Robin Haak's Recent LinkedIn Posts

The real robotics revolution is not what you think. As an investor in industrial robotics, space logistics, and deep tech, Christian Noske, Partner at NGP Capital, has some idea about where we might be headed. For him, the real story is not flashy humanoids or sci-fi fantasies. It is economics, labor shortages, and infrastructure that is shifting quietly to reshape entire industries. And this is only the beginning.

Are you a VC? Fintech investor? One of our strongest portfolio companies is now fundraising. ~€300M AuM today, on a clear path toward €1B. If this sounds interesting, feel free to reach out. Happy to connect you directly with the founder so you can hear the story firsthand. Let’s go 🚀

Great catching up with my old friend Erik Podzuweit, founder and CEO of Scalable Capital. Yes, technically I am a very, very tiny indirect investor. Microscopic, really. But much more importantly, I am just grateful to call him a friend. Erik is one of those rare builders who combines sharp thinking with real humility. No noise. No ego. Just steady execution over many years. I have always admired that about him. Seeing him succeed makes me genuinely happy. Not because of headlines, but because good people quietly doing great work is something this world needs more of. Berlin vibes tonight. While everyone seems to be still chasing sunsets in Cape Town, we are now here and build.) Founders for real. With heart. 🚀

Really enjoyed learning more about the Spanish ecosystem. Thank you for having me. cc Robin Capital and Norrsken VC Foundation. Aristotelis Xenofontos (Seaya) Sjoerd Stevens (Norrsken Evolve) Pepe Borrell Segura (Masia) Jorge Blasco (LUMO Labs) Iris ten Have, PhD (Visionaries Tomorrow) Moderated by Rocío Alcocer Magirena, Managing Director, Norrsken Barcelona.

Today, with Johanna Heise (heise), representing a fourth-generation media house from my hometown, Hannover. Hope you enjoy the read. Content is queen. CC Andy Lenz

Volition Capital joins Kombo (YC S22). Welcome, Sean Cantwell and team. Robin Capital has been on this journey for a while. So have Acadian Ventures with Thomas Otter and Jason Corsello. 468 Capital with Bardo Droege and Bernhard Janke. Brad Flora from Y Combinator. Strong partners who believed early and supported. Alongside Jens Bender, Christian Forman, Paul Forster, Sultan Murad Saidov, Jean-Denis Greze, Ferdinand "Micky" Meyer, viet le-martin, Julius Göllner, Tido Carriero, and many others. Kombo keeps building. Infrastructure that makes companies work. Quietly. Reliably. No headlines needed. Happy to be a tiny part of the journey. Congratulations, Alexander Kuebel, Aike Hillbrands, Fabian Rothfuß - you guys are amazing and rock! <3

Met Pepe Borrell Segura, Co-founder and Partner at Masia VC, here in Barcelona. Pure emerging manager energy. Building Masia from the ground up and already deeply plugged into everything that’s happening across Spain. Investing early, moving fast, high conviction. If you’re a founder in Spain, you should definitely reach out. Great meeting you and thanks for taking the time. Cc Aldea Ventures Carlos Trenchs Sainz de la Maza

Deniz Bay, Ziar Khosrawi, and the Bounti team just raised €4M led by Ventech, with IBB Ventures, Common Magic, and us (Robin Capital) joining again. We backed them at pre-seed. And we doubled down in this round. Bounti goes after something most software has ignored for decades. Not the office. The real world. Restaurants, retail, hospitality. The places where millions of people work every day and where execution directly drives revenue. We spent a lot of time with the team early on. What stood out was not a pitch. It was clarity. Deniz had lived the problem himself. Broken onboarding. Missing information. No systems that actually work on the ground. And a simple idea. If software does not help in the moment of work, it will not be used. What they built follows that belief. No dashboards for the sake of it. The system sees what is happening across locations, understands where things break and triggers action. Training. Tasks. Clear next steps. Directly with the people on the floor. And then something simple but rare happened. People used it. Every day. Thousands of frontline workers. Real operations. Real impact. AI has been loud in recent years. Slides, demos, promises. But the real opportunity was always here. In the physical economy. Where work is messy, human, and time-critical. Bounti quietly goes there. Proud to back this team from day one and to continue the journey together. In founders we trust. Paul Forster Koen Bok  Jorn van Dijk Framer Sarah Drinkwater - Common Magic Diana Zur Löwen Julian Lange Olivier Bonnet Jan Ebbinghaus  Jens Bender  Stefan Menden Thomas Jetter

This is the true story about me. The true story about Robin Capital. We encourage you to watch the full video. I grew up with Dragon Ball, and Vegeta has always been my favorite character. Not because he wins the most. Because he pays the price. He gives up comfort. He trains when nobody claps. He takes the hit, swallows the lesson, and comes back quieter, sharper, more real. In the story, there is that moment where pride turns into love, and he chooses sacrifice, not for applause, but because it is the right thing to do. That arc always stayed with me. And honestly, it is also venture. You do the work in the dark. You look stupid. You miss. You learn. You show up again. You try to become a little more disciplined, a little more truthful, a little more useful. I am deeply thankful to everyone supporting this journey: our Limited Partners, Venture Partners, Operating Partners, our team, everyone behind the scenes. And most importantly, the founders who trust us with their life’s work. Your courage is the signal. Our job is to be worthy of it. Minimalism taught me something, too: say less, mean more, leave space for what matters. In Founders We Trust. Courage Is a Co-Founder. Robin

Making friends and building community. Yesterday I met Edgar Vicente from Enzo Ventures here in Barcelona. Fantastic guy. Emerging manager, former founder, running a small and focused fund with amazing access to founders. Thanks for having me Edgar, it was a pleasure. You can really feel the energy right now. Milan and Barcelona are both on the rise as tech hubs. Many talented founders building ambitious companies and a growing group of thoughtful investors around them. Great to meet so many builders and peers along the way. LFG 🚀

Happy International Women’s Day. “Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.” Thank you for the strength, grace, and light you bring into the world. 🌷

Last weekend, Magnus Carlsen became World Champion in Freestyle Chess. It feels special to write that. Freestyle Chess, co-founded by Magnus Carlsen and Jan-Erik Büttner, started with a simple idea: let the best players in the world compete in a format that rewards creativity from the very first move. Last weekend, that idea stood on its own. It was great to see Freestyle Chess work closely with FIDE, Chess.com, and many strong partners and sponsors. When different parts of the chess world come together like this, the game wins. We are a small part of this journey as investors through Robin Capital. Grateful to support builders who care deeply about what they create. Congratulations to Magnus. Congratulations to all the players. And thank you to everyone who made it happen. The photo was taken during the event. I’m glad I had the chance to meet him there. Sometimes progress in a game that is centuries old happens quietly. Robin

It was a real pleasure meeting Ante Spittler yesterday, co founder of Moss. What he and the team have built is seriously impressive. A big company, yes, but more importantly one shaped by years of focus, discipline, and relentless execution. I am also a customer, which makes it even better to see the journey from both sides. Fun fact: his co founder Anton Rummel and I actually founded our first company together in our hometown many years ago. Small world. Long journeys. Full circle moments.

We love space. But not the hype. The real game is infrastructure. Alpine Space Ventures is one of the few funds actually backing the layer beneath it all, satellites, components, ground segment, data. Fund I already shows strong early marks. Fund II is going bigger. This is a deep dive with Joram and Bulent on how to build the space economy for real. Joram Voelklein

Seven years ago I almost became co-founder of NOVOS with my friend Chris Mirabile. Instead, I backed him early. Today the results speak for themselves. Real longevity science. Real outcomes. We’re outperforming the benchmarks. The mission is simple: help people live better, longer.

Today I went to the Goldman Sachs Tech Symposium in London. Great to see old friends and make new ones. Thanks for having me! Nadine Urseanu Lea Vajnorsky Zoé Fabian Esther Gonzalez Harry Stebbings Mathias Haniel Robin Capital

Robots working alongside humans. Space logistics becoming a real industry. And the real drivers behind it are not science fiction, but economics, demographics, and infrastructure. In this conversation, Christian Noske, Partner at NGP Capital, shares how he thinks about the future of robotics, industrial AI, and space technology. The takeaway is simple: the biggest shifts rarely happen where the headlines look. They happen quietly, when cost curves drop, data improves, and labor shortages force change. Factories are already moving from isolated robotic systems to environments where humans and machines work side by side. Space is moving from government ambition to commercial infrastructure. And we are still very early. A thoughtful perspective on where deep tech, robotics, and space infrastructure are actually heading. Highly recommend the read.

I asked our founders a simple question: if you could start again, would you choose Robin Capital on your cap table? The answer honestly surprised me and humbled me. Our latest founder survey resulted in an NPS of 95. That means 95% promoters, 5% passives, and zero detractors. The average score across participants was 4.8 out of 5. For a first-cheque investor, this means more to me than any IRR number or portfolio headline. Because venture capital, at least the way I believe in it, is not about money first. It is about showing up. Early stage is fragile. Things break, markets move, founders carry enormous pressure and often do it quietly. Our job is simple: be available, challenge thinking, open doors, connect people, tell the truth, and stay loyal when things get hard. Sometimes that means strategy. Sometimes it means introductions. Sometimes it means uncomfortable honesty. And sometimes it simply means answering the phone late at night when someone needs to talk. Reading the anonymous founder's feedback stayed with me. One founder wrote: “Robin is very close to the founders. You feel that he cares and always goes the extra mile.” Another said, “Robin challenges my thinking and helps me see the bigger picture.” And another: “Extremely responsive, quick to connect you to an awesome network, and very candid and honest.” We are still early in this journey. Robin Capital is not just a fund to me. It is a community. Founders helping founders, operators helping operators, people who believe that generosity, honesty, and long-term thinking compound over time. Capital is everywhere. Trust is rare. So to every founder who took the time to answer this survey: thank you. You are the reason we do this. In founders we trust. PS: In addition to the anonymous NPS survey responses from many founders in our Fund I and Fund II portfolios, several founders also provided references that we may share. We also conducted qualitative calls to better understand the feedback in depth and are now implementing what we learned. One of the first initiatives is a “How to Fundraise” series for our Robin Capital family, where founders such as Alexander Kuebel (Kombo (YC S22)), Paul Guillemin (Volta Software), Marc A. Wietfeld (ARX Robotics), and Maximilian Fischer (Deltia) will share their firsthand experiences, lessons, and advice with other founders in the community.

Moving to Barcelona. Intros appreciated! Today I’m moving to Barcelona for six weeks to spend some time getting to know the Spanish tech ecosystem a bit better. I’ll be restarting fundraising next week and am currently speaking with potential limited partners for the second close of my fund. That said, I’m always happy to meet fellow VCs, founders, and people building interesting things. And, quite honestly, I’m also just happy to make new friends along the way. Six weeks is long enough to work hard, but also long enough to share a few good moments. If anyone is around and feels like grabbing a coffee, a beer or a glass of wine, going to the gym (gym buddies welcome), riding motorbikes, dancing salsa, going for a walk, or exploring a bit of culture, I’m very much up for it. Warm introductions are always appreciated. 🙏♥️

There’s a lot of noise in the media right now. AI-generated everything. Endless takes. Faster cycles. Shorter attention spans. But Johanna Heise isn’t chasing any of that. As a fourth-generation leader at heise, one of Germany’s most established media companies, she’s focused on something far less flashy and far more difficult to build: trust. Trust in people. Trust in brands. Trust in doing things properly, even when the environment is shifting under your feet. Read on to discover how she is navigating change and building trust at one of Germany’s most respected IT and technology brands.

FORWARD.one’s Riemer Smink on Fund III, ruthless focus, and why commercialization—not elegance—decides who wins in European industrial tech.

Met Marc Jordana Soldevila today in Barcelona. He showed me around Norrsken, the space, the people, the energy. You feel it immediately. People building, quietly, seriously, together. We spoke about investment vehicles, long-term thinking, and backing what matters. Clear vision, no noise. Deep respect for what they’re building and for the roots of it, started by Niklas Adalberth. Grateful for the time, Marc. Rare to meet people who combine sharp thinking with real heart.

Procurement is not glamorous. It rarely makes headlines. But it quietly shapes margins, supplier relationships, compliance, and long-term resilience. Most companies did not intentionally build broken systems. Over time, they layered automation onto workflows that were already outdated. Tools were added. Complexity increased. Insight did not. Dexter did not begin with a grand platform strategy. It began with a very specific operational pain point. A customer struggled to receive invoices properly, validate them against contracts and purchase orders, and understand whether they were being charged correctly. So Bella Wu, Vincent Garrigues-Geithner, and Caterina K. built a solution to fix that narrow problem. As they improved at extracting and structuring line-item invoice data, something larger emerged. Invoices are not expressions of intent. They are financial reality. They show what companies actually pay, supplier by supplier, rate by rate. They expose fragmented long-tail vendors, maverick spend outside formal processes, contract deviations, and hidden surcharges that quietly erode margins. What started as accounts payable tooling became a window into how companies truly operate. From there, the company expanded upstream. Not just invoice validation, but supplier evaluation, onboarding, contract management, request intake, and purchasing decisions before the invoice ever arrives. AI is not a feature bolted on top. It is the connective layer across the procurement lifecycle. Dexter is deliberately focused on Europe. Procurement here operates under real structural constraints: data residency requirements, regulatory complexity, supply-chain transparency obligations. Many global enterprise systems treat these as secondary considerations. For European mid-sized manufacturing and wholesale businesses, they are core realities. The founding team previously worked together at Dance during a period of rapid growth and supply-chain intensity. That experience exposed the operational friction they now address. Y Combinator did not introduce them to AI, but it reinforced a commitment to building an AI-first system rather than incrementally modernizing legacy software. Today Dexter remains a small, focused team in Berlin, building in person and learning directly from customers. Their roadmap is driven by real-world feedback, not abstract strategy. The ambition is straightforward: become the procure-to-pay platform European mid-sized companies actually want to use. Clear. Practical. Decision-focused. Sometimes meaningful change does not start with a grand vision. It starts with an invoice that does not add up, and a team willing to look closely enough to understand why.

How Alpine Space Ventures built deep-tech conviction into a strong Fund I performance and why Fund II is all-in on real space infrastructure. Joram Voelklein

Europe produces world-class engineers, scientists, and researchers. Far fewer companies successfully turn that brilliance into global industrial scale. For Riemer Smink, that gap isn’t an abstract policy problem, but a core problem that informs his work as an investor. As a VC investor at FORWARD.one, Riemer has built a reputation for pairing early-stage industrial technology with relentless commercial discipline, backing founders early, leaning in hard when they perform, and stepping back just as decisively when they don’t. With FORWARD.one’s third fund underway, he reflects on FORWARD.one’s strategy, why sales still decides who wins, and what it will take to build Europe’s next generation of industrial champions.