Project A Ventures was founded in 2012 by six former Rocket Internet colleagues - including Uwe Horstmann and Florian Heinemann - who wanted to build a genuinely different support model than the pure incubation approach they'd seen at Rocket Internet. Their 'operational VC' model pairs early-stage capital with a team of more than 140 in-house functional experts across software engineering, business intelligence, marketing, and recruiting, exclusively available to portfolio companies rather than offered as generic advisory calls. That model has backed more than 130 startups including Trade Republic (now managing €100 billion in customer assets), WorldRemit, sennder, and Catawiki, and Project A pivoted early into defense and dual-use technology starting in 2022 - becoming an early investor in Stark, a defense drone maker where co-founder Horstmann later became CEO. The firm closed its fifth and largest fund at €325 million in 2025, pushing total AUM to €1.2 billion.
No confirmed public exit yet - Project A's model is operational company-building rather than harvesting, and its clearest current proof point is Trade Republic, now managing €100 billion in customer assets while still privately held