Brightlane Invest

Consumer Tech

Entrepreneur looking at different screens

The pace of change in consumer tech is unrelenting, and yet many consumer everyday problems are still lacking comprehensive, efficient and affordable solutions.

On our investment radar are solutions as diverse as non-medical devices for supporting patients with lifestyle diseases, mobile applications for making everyday tasks more efficient and platforms for collaboration on education, medical information and more.

The foremost selection criteria for us in consumer tech is the degree to which the consumer will benefit from the proposed solution. Uncomplicated and scalable technologies are usually preferred, as means for the proposed benefits to reach as many beneficiaries as possible.

Because we are based in continental Europe we particularly encourage solutions that are translatable over the borders of the more than 40 different countries composing the continent, in the spirit of inclusiveness inherent to all our portfolios.

Opportunities

While some technology spaces are saturated with new ideas and products (consumer finance comes to mind) many others are still awaiting for major breakthroughs and disruptions.

Challenges

In today’s complicated security landscape, finding simple, elegant solutions that are also safe has proven elusive so far. Hopefully, bright minds will make a difference here soon.

B2B Tech

While in consumer tech our continent can be said to lag both the US and China, as far as the B2B scene is concerned the picture is rather different.

Europe is now a hotbed of smart B2B startups and, encouragingly after a long period of rather low activity, of equally smart investments.

This has many explanations, not least the crossborder and crosscultural nature of Europe’s large companies, which help alleviate some of the burdens of having so many disparate cultures, languages and regulatory environments amongst the continent’s consumers from over 40 different countries.

On our B2B horizon are mainly ventures in the employee health space, such as mental health solutions and lifestyle innovations.

Opportunities

While employee productivity and communications have been at the forefront of many B2B innovations for some years now, employee health has taken the back seat for quite long. We think that is about to change rather rapidly.

Challenges

In an unstable political world, changing regulations will bring heightened risks to B2B innovation. While innovators in this space are used with this shifting landscape we believe that the level of unpredictability will reach new heights in the coming time.