Before moving into venture capital, Uwe Horstmann served with UN missions in conflict-affected parts of Eastern and Central Africa, which shapes how he talks about defense and security technology—he argues that military procurement should be judged by what soldiers actually find useful in the field, not just by what large established suppliers are asked to build. That same hands-on approach carried into his work at Project A, where he helped shape a model built around giving founders direct operating support rather than building companies from scratch, and it later led him to go from being an early backer of STARK to becoming its CEO.
About their Fund
Project A is a venture capital fund founded in Berlin by former Rocket Internet colleagues, with early backing from Otto Group and Axel Springer, that built an in-house team of roughly 100–140 specialists in engineering, product, data, marketing, sales, recruiting, and design who logged over 100,000 support hours for portfolio companies in a single year, while also holding meaningful ownership stakes of 10–35% in the companies it backs. Beyond typical early-stage investing, the firm has expanded into private-equity co-investments, having made 11 such deals with plans to invest up to $80M more, and has backed category leaders like Trade Republic, KRY, sennder, WorldRemit, Spryker, Voi, and Catawiki across sectors such as consumer finance, digital health, logistics, mobility, and commerce infrastructure.
















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