Three Premier Deals Worth 7.5M PLN
Hard2beat VC launches with three deep-tech investments totaling 7.5M PLN in Neuromedical, Defguard, and DefendEye
Hard2beat VC, co-founded by Maciej Zawadziński, Konrad Trzyna, and Maciej Frankowicz, has officially launched with its first three portfolio companies: Neuromedical, Defguard, and DefendEye. The fund has invested a total of 7.5 million PLN across these ventures, marking its debut under the PFR Starter initiative funded by FENG. The announcement was made during the inaugural Hard2beat Connect event on May 20, 2025.
Subscribe to Startup Digest to stay ahead with the latest news, investments, and must-attend events.
This comes after 18 months of preparation, positioning Hard2beat as a fresh source of pre-seed and seed capital in Poland—particularly critical during a period of capital scarcity for early-stage deep-tech ventures. The fund’s investment thesis is clear: back founders building technology with durable, hard-to-replicate advantages.
Neuromedical, a Polish-Israeli medtech startup, is developing VGuard—a wearable device that stimulates the vagus nerve to improve memory and focus, showing early effectiveness in Alzheimer’s and dementia treatment. The funding will support CE certification in Europe and FDA filing in the U.S., as part of a larger round.
Defguard delivers a next-generation open-source cybersecurity platform integrating VPN, IAM, and ALM into a single, self-hosted solution. Critically, it enforces multi-factor authentication at the WireGuard protocol level, plugging a long-standing security gap and unlocking broader adoption in enterprise settings.
DefendEye focuses on dual-use UAV systems designed for both military and civilian crisis response. Its modular system—drone, launch-tube, and cloud backend—enables rapid deployment and threat identification in critical scenarios. The company raised 4.8M PLN in a round co-led by Hard2beat and Sunfish Partners, alongside business angels, to initiate field testing and pre-production.
The fund’s partners emphasized that these three startups embody their vision of “science-backed, globally scalable innovation.” Hard2beat expects to close at least five more investments by year-end and plans to provide follow-on capital for current portfolio companies.
