Andreas Schwarzenbrunner

Andreas Schwarzenbrunner is a General Partner at Speedinvest, one of Europe's most active early-stage venture capital firms, where he leads the Climate Tech & Industrial Tech investment practice. He took an unusual path into venture capital: before investing, he served as a policy adviser in the Austrian Parliament, where he developed deep expertise across economic and technological affairs and an eye for emerging trends. He studied at WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and has spent time working and living across Munich, San Francisco, London/Stockholm, Sydney, and Vienna.

He joined Speedinvest in 2018, progressing from Principal to Associate Partner and, in a 2024–2025 management refresh, to General Partner alongside Markus Lang (Nora Frizberg became COO in the same reshuffle). With nearly a decade at the firm, he has been central in shaping Speedinvest's direction in industrial and climate tech, an area he has championed since his earliest writing on the "unconnected factory floor" and industrial digitalization.

Andy is a prolific writer and commentator on European industrial and climate tech. On Speedinvest's Medium he has published pieces including "The Unconnected Factory Floor" (2018), "Riding the wave of change in manufacturing" (2019), "Construction Tech: The Digital Future of a Stubbornly Analog Industry" (2020), and "The Race to Net Zero in Europe: Shining Light on Solar Tech" (2022). He co-authored, with Planet A Ventures and Norrsken VC, a widely shared guidebook/playbook for hardware and climate-hardware investing. He is a recurring conference speaker and podcast guest (e.g., VivaTech, Arctic15, Campus2Capital, and the Another ClimateTech Podcast).

• Invests at early stage (seed / Series A) in European B2B startups, concentrated in Industrial Tech, Climate Tech, and Enterprise Software.
• Core sub-themes: Construction & Real Estate, Energy, Supply Chains, and Manufacturing — technologies that help traditional ("old economy") sectors become more digital, productive, and sustainable. One of his stated professional passions is "supporting the old economy in its digital transition."
• Looks for startups that solve a real, concrete pain point. In explaining the Xapix investment he emphasized backing companies that address genuine operational problems (in that case, data orchestration and integration).
• Believes Europe should be more ambitious about building globally competitive industrial and deep-tech champions; has publicly argued that initiatives like the EU Scale-Up Fund are a positive signal but insufficient on their own.
• Heavy emphasis on founders and people — he describes his approach as supporting portfolio companies and founders in both business and personal growth and says he is "always keen to meet interesting people with bold ideas."
• Comfortable with hardware and "hard tech", having co-authored a playbook on how to invest in hardware/climate-hardware — a signal he'll engage with capital-intensive, non-pure-software businesses that many generalist VCs avoid.