25 Years of Building Disruptive Tech: Inside Armilar’s Journey from Bank Spinout to Pan-European Franchise
Andreas Munk Holm, Founder EUVC and Pedro Ribeiro Santos, Partner at Armilar
Pedro Ribeiro Santos joined the EUVC Podcast to share the Armilar story, our investment philosophy and why we’re doubling down on early-stage tech with Fund IV.
If you’ve followed the European venture ecosystem for any length of time, you know the names that make headlines: the unicorns, the mega-rounds, the billion-dollar valuations.
But ask any seasoned LP what they actually care about, and you’ll hear a different story. They care about DPI, cash returned to investors. They care about fund-returners, not just mark-to-market hype. They care about institutional durability, not one-hit wonders.
That’s the conversation our Partner Pedro Ribeiro Santos had with Andreas Munk Holm on the EUVC Podcast and it’s one of the most honest, detailed looks at how we’ve built Armilar over 25 years.
If you’re a founder considering partners for your next round, an LP evaluating European early-stage funds, or simply curious about what it takes to build a venture franchise that outlasts market cycles, this episode is worth your time.
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Pedro Ribeiro Santos, Armilar: 25 Years of Iberian Tech & The Next Chapter with Fund IV EUVC
Dragons Over Unicorns: What We Actually Optimize For
“Unicorns are for show. Dragons are for returns.”
What does that mean in practice?
Our realized exits alone have multiplied the amounts we’ve invested by 2,4x. Our active portfolio sits above 3x its cost and historically, our exits have landed above book value.
Companies like SafetyPay became fund-returners without needing billion-dollar headlines. OutSystems and Feedzai, both backed at the earliest stages grew into globally recognized tech companies, and we stayed involved at the board level through their scale phases because the founders wanted us there.
That’s the difference. We’re not optimizing for valuation markups or press releases. We’re building for realized returns and long-term partnership.
What Armilar Fund IV Is About
Stage: Primarily Series A, with flexibility around it where there’s a product, early revenue signals and room for a structured lead to shape governance.
Thesis: Tech-intensive companies across data, digitization and connectivity with overlap into AI, cybersecurity and industrial software.
Geography: 40–50% in Portugal and Spain, where we have density, trust and founder relationships. The rest across Europe, accessed through long-term co-investor networks.
First Close: €120 million+, already deployed into three companies (one Iberian, two rest-of-Europe).
LP Base: Anchored by EIF and SETT, with private LPs aligned to long-duration early-stage exposure.
This isn’t a reinvention fund. It’s a continuation bet on a playbook we’ve been refining for 25 years.
Why Iberia? Why Now?
Portugal and Spain have converged into a single innovation region. Capital flows freely across borders. Founders know the entire Iberian stack. Deal-sharing between Lisbon, Porto, Madrid and Barcelona is increasingly fluid.
Portugal’s ecosystem has matured through repetition: early failures produced second-time founders, who built scaled companies, who are now spawning emerging founder “mafias.” Spain historically had more domestic capital and local focus but that’s shifting toward globally ambitious, product-led ventures.
The result? Sourcing density + global ambition + accessible entry points.
We don’t invest in Iberia because we’re local. We invest there because we see asymmetric access to strong technical founders building for large addressable markets.
Succession: Building a GP That Outlives the Founders
How Armilar has deliberately built succession into the firm’s structure:
- Senior founders remain present (experience + institutional memory)
- The operating core is carried by the next generation of partners
- A bench behind them has clear progression pathways
Why does this matter?
Venture capital is a 15+ year craft. You don’t know if a partnership truly works until you’ve run a full fund cycle from first check to final distributions. Most VC firms fail the succession test. Armilar is building governance and ownership to make continuity investible.
For founders, this means your lead investor won’t disappear when the original partner retires or moves on. For LPs, it means betting on a durable institution, not a personality cult.
What You’ll Learn in the Full Episode
The conversation covers a lot more ground than we can summarize here:
- The origin story: spinning out from a bank VC to independent GP
- Building conviction in Portugal before there was an ecosystem
- Why Armilar invests in “data, digitization, connectivity”
- How the firm balances board-level involvement with staying power through multiple rounds
- What LPs should actually underwrite (and what to ignore)
- The convergence of Portugal and Spain as a unified tech region
- Why realized outcomes (DPI) matter more than valuation marks
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