In June last year, we launched Nauta Labs our pre-seed initiative which part of our Nauta Fund V. The focus of this pre-seed investing program is to identify and support category defining enterprise software, infrastructure software and deep tech companies with investment (£100-£250k), operational and strategic support. As these companies grow and find product market fit, some might be suitable for a ‘Nauta seed’ round led by Nauta Capital.
Some of the domains where we have been investing in are: the modern data stack, developer tools ML and AI (incl. ML Ops), cybersecurity, infrastructure software, high performance and quatum computing, cloud-native and open source startups.
What do I mean by ‘enterprise software and deep tech’ domains? There are many definitions out there for both ‘enterprise software’ and ‘deep tech’, however, I will try and explain what we are trying to accomplish here with Nauta Labs.
Enterprise software – more loosely aligns with a horizontal solution that address the core business need of an organization and a foundational part of the technology stack that an organization needs to build to achieve its own objectives. The software is bought (used) by technology savvy devs or IT teams. Today’s enterprise software has borrowed many of the favourable features from the consumer world – like slick UX, ease of use and cross platform interoperability while retaining the core requirements of large enterprises like cybersecurity, auditability and accountability.
These fundamental building blocks of a modern technology stack ..
We are defining deep tech as companies with a technology moat. Usually, deeper down in the technology stack and not vertical focused.
In the past 6 months we have invested in:
- Lupovis – A cybersecurity company based in Edinburgh that uses dynamic deception technology to lead cyber attackers away from high value assets and trap them within the network, and also generate alerts so that network administrators can stop a cyber exploits in progress. The start-up is a spin-out from the University of Strathclyde.
- Universal Quantum – Universal Quantum is building the world’s first million-qubit quantum computer. Its unique, electronic quantum computing modules are based on silicon technology where individual modules are connected using ultrafast electric field links to form an architecture that truly scales.
- Napptive – A Madrid, Spain, based start-up that has built a tooling platform to simplify the design, development, and maintenance of cloud native and edge-ready applications. By layering Napptive’s out-of-the-box solutions on top of their existing software application clients can add cloud-native features (such as Kubernetes deployment, monitoring, unified logging, secured endpoints) to their SW without wasting any time or significant effort, and instead focus on their core value proposition.
- Net AI – An Edinburgh, Scotland based company which operates in the network management domain targeting mobile operators. Mobile operators today struggle to predict volume and demand of network resources, and Net AI aims to decompose network data and provide analytics which will help operators automatically perform resource allocation to reduce capex and opex while increasing network efficiency. They also provide real-time insights to reduce costs associated with inaccurate resource provisioning.
- Boxy –
A London based open source startup, is the that gives any software company the opportunity to be enterprise-ready and compliant. Some of the features that are offered are audit logs, single sign on, role based access control etc. which are necessary for any software vendor selling to large enterprises. Especially early stage tech companies lack resources to be compliant with the security guidelines set out by large enterprises. Such startups might spend significant developer time on non-core feature, which could be better spent on their core product and offerings. Boxy helps such companies to enable enterprise features with just a few lines of code.
- Trackingplan – An Alicante, Spain, based start-up that monitors and understands all your analytics across disparate systems. Trackingplan is your real-time single source of truth across all your customer data and frontend systems, letting your business users and product managers own and understand how everything is performing in real-time and identify misconfigurations, anomalies and potential issues before they adversely affect your business. Trackingplan have been accepted into the most recent YC W22 batch.
- Undisclosed – an open source company in the AI/ML space
- Mistho – Mistho offers the first open payroll API for Europe that enables consumers to easily access and securely share their employment and payroll data with counterparties such as banks, insurers and lenders at the click of a button.
- Undisclosed – a universal compute fabric
And we are spending time with a number of other companies in various relevant domains – including misinformation/fake news detection, predictive cybersecurity, combating alert fatigue at the SOC and attestation and security for edge devices.
On these deals, we have partnered up with a number of our VC colleagues in the ecosystem – including Mark Hogarth (Techstart), Joseph Jacks (OSS Capital), Mina Samaan(MMC), Thomas Meier (Lightbird), K-Fund, Creator Fund, Runa Capital, Adara Ventures and Athos Capital.
If you are building an enterprise software, infrastructure software or deep tech company in Europe we would love to talk to you. Please apply to Nauta Labs now
By Pratima Aiyagari
