil von Croÿ, Julian Kappus, Dr. Nicolaus Berlin, Falk Schäfers

#Compliance is broken. And everyone working inside a large organisation knows it. Policies exist in PDFs. Regulations live in the heads of specialists. Legal teams become permanent bottlenecks. Employees default to "ask a lawyer" for questions that should have a clear, instant answer. The result: slow decisions, expensive headcount, and real business risk - all at the same time. This is not a people problem. It is an infrastructure problem. And it has been waiting for a proper technological solution. That is why we backed Bayshore AI in their $8M seed round together with our network of selected co-investors. #Bayshore translates regulations and internal policies into "#Baycode", a proprietary language that turns legal rules into machine-executable decision logic. Employees and teams interact with it through an AI layer that is intuitive and business-friendly. The output is deterministic: not a suggestion, not a probability, a reliable answer. This matters because pure AI cannot solve compliance. LLMs hallucinate. In legal contexts, "probably correct" is not good enough. Bayshore's combination of codified rules and AI is what makes it trustworthy enough for the world's most regulated industries. The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital, with participation from Lucid Capital, BOOOM💥, and strategic angels. Congrats to Philipp Wiegand, Paul F. Welter and Erik Krauter - we're very excited to be part of your journey! Falk Schäfers, Cecil von Croÿ, Julian Kappus, Dr. Nicolaus Berlin

Oktoberfest Recap 💥 🥨   Last Wednesday, we gathered together with our partner Heliad AG for our Bavarian Power Breakfast for the final stretch of Oktoberfest and Bits & Pretzels.   Listed as a protected monument in the Bavarian inventory of historic sites, Gaststätte Großmarkthalle offered us the perfect setting for meaningful conversations – connecting the old with the new. Founders, angels, investors, and friends joined us over fresh coffee, Weißwurst, and Brezn to reconnect, reflect, and recharge after a packed week of pitches, panels, and Maßkrüge.   Thank you to everyone who joined us early in the morning and to the team at Gaststätte Großmarkthalle for the warm hospitality and authentic Bavarian start to the day.   Prost to carrying the Wiesn spirit into the months ahead!   In case you missed it, we look forward to seeing you at one of our next events! Cecil von Croÿ Dr. Nicolaus Berlin Alexander Wagner Philip Kurzrock Falk Schäfers Julian Kappus