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How I Raised It with Gesa Miczaika of Auxxo

·49 min·3 clips

German regulation forces fund LPs to write at least €200,000, shaping who can invest.

Nathan Beckert opens by asking how family offices are actually found. Geysa Mikzajka says they are private, hard to find, and usually do not want to be found. She points to the German Handelsregister as one practical way to uncover the names of investors in a fund. That answer sets up a wider fundraising conversation rather than a side remark. Auxxo backs female-founded startups in Europe, and that focus runs through the whole discussion. The firm did not start as a conventional venture fund. It began as an angel vehicle and then turned into a proper fund in 2021. That first fund came together quickly. The timing helped, because 2021 still had plenty of capital in the market. Auxxo already had relationships with angels and other backers from the earlier vehicle. The first tickets came in from GPs at big funds in Germany. They also included well known women who had founded companies or worked in private equity. The first fund was 19 million euros. That was enough to test the model without stretching too far. The next fundraising round was a different story. It took more than two years. Geysa describes the process as crisis mode. The broader backlash against diversity made the pitch harder to sell. There were many no's. At points, the team almost gave up. They kept going anyway, partly because the market turning away made the work feel more necessary, not less. The first closing eventually came in summer. That close landed at 26 million euros. The team still wanted a bit more, but it could already work with that size. The episode then shifts to deal flow and filtering. Auxxo receives roughly 1,500 to 2,000 pitches a year. For a small team, that is a lot to carry. Nathan asks who actually reads them. The answer is an intern. The team trains the intern to screen the inbound deals. They have tried AI bots too. The concern is missing something important. Because they see things differently than most people, they do not want anything to slip through the cracks. That ending fits the episode's tone. It is direct, curious, and more interested in process than polish.

As heard by us

A candid look at European VC fundraising when the easy money disappears.

How I Raised It moves quickly into the practical side of fundraising: a founder-to-founder conversation about how Auxo Female Catalyst Fund grew from angel investing into a proper VC fund for female-founded startups in Europe, and how much harder fund number two was to raise.

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Why you'd press play

You want the mechanics of raising a VC fund when the market turns hostile.

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