Uwe Horstmann

Who they are

Uwe Horstmann is CEO of STARK Defence — co-founded Project A Ventures in 2012, built it to €1.2B AUM, then stepped out in 2025 to run a drone and loitering-munition company he also founded.

Person

Uwe joined STARK in 2025, when the company had just closed a $62M fundraise and was already building unmanned weapons systems for Europe and NATO. Before that, he spent roughly thirteen years as General Partner and Co-Founder of Project A Ventures — co-founding the firm in 2012 out of Berlin and growing it from zero to €1.2B in assets under management across more than 100 portfolio companies, earning a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe (Finance) nod in 2016 along the way. His educational base is dual: a Bachelor of Science from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and a Master's from the University of Stuttgart. Possibly — earlier in his career he had stints at Rocket Internet, which was a common launchpad for Berlin's first-generation VC builders. The companies he founded: Project A Ventures (2012, European early-stage VC, Berlin and London) and STARK (2025, technology-driven defence company producing strike drones and loitering munitions for Europe and NATO). He writes actively — LinkedIn posts on European defence tech, dual-use technologies, NATO, and portfolio companies like Quantum Systems and ARX Robotics; a Medium blog covering operative VC in Berlin and humanitarian logistics; and pieces on Sifted on European tech investment. The through-line is institution-building at Europe's frontier: first in venture, now in the hardware of European security.

Company

Project A closed Fund V in June 2025, raising €325 million — brought in over just four months from returning and new LPs across Europe and the US — pushing total assets under management to €1.2 billion. The fund signals a deliberate shift toward fewer deals but larger conviction bets, with an explicit expansion into battlefield robotics and AI-powered defence applications alongside the firm's established AI, fintech, and software focus. In mid-2026 the firm also added a new Partner in London as part of its growth push. Project A operates as an embedded partner to founders, combining capital with operational support across product, marketing, and data — a model it has run since 2012. Portfolio milestones have been prominent recently: Quantum Systems hit unicorn status and closed its dual-use Series B/C, and ARX Robotics reached a publicly celebrated European defence robotics milestone.

Market

Project A is one of Europe's most active early-stage investors, competing in seed and Series A against global firms including Lightspeed, Battery, and Andreessen Horowitz — the last of which raised a $15 billion fund in early 2026 with a pointed defence-tech and AI focus. The broader European VC market in 2026 is shaped by heightened geopolitical tensions, surging defence budgets, and a selective funding environment that rewards large conviction bets in scalable software and dual-use technology. Regulatory and macro sensitivities — tariffs, trade dynamics, sovereignty concerns — are actively affecting diligence and valuation assumptions across the sector.

Network

Uwe's closest professional orbit runs through Project A, where Anton Waitz co-leads the GP practice and Florian Heinemann is a fellow partner. His defence-tech engagement is visible through board-level and public endorsement of STARK portfolio adjacents — Quantum Systems (drone unicorn) and ARX Robotics (European defence robotics) — and he has worked alongside Jack Wang at Project A on defence investments.

Anton Waitz· General Partner, Project A Ventures
Florian Heinemann· Partner, Project A Ventures
Jack Wang· Defence Investments, Project A Ventures

How they likely show up

Long tenure co-founding and running Project A for ~13 years before moving to STARK → thinks in multi-year institution-building arcs, not quarterly cycles.
Founded two distinct companies (Project A Ventures, STARK) rather than joining either as an employee → high agency; builds the thing rather than advising on it.
Active LinkedIn poster on defence tech, dual-use, NATO, and portfolio companies → comfortable being visible and staking out public positions; likely responds well to direct engagement on those views.
Moved from GP role into operating CEO of a hardware/defence company he co-founded → willing to trade status and comfort for the harder, more concrete problem.
Writes on Medium about humanitarian logistics and crisis coordination alongside defence → brings a systems-thinking lens to hard-infrastructure problems, not just a financial one.
Speaking at StartSummit, PAKCon, NATO Defence events, and Stanford Engineering across different years → at ease in founder, investor, and policy rooms simultaneously.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific LinkedIn post — on Quantum Systems' unicorn milestone or the ARX Robotics moment — to signal you've followed his thinking, not just his title.
→ Ask about the decision to step from GP to operating CEO at STARK: it's a rare move and almost certainly has a clear thesis behind it worth drawing out.
→ He writes on both defence sovereignty and humanitarian logistics — connecting those two threads (dual-use, crisis response) will land better than treating defence as purely commercial.
→ Don't pitch him on generic 'European tech ecosystem' framings — he helped build that ecosystem; go specific on the problem or company you want to discuss.
→ If you've read anything on Sifted or his Medium, name the piece — he'll know whether you actually read it.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the STARK factory opening in Swindon and the Virtus loitering munition unveiling — he posted about it publicly and it marks the moment his defence bet became a physical product, not just a thesis.
Reference the Project A Defence Tech Continuum post — he's framed a deliberate portfolio architecture around European defence, and that document is where the investment logic sits.
Mention Quantum Systems hitting unicorn status: he publicly endorsed the milestone and it's the clearest proof point that his dual-use VC thesis produced a breakout outcome.

Discovery questions

When you moved from GP to CEO at STARK, what did you see that you couldn't back from the outside — what required you to be inside the company?
Project A's Fund V explicitly expanded into battlefield robotics and AI-powered defence — how do you think about the line between dual-use and purely military, and does that distinction matter to your LPs?
You write about humanitarian logistics alongside defence tech — is there a unified framework there, or are those genuinely separate interests for you?

Avoid

Don't frame STARK or Project A's defence push as opportunistic or geopolitically reactive — he has been building toward European defence tech for years and will have a clear, principled thesis for it.

Make it yours