Christian Buchenau

Christian Buchenau is a co-founder and partner of SquareOne Venture Capital, the Berlin-based early-stage firm that was originally founded as Paua Ventures in 2010 and rebranded to SquareOne in 2022. The stub data and many third-party databases still list him under the Paua Ventures name (and his firm email remains [hidden]), but the operating entity today is SquareOne. As a member of the founding team, he is described as mainly responsible for structuring funding rounds and leading exit discussions, and he sits on the boards of several portfolio companies.

He studied Business Administration in Vienna, Cologne, and Barcelona, completing a Master's in finance at EADA Business School in Barcelona. Before moving into venture capital, he worked in mergers & acquisitions at Deutsche Bank, holding positions in both Frankfurt and Vienna — a background that aligns with his current focus on financing rounds and exits.

Beyond investing, Buchenau has been active in the European startup ecosystem as a mentor for accelerator programs including Microsoft Accelerator and Techstars, and he has lectured on entrepreneurship and venture financing (reported affiliations include LMU Munich). At SquareOne he works alongside fellow partners and co-founders such as Christophe Defforey and Georg Stockinger, with the firm positioning itself as a hands-on, first-institutional backer for B2B and deep-tech companies.

• Invests at pre-seed and seed, frequently as the first institutional investor on the cap table, with checks of roughly €350K–€3.5M.
• Focuses on B2B software, enterprise SaaS, and deep tech, increasingly with an AI and data emphasis, backing companies "building technology to solve complex problems in huge markets."
• Looks for strong founding teams — Buchenau noted around the 2022 fund launch: *"We've never had so many high-quality founding teams in our deal flow before."*
• On the firm's identity and strategy, he framed the SquareOne rebrand as: *"We decided to rebrand to concretely reflect what we have been doing for 13 years in one brand, namely early-stage investments."*
• Differentiates via a "first-customers-guarantee" — actively helping portfolio companies land early enterprise customers — and positions the firm as an entrepreneurial sparring partner and hands-on supporter from day one.
• Personally oriented toward the finance side of deals: structuring rounds, board work, and leading exit discussions.