Our Story.
Innovis VC is a success story, a group of like-minded individuals who set out with a goal: to become the leading student organization in the VC field for European students.
This is the story of how we were born and how we have come this far!
September 2020.
Foundation of the Munich Student Venture Club e.V.
In March 2020, companies were trying to cope with the pandemic, students started their first online semester and everything in public was shut down from one day to the next. We as a group of highly motivated students from Munich, united by the passion for startups and VC, decided to found a student club in the Venture Capital sector. In September we completed all legal requirements for a non-profit association and the Munich Student Venture Club e.V. was ready to accept members from TUM and LMU.
January 2021.
Onboarding of the first renowned Partners
After conducting some targeted recruitings (e.g. Legal, IT), we finally opened our application window in autumn and were pleasantly surprised by the number of applicants. To bring value to all of our new members, we simultaneously arranged first partnerships with for example Ventech, the UnternehmerTUM or Lupp+Partner as our first supporters and started with interesting and well-visited speaker-events.
October 2021.
Rebranding & Growth
During time we encountered more and more interest from students outside Munich that had an interest in what we already did. We gradually noticed that we wouldn’t be able to grow and reach our goals as “Munich Student Venture Club”. Therefore, we started to look for a brand that represented a student organization with hubs and professional teams around Europe’s startup destinations. At the same time, through our personal connections, we formed the founding teams of the first four hubs where we expanded: Milan, St. Gallen, London, and Paris.
January 2022.
New Activities, Partnerships & a new Hub
At the beginning of 2022, we decided to add another hub to our network: Madrid. An increasing number of students started to show interest in Innovis VC, and in March, we celebrated the 100th member of the student organization. Along with the number of members, the number of partners who supported us also grew, helping us to organize the first European events in a hybrid format: some members had the opportunity to participate on-site, while others connected from all over Europe.
September 2022.
Launch of our first Hackathon & a new internal structure
In mid-2022, the founding team of Innovis VC, after nearly two and a half years of work, decided it was time to make way for the new generations. To this end, a new internal organizational structure was created, consisting of three departments (Ventures, Operations, and Brand Management), each coordinated by a member of the Executive Board. The newly elected members of the Executive Board immediately got to work organizing a major European event, the VC Hackathon, and a new partnership with La Famiglia VC.
January 2023.
Further expansion & growing ESG awareness
The year 2023 was when we could finally focus on one of the issues most dear to us since our founding: making the world of Venture Capital increasingly accessible to students. Our ESG efforts were concentrated in this area, resulting in a series of "Women in VC" events and the recognition of the work of minorities in our sector. The year continued with the addition of new partners within the Innovis VC ecosystem, but the growth did not stop there. In May, we added two new hubs to our network: Berlin and Amsterdam.
September 2023.
Improvement of our internal systems
As the organization continued to grow, we implemented several improvements to provide even more value to our members and partners. The introduction of a new IT platform allowed us to offer an unprecedented networking and working experience to both members and partners. We also updated and enhanced our VC Academy, which enables us to provide members with a professional crash course on VC. Lastly, our website underwent a redesign to make it more attractive and up-to-date.
January 2024.
More events & more community
The cornerstone of the Venture Capital ecosystem are startups, and to support them, starting from early 2024, we began a closer collaboration with them through the "Startup Offering." Additionally, we organized many events across our hubs, but one stands out in particular. On March 21st and 22nd, members of Innovis VC from all over Europe gathered in St. Gallen to participate in the first "European-Wide Get Together" held during the Start Summit.
Our Future.
We dream big
In the next years, we want to consolidate our position as European student VC organization having hubs in all relevant entrepreneurship hubs. We plan to achieve this through new partnerships, more activities for our members and even more hubs in new locations!
The Innovis VC success story so far would not have been possible without the amazing team behind it — a motivated team and an attitude of getting things done paired with the right amount of optimism and ambition are of immense value.
Cheers to the team — We keep going!