Aspire11, a new venture firm based in Prague, has launched its debut fund with €500 million committed capital. The fund is backed entirely by global private markets investor The Partners Group and its pension company Rentea.
The firm plans to invest in both early-stage VC funds and directly in later-stage start-ups through both primary investment rounds and direct secondaries. In the VC funds it backs Aspire11 seeks to be a “keystone LP” to accelerate closings and plans to co-invest alongside those funds in their best performing companies, according to its website.
Aspire11 was founded this year by Pavel Mucha, also the founder of Central and Eastern Europe-focused Kaya VC. Mucha is joined by founding partner Petr Borkovec, co-founder and CEO of Partners Financial Group, and partner Tülin Tokatli, a former fund of funds investor at the European Investment Fund.
The firm is founded on the model of The Maple 8, the eight largest pension funds in Canada, which all allocate more capital over a longer investment period to private equity than most European pension funds. Aspire11 points to the fact that the majority of pension funds in Europe have historically been conservative and remain heavily weighted toward bonds, according to a paper it published earlier this week.
The paper says that EU pension funds currently allocate just 0.02 percent of their total assets to venture capital, and that redirecting 1 percent of those pension funds’ assets under management would unlock €87 billion of fresh capital.
