❯ WHO IS THIS FOR
Founders who don't fit
the pitch deck.
$ echo "your pitch" | mail niklas@bfc.fyi
run by a founder who runs a company (SECJUR),
who spent 2023 finding out how deep you can fall and still come back.
And who also happens to be a lawyer and artist.
◢◤ THESIS
Most VCs bet on markets.
I bet on founders who won't be talked out of what they're doing.
That's a smaller pool.
It's also a much more interesting one.
I write €10k-€50k pre-seed checks - first money, no board, WhatsApp access instead of governance overhead. No thesis about sectors. No partner meetings. No signaling.
Weakest at: consensus. Saying yes fast.
Strongest at: legal, security, compliance-adjacent tech, and founders in situations most people would call a mess.
I'M WRONG ALL THE TIME. C'est la vie.
◢◤ WHO'S BEHIND THIS
Niklas Hanitsch. Founder-CEO of SECJUR (compliance startup, 50+ team, venture-backed, Google for Startups Cybersecurity Accelerator, some awards along the way - Capital 40under40, Deutscher Startup-Pokal Cybersecurity 2022 - 1st. place).
Also: criminal defense lawyer since 2016. Wirtschaftsstrafrecht. Which means when a founder calls me at 11pm about something they shouldn't have signed, I can actually tell them what to do.
I know what that call sounds like from the other side too. In 2023 SECJUR ran a down-round while I was losing a co-founder, absorbing an internal investigation, personally exposed on Selbstschuldbürgschaften and Grundschulden against the company's debt, and - for good measure - becoming a father the same year. None of it was supposed to work out. Enough of it did that we're still here.
I'm also a Venture Scout at identity.vc - Europe's first LGBTQ+ venture fund. So beyond the €10k first checks I write personally, queer founders get a dedicated channel through me into a fund that was built for exactly this. If that's you: same inbox. Say so.
If you want the long version instead of this paragraph, it's on the Startup Insider and Arrtist podcasts.
Before all of that: Amazon Legal, Taylor Wessing Silicon Valley, Bird & Bird, WHU MBA.
◢◤ HOW TO REACH ME
Warm intros preferred. If we share someone in common, have them make it.
Cold-mail works too. It just has to survive these three tests:
- 01under 100 words. non-negotiable.
- 02one metric that actually matters.
- 03no "circling back". no "reaching out". no "wanted to touch base". I'm not that kind of investor.
→ niklas@bfc.fyi
Reply time: 48h if I'm interested. Silence if I'm not. I know that's rude. It's also the only honest signal.
SURVIVES ALL THREE.
