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Defiant

GBPTUSB2B SaaSFintechAI/MLEnterprise

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Investment thesis

Defiant is a London- and Lisbon-based early-stage VC fund focused exclusively on B2B Software/AI and Fintech, investing at late Seed ($1–3m) and Series A ($2–10m) across Europe and occasionally the US. The firm targets companies with a live product generating revenue, emerging or established signs of product-market fit, and early signs of a repeatable growth engine — preferring technical products with complexity, moats, and barriers to entry where Defiant can add genuine value. What sets Defiant apart is its product-centric approach: the firm dedicates a third of its operational budget to building proprietary data and software tools — including Morpheus (an internal AI-powered deal-sourcing and analysis platform) and Blueprint (a founder-facing benchmarking tool) — to make better investment decisions and deliver tangible value to portfolio companies. Defiant describes itself as "Europe's first VC firm built like a technology company," combining deep thematic research, rigorous data-driven analysis, and a low-volume, high-conviction investment style with the aspiration to back future category leaders in verticals exposed to long-term secular growth trends.

Notable quotes

Our thesis is that the future of venture is going to be pretty different to what it is today. And it's going to be a lot more technologically enabled, a lot more sophisticated around the use of data, AI products.

Joseph Pizzolato · TechCrunch · 2025-01-09

We dedicate a third of our budget as a fund to product building. Again, I don't think there's any fund in Europe who does that from an OPEX perspective.

Joseph Pizzolato · TechCrunch · 2025-01-09

When we met Erik Scalfaro and Tiago Kieliger it was an incredibly easy decision to partner with them as we believe they have all the ingredients to build a category defining business — drive and hunger, a product solving a clear pain-point, real-world ROI from verticalised AI, and distribution super powers into a historically hard to sell market segment.

Joseph Pizzolato · LinkedIn · 2026-03-18

Recent investments

CompanyRoundSizeDate
BlitzySeries C$200m2026-05-01
RiviaSeries A$15m2026-03-18

Frequent co-investors

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