Investor Insights: Christian Noske, Partner at NGP Capital

One month into 2025 multiple raises over $100 million have already been announced, with Forbes proclaiming that “analysts expect 2025 to be the biggest year for venture investing since the heady days of 2022.” However, as the market improves, understanding how to engage investors and stand out from the crowd will be even more critical for companies looking to fundraise.

To help tech companies keep pace with the evolving investment landscape, TFD last month launched an investor series, where we speak to global VCs on a host of important topics, including the trends they’re following, how AI is impacting investment strategies, and some of the biggest mistakes companies make when communicating to investors.

In our second instalment, we sat down with Christian Noske, Partner at NGP Capital, a firm focused on early-stage B2B companies from series A onwards in Europe, the U.S., and Israel within Industrial Technology, Enterprise Software, Cybersecurity, and Edge & Data Infrastructure. Central to NGP Capital’s thesis is the ‘Great Convergence’ of physical and digital, which is giving rise to a host of exciting applications, devices, infrastructure and AI use cases, including autonomous robotics, digital twins, and data capture technologies. To date, the firm has backed over 120+ companies, including 19 unicorns and 11 IPOs, including Deliveroo, Pubmatic, and Xiaomi, while its current portfolio features a host of deep tech innovators including The Exploration Company, ANYbotics, and Observe AI, giving its investors extensive insight into the deep tech market and what it takes to drive growth.

During our conversation, Christian shared his thoughts on why founders should avoid using genAI as a selling point, the value of industry events - and which companies should attend - and how speed can kill a deal.

What sectors or trends is NGP Capital most excited about in the next 12-18 months?

We are drawn to the hard stuff with our overall “Great Convergence” fund thesis, so in the next 12-18 months we are very excited to see the next generation of industrial tech, especially around robotic interfaces, digital twins and manufacturing transformation.In addition, we’ll continue to be excited about space tech and the software infrastructure powering all the above. We are also closely monitoring emerging technologies like quantum computing, as we believe we will see material progress in maturity in this timeframe.

Has the rapid rise of generative AI impacted your investment strategy?

Yes and no: we haven’t changed our thesis and strategy overnight completely; however, we’d rather view GenAI as a very powerful technology that is disrupting both the businesses of our portfolio companies, and creating new opportunities in our investment focus areas. Every company needs to have a clear answer on what the application could be and how to integrate GenAI in their solution. For some, it’s more on the company efficiency level, e.g. automating code-review, creating marketing content, while for others it’s a transformation of their company, e.g. making it 10x cheaper to do business.

It’s been a horrendous year in global politics. How do you think the current macroeconomic environment is shaping the tech investment space?

The macroeconomics will continue to drive a lot of our investment areas very strongly, especially in space tech and all things related to manufacturing and resilience.

Do you have any advice for founders on how to get noticed in the tech space?

Where 2023 and partially 2024 were all about GenAI, I think this year founders shouldn’t use that as a strong selling point anymore. For instance, saying “I’m using GenAI to do XYZ,” will increasingly be met with skepticism from VCs, who have seen hundreds if not thousands of such claims.

Getting noticed in 2025 is about the basics. Speaking for our stage focus of Series A+/-, this would be: great team, customer love, big market, and a good balance between growth and burn.

What mistakes do companies make when communicating to investors?

I don’t think this changed a lot over the years, but some of my favorites that I saw the most in the last couple of months:

Speed: time always kills a deal and the best founders usually respond within 24h, or give an update on when to expect something,
Playing too many games: I saw an increase in situations whereby founders played the ‘FOMO game’ too aggressively and it backfired. Of course, founders should negotiate hard to get the best deal, but how you behave in the negotiations sets the tone for ultimately the start of a very long relationship.
Valuation focus: 2023/2024 weren’t easy years for many of the highly funded companies. I think setting expectations too early, e.g. my last valuation is set in stone, can hurt a company, and it should not be confused with a direct reflection of a company’s accomplishments of the last 2-3 years.

Do you think industry events are valuable for tech companies looking to engage prospective investors? Do you have any in particular you recommend?

Since we started hosting an industry event ourselves on Industrial AI in 2024 and will continue to host it this year in autumn, we are a bit biased, but I would say it depends: if a founder doesn’t fall into a generalist fund mandate, then industry-focused events are much more efficient. Attending events can be very refreshing for founders as it allows them to immediately discuss the real stuff that matters to their specific vertical, with either investors or potential customers. For more generalist tech events, there is a stage, geo and industry consideration for founders, but I would recommend Hello Tomorrow in Paris, Deep Tech Momentum in Berlin, and Start Summit in St. Gallen for early-stage deep-tech founders, while Bits & Pretzels and Slush can also be very relevant for later stage companies.