Micro Funds and Deep Tech with Aldea Ventures’ Gabrielle Cummins

Gabrielle Cummins is a Principal at Aldea Ventures, the leading European deep tech fund-of-funds focused on backing specialized micro VCs investing in deep tech and frontier technologies.

How did your background lead you to Aldea Ventures?

I started my career with Teach First, a program that places graduates into underperforming UK schools. I wanted responsibility from day one and to have a meaningful impact. After that, I worked for a national homelessness charity but missed having ownership of my own projects. That led me to startups. I spent seven to eight years working with early-stage startups in London, including as COO of an HR B2B SaaS company during the pandemic. Throughout that period, I navigated a business from pre-seed to Series A stage in a tough macroeconomic-climate.

After the pandemic, I moved to Barcelona and worked for a deep tech climate company while studying for an executive MBA at IESE Business School. That’s how I met the Aldea team. They were looking for someone with hands-on experience building startups, who could bring a complementary perspective to their team. Having worked so closely with founders, I understand the challenges of early-stage companies. There aren’t many business problems an early-stage founder could mention that I haven’t seen before!

What makes Aldea’s fund of funds model unique?

At our core, we’re a fund of funds backing small and specialized funds. By small, we mean sub-$100 million fund sizes focused on pre-seed and seed. We want GPs who are hyper-focused, opinionated, and conviction-led. We look for funds with product-market fit that know exactly where they play and why they win. We have a preference for deep tech and frontier technologies because that’s where we believe the big returns will come over the next 10 years.

We focus on Europe, which is a great fit for our deep tech strategy. Europe has world-class universities and deep STEM talent. There’s opportunity for arbitrage from Europe to the U.S. as companies scale. Technical talent and valuations tend to be more affordable. Europe also has geopolitical pressure to invest in resilience and sovereignty, creating a favorable policy climate. Many of our portfolio companies access public funding grants to support them at the earliest stages.

What differentiates us is our concentrated approach. While some fund of funds go for maximum diversity across stages, geographies, and fund sizes, we know exactly what we’re looking for and invest with conviction. This enables us to sit on the LPAC, but more importantly build close relationships with our incredibly talented fund managers and get access to direct investments and co-investments that we can do ourselves or open up to our LP base.

Why do micro VC funds make particular sense for deep tech investing?

The math works better with small funds. A $50 million fund with 10-15% initial ownership and a highly concentrated portfolio can return up to 3X with a single $1 billion-plus exit. A $400 million fund, facing the same outcome, might get back only half the fund. We prefer to underwrite funds where a $1 billion outcome can return the entire vehicle – and where hitting a decacorn could mean top 5% performance.

Small funds also create better GP-LP alignment. Large funds can become asset management games focused on management fees rather than returns. We’re comfortable with super carry structures because we’re aligned on generating returns, not accumulating assets under management.

For deep tech specifically, the model suits solo GPs or small teams with deep expertise. They might be ex-founders, PhDs, or scientists with strong founder value propositions. They compete against top-tier brands by offering genuine experience, networks and customer access. A first-time founder at the earliest stages often finds that more compelling than just capital and a brand name.

Yes, deep tech is capital intensive, but EU public funding helps bridge that gap. As a pre-seed or seed investor, you also have optionality to exit at Series B or C. You don’t need to wait for a full exit or until you’re 80% diluted to drive meaningful returns. The smaller fund size means earlier liquidity events can still deliver strong multiples.

What’s your diligence process for evaluating micro fund managers?

Track record matters, but there are different ways to build it. If you were a founder or senior operator in a fast-scaling AI business and want to build an AI fund, that’s a strong value proposition. You might have angel investments, syndicated rounds or a community that demonstrates both access and picking ability. Sometimes we see experienced managers spinning out of large funds with great Series A track records who want to focus on deep tech pre-seed. The question becomes how relevant that track record is to their new thesis.

We look closely at sourcing and differentiated access. How does this fund repeatedly reach founders? We want to see proprietary networks through founder collectives, university relationships, successful exits or data advantages. What are they doing or where are they looking that others aren’t? We invest in non-overlapping networks, not echo chambers.

We conduct 360-degree due diligence. We talk to LPs who have and haven’t re-upped, co-investors, founders, and operators. My experience as a COO helps me evaluate operational claims. Portfolio construction is critical. For a $50 million to $100 million fund, we want to see consistent 10%-plus ownership at initial investment. Some funds mix discovery tickets with high-conviction follow-ons or blend core and non-core investments. We challenge whether that represents disciplined construction or just placing bets without conviction. When an LP asks about exposure to winners like Lovable or Poolside, we need those positions to be material enough to move the needle.

What’s next for Aldea Ventures?

We’re focused on platform building. We’re deploying our second fund and have built an incredible network of fund managers and founders. We recently hired Andrew Padilla, a partner from the U.S. with experience at Alumni Ventures and Mithril Capital. As we grow, we want more exposure to U.S. funds while internationalizing our LP base.

Unlike typical fund of funds that maximize diversification, we run a concentrated portfolio of best-performing managers. This allows us to give LPs the traditional benefits of a fund of funds structure while also enabling direct strategies. If you’re an LP who wants to double down on health and biotech or batteries or fintech, we can get you access to the most exciting companies in Europe through our network.

Our ultimate goal is to unlock pension capital. Pension funds prioritize persistence of returns above all else. They want certainty and consistency, which is why they typically invest in bigger platforms that deliver predictable, if unremarkable, returns. Our concentrated fund of funds model can deliver that same persistence but with better performance. By focusing capital on diverse, top-performing specialist managers, we manage volatility while generating higher returns than the mega-platforms.

This approach benefits everyone. Pensions get exposure to where real innovation is happening without the volatility they fear. The ecosystem benefits because it promotes diversity and specialism rather than letting the market become dominated by a small group of mega-funds writing massive checks and kingmaking selected companies. We’re proving you can have both stability and superior returns by backing the right specialized managers.

How do you define deep tech?

We define deep tech as novel technology, engineering breakthroughs or scientific discoveries in still-emerging markets. There is high technical risk and market uncertainty. Whereas we differentiate frontier technologies as tending to be technically a bit uncertain but there’s typically a market we can identify, evidence of buyers or early commercial traction. We look at technology readiness levels and give each company a score on that framework. But fundamentally, it’s about a balance of technical novelty and market maturity. Is this pushing the boundaries of what’s scientifically or technically possible rather than just applying existing technology to new business models?

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