Michael Hock

Michael Hock is a fintech operator-turned-investor. He began his career at Siemens around 2000, working across venture capital, mobile, and corporate finance functions within the group's corporate ventures activities. He later served as a Managing Director at Holtzbrinck Digital / Digital Science, holding general-manager and board-level responsibilities before moving into the fintech company-builder world.

In 2017 he joined finleap, Berlin's fintech company builder, as Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director, where he was responsible for steering portfolio growth and professionalizing group operations. During his tenure (2017–2021) he led several notable exits of finleap portfolio companies, including the majority acquisition of PAIR Finance by Pollen Street Capital and the sale of challenger bank Penta to French market leader Qonto.

He then co-founded embedded/capital with Ramin Niroumand, a Berlin-based early-stage fintech investment firm built around the "embedded finance" thesis. In November 2022, Motive Partners (the specialist fintech private-equity and venture firm) agreed to acquire embedded/capital; the deal closed in February 2023 and the team was rebranded Motive Ventures, becoming the early-stage arm of the Motive platform. Hock is now a Partner on Motive's Venture Investment team, focused on sourcing and executing early-stage deals and driving portfolio growth.

On the education side, Hock holds a Diploma in Business Administration from Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (Stuttgart) and an Executive MBA from the Technical University of Munich.

• Backs early-stage companies that "embed financial services into non-financial products and workflows" — the core embedded-finance thesis carried over from embedded/capital into Motive Ventures.
• Invests at pre-seed, seed, and Series A, typically writing checks of roughly $500K–$4M.
• Sector emphasis on fintech and embedded finance, extending to SaaS/enterprise, proptech, and Web3/crypto.
• Values operator credibility — he built and scaled fintech businesses hands-on at finleap before investing, and looks for founders solving real financial-infrastructure and workflow problems.
• Leverages a cross-border network across Berlin, London, and New York via the broader Motive Partners platform, giving portfolio companies access to financial-institution relationships and later-stage capital.