On a cold January day back in 2006, Endeit Capital officially came into being when Joop van den Ende and Hubert Deitmers held a press conference announcing their new investment firm.
The company was initially named Van den Ende & Deitmers, before later becoming Endeit Capital. A small detail that has always carried a big meaning: our logo. It’s a fusion of the E from Van den Ende and the D from Deitmers, two shapes coming together. It reflects equality and true partnership (almost like yin and yang), and it stands for transparency, values that have guided our approach from the very beginning.
Right from day one, our ambition was clear: not so much to back the earliest start-ups, but to partner with scale-ups, companies that had proven their potential and were ready to accelerate their next phase of growth.
As soon as the announcement was over, the team got straight to work and made its first investment in Eyeworks. Founded by Reinout Oerlemans, its focus was scripted and non-scripted TV content across a range of genres.
The ball was officially rolling!
Investment in early social media company Hyves soon followed (its dancing banana logo becoming something of an icon across the Netherlands). In fact, Hubert already held a stake in Hyves, which helped make it possible for Endeit to come on board as an investor too. Alongside Hyves, we invested in Albelli, which went on to become one of Europe’s leading photo printing platforms.
2006 would also prove to be a significant year in the wider tech arena: Apple rolled out its first edition of the MacBook; Google acquired a little-known video sharing site called YouTube; and people were invited to share their thoughts via short messages with the launch of a site called Twitter, and just 12 months later, the iPhone was introduced, a moment that would redefine what “mobile” could be.
20 years on, Endeit has grown alongside an extraordinary wave of innovation. What started as a bold vision has become one of Europe’s leading scale-up investment firms, partnering with founders who are building ambitious, AI-enabled businesses and shaping what’s next for our economy and society.Our journey has evolved too: back then, we were a distinctly Dutch firm, with several investments beyond our borders.
Today, we’re a European platform, and we’re proud that a meaningful part of our portfolio is still built in (and with) the Netherlands.In celebration of our 20th anniversary year, we’ll be sharing posts that give insight into our learnings from 2 decades of backing and building companies, from team members across our segments of Fintech, ClimateTech, Future of Work and Security. And, of course, we’ll share some thoughts on the direction we see things going over the next 20 years.
We’ve only just begun….
