ExtraVallis — Investing in Early-Stage European Startups

Europe’s Next Generation of Technology Leaders

Europe has entered its breakout decade. Exceptional founders are building global companies from day one, yet the continent’s founders still lack the funding infrastructure, operational support, and international connectivity needed to unlock their full potential. ExtraVallis has evolved to bridge that gap—backing Europe’s most ambitious founders with deep operational experience, hands-on partnership, and a transatlantic network that accelerates growth from the earliest stages.

A Different Kind of Venture Capital

We do far more than provide capital. We lead early investment rounds where few European funds are willing to do so, build relationships with founders long before they raise funding, and actively help exceptional teams recruit talent, refine strategy, expand internationally, and prepare for successful exits. By combining decades of entrepreneurial and operating experience in both Europe and the United States with disciplined investment selection, we seek to create enduring value for founders and investors alike.

Built for Superior Long-Term Returns

Our investment strategy focuses on Europe’s strongest AI infrastructure and applied AI startups, in the fintech, legaltech, and dual-use verticals, at the pre-seed and seed stages, where attractive valuations and world-class technical talent create exceptional opportunities. Rather than chasing inflated paper valuations, we emphasize capital-efficient businesses, earlier liquidity opportunities, and founder-led companies capable of producing meaningful exits. The result is a portfolio designed to generate attractive long-term returns while helping build the next generation of globally significant European technology companies.

Portfolio

Agentic AI systems represent a radical shift from traditional AI applications. While conventional large language models (LLMs) respond purely reactively to inputs, agentic systems proactively take responsibility: they show initiative, make decisions, and autonomously control complex processes. That’s why we’re building the first ambient AI-Lawyer! Designed specifically for the legal reality of SMEs, the AI-Lawyer bridges the gap between automation and legal certainty — enabling companies to move fast while staying legally secure.

Beatsquares creates a new connection between content producers and their audiences: AI agents transform and deliver existing content in exactly the format audiences want to receive it, from fully managed social media channels to owned products such as newsletters, podcasts, and on-site offerings. Early customers include Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, and Messe Berlin.

One Coworking is a workspace management platform that helps companies with distributed teams easily source, book, and manage workspaces. Their intuitive portal makes it easy for team members to find and book flexible workspaces while providing HR and People Operations with real-time data to optimize workspace utilization.

Team

Derek Footer

With 25+ years building, founding and investing, Derek has a natural fluency in diverse cultures and startup ecosystems, matched by linguistic fluency in 5 languages. His career as a founder included a Latin American Yahoo! clone founded in Chile in 1994, while he was in law school, segueing into a continent-wide consultancy that built some of the first Internet banking and large corporate sites. After the sale of that business, he became the head of DirecTV Latin America's interactive television unit and afterwards served as Vice President for Content at OpenTV, working with European software providers and major cable television providers such as ESPN, Time Warner and the precursor of Comcast.

Rejoining the startup world, he founded BlueLake Media, and established SeeFootie, an Internet broadcaster that for a time was the only way to see full schedules of European football — with 12 English Premier League teams including Arsenal and Liverpool, German Bundesliga, Dutch Eredivisie, French Ligue 1, and select matches from the Champions League and the UEFA Cup. Founding the company in a garage in Menlo Park, California, he negotiated the multi-year rights to these top leagues and managed development of the site at a time when AWS and other content delivery networks did not exist.