Hungry Beats Big

A few weeks ago, we announced that Judith is joining our portfolio company Langdock as Co-CEO stepping into the trenches of building and creating a more direct operational bridge into AI for the founders we back. It's the first step in building Visionaries into a more AI-native VC firm for its next fund generation.

Today, we'd like to share a bit more about the strategy behind that evolution and where we're headed next.

Every era of venture had its model.

The 1990s built venture like consulting firms: senior partners, junior partners, associates, long memos, top-down calls. The 2000s answered with flat and fast: no juniors, no platform, everyone does the work themselves. The 2010s built the VC firm like a tech company: services, media and marketing through a massive platform team.

Each model won its era because it matched how companies were built at the time. We believe the AI era demands a new one and that it looks almost nothing like the last decade of European venture.

What AI changes about venture itself

The age of AI changes not just how companies operate, but equally who is qualified to back them.

Stages are collapsing. Companies go from idea to $100m ARR in two years. The old assembly line of pre-seed, seed, A to B, each with its own specialist investor, is blurring into a single question: who do you want in the room from day one?

Returns concentrate. This cycle pays a handful of senior-led, high-conviction investments. Founders increasingly look for a direct line into the people who have operated at the frontier as they optimize for speed, distribution, geopolitical connectors, policy influence, operator access, and compute.

Analysis is commoditised. AI now does the "standard" diligence work VC firms built teams and analytical edge around, the KPIs, the TAM models, the benchmarks. But everything that can be analysed is, by definition, consensus. The defining companies of this era are the ones most would have failed to imagine and rejected by every spreadsheet until the day they look inevitable. What remains is judgement, conviction before evidence, and the human element: who you are and who you know, not how many people you employ.

The conclusion we've drawn: the edge in venture has moved from process and headcount to judgement and network. The AI era's model is concentration.

What we're doing about it

We started Visionaries in 2020 as the antithesis of institutional venture: a club of leading digital founders and family-business entrepreneurs backing the next generation connecting the top 0.1% with the top 0.1%. The founders defining the future deserve the people who have already built it once.

Since founding La Famiglia and Visionaries, the ambition has always been to build a VC firm that matches its era, a firm with a clear spike that deserves to be a founder’s number one choice. From Lovable, Groq, n8n, Langdock, Black Forest Labs, Tandem, Tendrils, Solve Intelligence, Parloa, Langfuse, Tacto, Deel, Personio, Miro and Pigment – we have been fortunate to partner with founders defining AI and shaping each wave from the earliest stages.

Now we are reshaping the firm itself for its next fund generation with the same instinct.

We're returning to GP-led investing, the way Visionaries and La Famiglia began. A concentrated senior team, more time with founders, and a direct line into our entrepreneur-LP base. Rob will be leading our investing together with Venkat, who has been behind some of our strongest recent investments, including Lovable and Tandem.

A more operational line into AI: We're moving our hands deeper into the work. Judith joined Langdock as Co-CEO while remaining Senior Partner at Visionaries from our next fund generation onwards. She now sits at the operating core of one of Europe's most important AI companies giving us a live signal into how AI is actually built and bought. She continues investing with us in the next generation with an operator's edge. In this era, we believe the investors who matter are the ones inside the work not observing it from across a boardroom table. 

Alongside this several of our team are taking entrepreneurial roles in AI, strengthening the network our founders draw on.

We're building the Visionaries Cadre. From Visionaries Unplugged to the network of founders, operators and industry leaders around us, our model has always been that the people who built the last era back the next one. AI flattens every advantage except that one.

Why Europe, why now

Europe is in its most consequential moment in a long time. The defining companies of the AI era are being built here, right now – and our founders are early proof of what this continent can produce when frontier talent meets first believers.

Our job is what it has always been: to find them first, believe earliest, and bring the people who have already built it once.

Hungry beats big.

Rob, VK & Judith for the Visionaries team