S20 Fund Emerges from Stealth with Bold Backing of Central European and Baltic Founders
Category: Venture Capital & Startups Tags: venture capital, CEE startups, early-stage investing
New Polish-led S20 Fund launches with 10 early investments, backing high-agency founders across CEE and the Baltics — starting with Peec AI and Smartschool.
S20 Fund, a newly launched venture capital initiative founded by seasoned investors from Poland’s SpeedUp Group, has officially stepped out of stealth mode after completing 10 early-stage investments across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Baltics. The fund aims to be the first institutional believer in bold, high-agency startup founders at the pre-seed stage.
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Spearheaded by Tomasz Czapliński, Kuba Dudek, Marcin Fejfer, and Bartłomiej Gola, the S20 team brings over a decade of experience from SpeedUp VC and has now created a fully private vehicle designed to move fast, invest flexibly, and provide hands-on support when needed. The core thesis of S20 is simple: identify exceptional teams early — those with grit, urgency, and ambition — and partner with them long before they become obvious winners.
S20 has already made notable bets, including:
Peec AI: A German startup developing AI to redefine geo-optimization and enterprise search. Just four months after launch, Peec has raised €7M and reached six-figure ARR. S20 was among the company’s first institutional backers.
Smartschool: An AI-powered education platform that originated in Poland but operates solely in the U.S. It offers real-time feedback and grading automation for handwritten math exercises, helping teachers save time and enhance student outcomes. Over 64,000 exercises have been submitted through the system in American classrooms.
The fund’s goal is not only to bridge capital gaps at the earliest stages but to ensure that Central European and Baltic founders are on equal footing with their Western European or U.S. counterparts. With capital that adjusts to a startup’s pace and the flexibility to follow founders into international markets, S20 is carving out a differentiated role in the European VC landscape.
More portfolio companies are expected to be revealed in the coming weeks as the fund continues to showcase the region’s potential in deep tech, SaaS, education, and beyond.
As S20 puts it: “We partner at your speed. We stay for the long run.”
