Early Game (Fund II) is a €60 million early-stage venture capital fund looking to invest in tech startups across Europe. Fund II was launched in April 2024 and has already invested in six companies, including ReLock (cybersecurity), Servo (AI), PlaySafeID (gaming), and CogniSync (enterprise software). “Our philosophy is simple: we always act as lead investors, deploy capital with conviction, and view traction as a result of our investment, not a prerequisite. We #LeadEarly,” says Cristian Munteanu, the fund’s Managing Partner.
Fund strategy overview
Geography: Europe, with a focus on CEE and Romania
Preferred industries: generalist fund with a soft spot for cybersecurity, enterprise software, dev tools, deep tech
Investment ticket: flexible first checks, ideally between €500k and €2 million; up to €6 million in follow-on rounds
Company stage: any early stage (pre-seed, seed, series A)
Product type: any
Product stage: any
Revenues: pre-revenue or post-revenue
Q&A with Cristian Munteanu, Managing Partner at Early Game Ventures
What are the five main things you look for in a startup?
1. Exceptional founders with true grit
We invest in founders, not just companies. The ideal team is composed of individuals with complementary skills — typically, someone who can build, someone who can sell, and someone who can lead. But beyond skillsets, what we really look for is resilience. Grit. The ability to navigate ambiguity, take punches, and come back stronger. We want founders who are obsessed with the problem they’re solving — because when things get hard (and they will), obsession is what keeps you going.
2. A sharp, simple, and compelling value proposition
If you can’t explain what your company does and why it matters in one sentence, you’re probably not ready to scale. We look for startups with a crisp, differentiated value proposition that instantly resonates. Not clever, not cute — clear. When a customer hears it, they should say: “Yes, I need that. Now.” The best startups don’t just offer incremental improvement — they offer a new lens through which a market sees itself.
3. Deeptech, not just tech-enabled
We prefer to back companies building real technology products with defensibility at the core, not just a digital layer wrapped around an offline service. Tech-enabled businesses can work, but they’re often easier to copy, harder to scale, and rarely deliver venture-scale returns. We’re looking for startups with technical depth and IP potential, ideally in AI, infrastructure, automation, or other areas where the tech is the product, not just the enabler.
4. Big bets, big markets
We’re not afraid of risk — in fact, we seek it out. We want to fund bold ideas targeting massive markets. If there’s no risk, there’s probably no edge. We’re looking for founders who want to swing for the fences, not just play it safe. That means going after market categories worth billions, with the potential to reshape industries. Sure, this lowers the probability of success. But when it works, it works — and that’s what venture capital is built for.
5. A painkiller, not a vitamin
The problem you’re solving should be urgent, painful, and recurring. We want startups addressing problems that customers must solve, not problems they might solve someday. The best startups offer pain relief, not just nice-to-haves. If you’re not solving something painful and frequent, customer adoption will be sluggish, sales cycles will be long, and churn will be high. We back founders who are obsessed with the pain point, not just in love with their solution.
What disqualifies a startup as your potential investment target?
We have a clear set of filters, and we don’t waste time when something doesn’t fit.
First and foremost, we don’t engage with founders who are unqualified, uncommitted, or carry a questionable reputation. This is non-negotiable. If we sense a lack of integrity, drive, or clarity of thought, it’s a fast “no.” We’re in the business of backing people, and if the people aren’t right, nothing else matters.
Second, we stay disciplined about our investment thesis. We won’t invest in sectors that are outside our focus, no matter how enthusiastic the founders are or how hot the space might seem. That means we pass on companies in areas like Web3, crypto, tokenization, or anything that relies on financial engineering rather than product innovation. We’re also not interested in lifestyle verticals — fashion design, wellness, physiotherapy, fitness apps, or travel planning platforms. These may be viable businesses, but they don’t align with our mandate or risk/reward profile.
We’re focused on backing technology companies solving complex, high-impact problems in scalable ways. If it doesn’t fit that lens — whether because of the team, the domain, or the fundamentals — we move on quickly.
What, in your opinion, differentiates the best founders from the rest?
The best founders operate on a different frequency.
They have a deeply entrepreneurial mindset — not just in terms of building a product, but in how they think, how they make decisions, and how they handle adversity. They’re all in. There’s no plan B, no hedging. Their company isn’t a project — it’s a mission. You can feel it in the way they talk, the urgency they bring, and the way they pull people into their orbit.
What truly sets them apart is a combination of resilience, courage, and conviction. They’re opinionated because they’ve spent time in the problem space. They’re courageous enough to take big bets and withstand pushback. And they’re restless — never satisfied, always pushing harder, faster, deeper.
Everyone else? They’re reasonable. And that’s exactly the problem. The best founders are unreasonable in the best possible way. They bend reality instead of accepting it.
What startups should take into account before making a deal with a VC fund?
Founders often focus too much on valuation and too little on alignment. That’s a mistake.
Before signing a term sheet, a startup should ask: Is this the kind of partner I want in the trenches when things get hard? Because they will get hard. And when they do, misaligned expectations or mismatched values can destroy more than just the cap table—they can destroy momentum, culture, and trust.
The best founder–VC relationships are built on shared ambition and shared values. You want to raise from a VC who understands your vision, who’s comfortable with your level of risk, and who pushes you to go bigger, not someone trying to manage you like a portfolio asset. Likewise, the VC should believe in how you want to build, not just what you’re building.
So do your diligence. Talk to other founders that VC has backed. Find out how they behave after the deal closes. Because raising from the wrong VC is easy. Getting rid of them? Not so much.
What is your approach to startup valuation and preferred shares in the company?
At the early stage, valuation is more art than science. There’s no discounted cash flow, no EBITDA multiple that can capture the uncertainty and the potential of a startup that’s barely left the garage. What we’re really pricing is a combination of team quality, market opportunity, timing, and our own conviction. In many ways, early-stage valuation is a reflection of how big a leap of faith the investor is willing to take.
We don’t fixate on owning a specific percentage down to the decimal, but we do aim for a stake that reflects both the risk we’re taking and the level of support we plan to provide. For most early-stage investments, that typically means somewhere around 15% ownership. That gives us enough skin in the game to be a committed partner, without ever being a controlling one.
Ultimately, it’s about alignment. We want the founders to be motivated long-term and to have the largest piece of the upside. If everyone at the table is slightly uncomfortable with the final number, it usually means the deal is fair.
How do you support your portfolio companies?
Yes, we provide funding, but our real value shows up after the wire transfer. That means hands-on support, honest feedback, and a no-BS approach to problem solving. We challenge assumptions, help sharpen strategy, and act as a sounding board when things get messy because they always do.
We also open doors. Warm intros to top-tier investors, key hires, and strategic partners — we make those happen. We’re deeply plugged into the ecosystem, and we actively broker the connections that matter. Whether it’s raising the next round or closing a mission-critical hire, we’re in the founder’s corner. Importantly, we only step in where needed — we don’t crowd the table with unsolicited or imaginary support. We listen first, then act. Our job is to empower, not to interfere.
And on the operational side, we make sure our founders aren’t reinventing the wheel. Our portfolio accesses many startup perks: cloud credits, dev tools, analytics, HR platforms, and legal resources, worth hundreds of thousands of euros. It’s about removing friction so founders can focus on building.
What are the best-performing companies in your portfolio?
We’re proud to back a number of breakout companies—startups that aren’t just scaling, but reshaping the categories they’re in.
- ReLock is redefining cybersecurity. It makes any company phishing-resistant in just one day — no training, no friction, just real security delivered instantly. In a world drowning in email attacks, that’s a game changer.
- Druid is automating complex enterprise workflows with conversational AI. It’s not about chatbots, it’s about unlocking business logic and delivering measurable value from day one, across industries from banking to healthcare.
- BibleChat is one of the fastest-growing B2C AI apps in Europe. It brings comfort, answers, and spiritual guidance to tens of millions of people through faith-based conversation. It’s a rare case where deep tech meets deep emotional resonance.
- Bunnyshell is removing the last friction in software deployment. In the age of AI-generated code, environments spin up as easily as code is written, turning DevOps into a one-click experience.
- FameUp is democratizing influencer marketing. What once took agencies, spreadsheets, and weeks of coordination now takes minutes and costs a fraction. It’s self-serve advertising built for the TikTok era.
These are not just great companies. They’re champion startups born in Central and Eastern Europe, scaling globally with bold visions and real traction. We’re not just backing them, we’re helping them take the world by storm.
What are your notable lessons learned from investments that didn’t work out as expected?
The biggest one? Never invest in part-time founders.
Startups are brutal. They demand full attention, full commitment, and full emotional bandwidth. If a founder is hedging, keeping a corporate job, freelancing on the side, or just not fully committed, it’s a red flag. In every failed investment we’ve made where this was the case, the story was the same: the startup didn’t die because of product-market fit or timing, it died because the founder wasn’t all in.
Another painful lesson: don’t ignore your gut on founder dynamics. If something feels off in the team—even if the pitch is great and the metrics look decent—trust your instinct. Dysfunction between co-founders rarely heals itself. It usually festers, then explodes at the worst possible time.
And finally: don’t make exceptions to your own rules. If a startup is outside your thesis, but you’re tempted because the team is charismatic or the hype is strong, that’s exactly when you should step back. The deals that go sideways most often are the ones where we convince ourselves to make an exception.
In short: full-time founders, strong alignment, and disciplined decision-making. That’s the checklist we stick to for a reason.
What are the hottest markets you currently look at as VC, and where do you see the biggest hype?
Right now, AI isn’t just a hot market; it’s the underlying force transforming every market. It’s not vertical anymore; it’s horizontal. It’s rewiring entire industries, collapsing cost structures, shifting power dynamics, and redrawing market maps. The old playbooks are out the window.
Yes, we have our core focus areas — cybersecurity, enterprise software, and developer tools — where AI acts as a force multiplier. In cybersecurity, for example, AI is moving us from reactive defense to proactive detection and autonomous response. In enterprise software, it’s driving a shift from dashboards to decision-making. In dev tools, it’s changing how code is written, tested, and deployed, compressing years of work into weeks.
But here’s the truth: there’s no vertical untouched. Whether it’s healthcare, legal, logistics, HR, or even agriculture, AI is exposing inefficiencies and creating wedge opportunities for new entrants to come in fast and build big.
As for hype, it’s everywhere. AI-native decks are flooding inboxes, often with more vision than execution. Our job as VCs is to separate signal from noise. The real opportunity lies not in those just layering AI on top of tired ideas, but in those rebuilding workflows, systems, and infrastructure from the ground up with AI as the core foundation.
In your view, what are the key trends that will shape the European VC scene in the coming years?
The biggest shift is that building a global startup from Europe is no longer aspirational; it’s operational. And AI is accelerating that shift.
AI, both as a core technology and as an ecosystem of tools, is dramatically lowering the barriers for European founders — especially in Central and Eastern Europe — to compete on the global stage. It’s now easier than ever to build world-class products, run lean teams, and most importantly, reach and sell to customers in the U.S. or anywhere else, directly from Bucharest, Budapest, or Sofia.
This unlocks a new playbook. Startups from Europe no longer need to relocate or raise from Silicon Valley just to be global. They can go to market globally from day one. And that changes how we, as VCs, operate too. We’ll see more cross-border syndicates, international follow-on rounds, and more exits from the US market, even if the founders never leave their home country.
So while the headlines may still focus on AI hype, the real trend shaping European VC is the emergence of global-native startups born anywhere, scaling everywhere. That’s where we place our bets, and Europe’s edge will come from.
