Across global technology markets, few areas have seen as much transformation over the past decade as growth-stage tech investing. As capital has become more abundant and competition for high-quality assets has intensified, investors have increasingly specialized, focusing not only on growth potential but also on capital efficiency, operational discipline, and long-term value creation.
To explore how that evolution is shaping the next generation of European technology companies, we spoke with Frederic Huynen and Danai Musandu from HPE Growth, a pan-European growth equity firm focused on scaling digital technology companies across SaaS, fintech, digital health, and climate tech.
Established in 2009, the firm has built a sector-specialist platform focused on supporting early- to mid-stage technology businesses as they scale across Europe and beyond. Today, HPE Growth manages more than €600 million in assets and has developed a long-standing reputation for backing category-leading software and digital infrastructure companies.
Over the years, HPE Growth has invested in companies including WeTransfer, PPRO, ZAVA, Tiqets, Uberall, EGYM, and Aevi, while continuing to deepen its focus on efficient growth and hands-on portfolio support.
Danai Musandu leads investor relations at HPE Growth, overseeing the firm’s fundraising, investor communications, and strategic relationship management. Prior to joining HPE Growth, she worked at Goodwell Investments, an early-stage technology-focused private equity firm investing across emerging markets and impact-driven businesses. Originally from Zimbabwe, Danai brings more than a decade of experience in private equity and investor relations across Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe.
Frederic Huynen, who joined HPE Growth in 2012, is a Partner at the firm and leads investment sourcing and underwriting, and is actively involved in portfolio value creation initiatives. With experience across fintech, enterprise software, and climate technology, he has helped shape HPE Growth’s long-term approach to scaling digital businesses through multiple market cycles.
A Year of Strategic Maturity for European Growth Investing
For HPE Growth, the past year represented a validation of how the firm has approached growth investing through an increasingly volatile technology environment.
As public markets recalibrated, valuations compressed, and artificial intelligence influenced parts of the software ecosystem, the firm believes the market began moving toward a more disciplined and mature phase of technology investing.
Danai describes the year as an important inflection point for both HPE Growth and the broader growth ecosystem.
“From my perspective, I would see the past year as a validation year for us, a year of our strategic maturity. Turning a bit of our long-term investment thesis into realizing real value, specifically with the case examples that we’re going to be discussing today.”
For HPE Growth, that maturity has largely come from maintaining a consistent focus on a specific market segment: helping established European technology businesses scale internationally while navigating increasingly complex market conditions.
“We have really focused on a segment of growth that is really about scaling proven European digital companies into global leaders.
Positioning ourselves in that way has been really important for us, and guiding these companies through scale and exit readiness, particularly in an environment in the past five or six years that has been changing quite a bit within the tech landscape.”
Over that period, the technology market has undergone several simultaneous transitions. Investor expectations around growth, profitability, and operational efficiency have changed, while AI has introduced an entirely new layer of disruption across software markets.
Danai points to several changes that have influenced how growth investors evaluate businesses today.
“Whether it’s valuations, whether it’s repricing, whether it’s growth at all costs, or is it efficient growth, whether we even talk about the entrance of AI within the software landscape.
The market has fundamentally repriced what quality means in software.”
Frederic Huynen sees the current environment as part of a much broader market cycle.
“The period 2018 to 2021 was largely characterized by aggressive expansion strategies fueled by low interest rates, strong public market momentum, rapid digital adoption trends, and COVID digital acceleration. So, a growth-at-all-cost type of momentum.
That dynamic started to shift significantly beginning in 2022, when rising interest rates and public market corrections pushed investors to prioritize profitability and sustainability over pure top-line growth, requiring a change of skillset.”
As of 2023, Frederic believes the market has entered a more balanced phase, in which companies are expected to combine growth with operational discipline.
Hence, over the last 2 years, companies have needed to adapt to the accelerating impact of generative AI, which has, in turn, triggered a further acceleration of product-led growth initiatives.
For HPE Growth, navigating that transition has also reinforced the importance of preparing portfolio companies for long-term strategic outcomes rather than short-term exits, says Frederic.
“Going through that journey also allowed for focusing on creating DPI for investors at the right moment in time. How do you shape and form these types of assets to be exit-ready, as companies are being bought, not being sold?”
Volatility, Exit Readiness, and Building European Champions
One of the defining characteristics of the current market environment is the level of uncertainty and volatility shaping both public and private technology markets.
While software and digital businesses are often less directly exposed to disruptions than physical supply chains, Frederic Huynen believes the ripple effects across capital markets remain significant.
“The environment has never been as dynamic and volatile as what we’ve seen and currently observe at the moment.
Within technology earning models, typically the impact is less direct than for physical supply chains, but still it creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty is trickling through the entire capital markets.”
For HPE Growth, periods like this place even greater importance on backing management teams that can adapt quickly as market conditions evolve.
“As always, when we back companies, the first thing we trust and take comfort in is the management teams.
In a changing landscape, they will be the first line of the frontier to deal with dynamic environments and how quickly they can adapt to new circumstances.”
Although several of the sectors HPE Growth invests in continue to see strong long-term demand trends, Frederic notes that investors have become increasingly selective in today’s market.
“The segments that we are operating in have actually seen quite some additional uptick. But capital markets remain volatile, and therefore people want to see more confidence and proof points to ensure that the right companies are being backed.”
Danai Musandu believes those broader macroeconomic and geopolitical factors have affected every layer of the private markets ecosystem, from portfolio companies all the way through to investors and limited partners.
“The last few years, geopolitically and economically, have forced every participant in private markets, founders, GPs, and LPs alike to refocus on fundamentals.
There has been a strong focus on DPI development and a shift towards profitability. Scaling these companies now means real enterprise value.”
That environment made several of HPE Growth’s recent exits particularly notable.
“EGYM, Tiqets, and ZAVA; what makes those exits meaningful is that those businesses navigated extreme market dislocation during COVID and still emerged as strategic assets.
To now talk about them as exit stories is remarkable, but it also highlights why our value creation strategy is important and why it works.”
For Danai, successful exits are not simply about finding buyers at the right moment. They require building companies with clear positioning, differentiated market narratives, and strong strategic identity long before any transaction process formally starts.
Exit readiness starts years before the transaction process.
“Founders always need to know who they are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and what makes them really uniquely positioned to future acquirers
Getting those companies into a position to build a strong investor narrative early on has been really important for us.”
That preparation also extends to shaping how potential acquirers and investors perceive the company years before an exit.
“Creating the right expectations early on, and being prepared and ready, has been one of the greatest highlights when we look at these portfolio companies.”
From Investment to Exit: Building Strategic European Market Leaders
When discussing some of HPE Growth’s recent exits, including Tiqets, ZAVA, and EGYM, Frederic Huynen believes several common characteristics stand out across all three companies. At the core was a strong focus on capital efficiency from the very beginning.
“What’s overall interesting is that they have a lot of things in common. They have been very capital efficient from the start.”
According to Frederic, all three companies managed to scale into category-leading European platforms while raising comparatively limited amounts of capital relative to many growth-stage technology businesses.
“That combination of scale, market leadership, and disciplined capital deployment ultimately made the businesses particularly attractive to strategic acquirers, especially large North American platforms seeking faster expansion across Europe.
It’s also not by coincidence that all these companies have been acquired by US strategics. They’re looking to expand beyond their North American territories, but they want to have really the clear market leader in these European landscapes.”
Rather than building local market positions country by country themselves, many strategic buyers prefer acquiring companies that already possess strong distribution, infrastructure, and customer reach across Europe.
“Expanding from one country to another in Europe is not something that they aim for. They go for time to market.”
For HPE Growth, this dynamic influences how the firm approaches portfolio value creation and exit preparation long before a formal acquisition process begins. One of the firm’s core priorities is helping portfolio companies build strong commercial relationships with potential acquirers years in advance.
“It’s very important that you back assets that are very strategically positioned to be acquired by these companies.
One of the key points of focus for us, as part of the value creation playbook, is building very strong joint commercial proof points with these acquirers.”
According to Frederic, those strategic relationships often begin developing years before an actual acquisition takes place.
“On average, you will see that there’s a very intense dialogue ongoing multiple years in advance.
With strong business and commercial momentum, allowing those synergies to be locked up front.”
Danai Musandu points to Tiqets as one of the clearest examples of how industry trends can create strategic positioning for growth-stage companies.
Even before the company’s eventual exit, HPE Growth played an active role in helping Tiqets deepen relationships with large global travel and tourism platforms.
“Quite early on, HPE had a strong role in bringing on Airbnb, which was one of the strategies around Tiqets. At the same time, the economics of travel platforms shifted materially toward experiences. Attractions and activities became more strategically valuable than simply competing on lower-margin categories, flights, or accommodation.
The shift seen by — Booking, Expedia, Airbnb — focusing towards experiences, attractions, and activities.”
That market transition positioned Tiqets as a highly complementary acquisition target capable of strengthening broader travel ecosystems.
“Tiqets was well positioned to be that add-on that directly sat at the intersection of consumer discovery, localized inventory, and experience-led travel. Really having an end-to-end experience for tourists and travelers.”
For HPE Growth, one of the clearest indicators of long-term strategic value was the speed and scale of these companies’ international expansion during the firm’s holding periods.
Danai highlights ZAVA as one example of that growth trajectory.
“With ZAVA, they managed to quadruple their revenues within our holding period.”
The scale achieved by several portfolio companies further reinforced their attractiveness to global buyers looking for immediate international expansion opportunities.
On top of this, Tiqets had already established a substantial global footprint by the time of its exit.
“Tiqets had more than 1,300 cities that it covered across more than 62 countries.”
Lessons From Scaling European Technology Companies
After supporting multiple portfolio companies from growth-stage expansion through exit, HPE Growth believes one of the biggest lessons for management teams is that scaling internationally is rarely as linear or predictable as founders initially expect.
According to Frederic Huynen, one of the first realities founders encounter is that European markets differ operationally, commercially, and culturally.
“It starts with: you don’t know what you don’t know. Expanding in a European ecosystem from one country to another is never the same. For growth-stage companies, this creates an important strategic decision about how aggressively expansion should proceed.
Some companies choose rapid market capture, prioritizing speed and broad rollout across multiple geographies simultaneously. Others take a more measured approach, entering markets sequentially and adapting the playbook over time.
You can tackle that with a growth-at-any-cost product-led growth strategy. That means conquering eight to ten markets at the same time.”
Alternatively, Frederic says many companies benefit from an expansion model focused on iterative learning and operational refinement before scaling further.
“Or you can do that on a more serial basis. Expand into two or three markets, incorporate the lessons learned, and infuse that into the next go-to-market proposition.
While no single playbook applies universally across all sectors, Frederic believes companies that scale sustainably often prioritize adaptability over pure speed.
Growth never goes steeply up, but always goes with adjustments.”
That philosophy also ties directly into one of HPE Growth’s core investment principles: capital efficiency. According to Frederic, one of the firm’s priorities is to ensure portfolio companies maintain strong enough unit economics and operational flexibility so that future fundraising becomes optional rather than necessary.
“The more you can navigate and control growth, the higher your capital efficiency and outcome will be. We never want to be in a position where we are forced to raise additional funds for companies.”
Instead, HPE Growth focuses on backing businesses capable of sustaining growth while continuously improving operational performance.
“Ensure the company is always fully funded, and in case the unit economics continue to improve, and you further accelerate growth.
Thereby, you have the option to raise additional funds, but you’re never forced to raise additional funds.”
Danai Musandu believes another important lesson from recent exits has been the continued importance of valuation discipline at entry, particularly in volatile markets.
According to her, much of HPE Growth’s investment strategy has historically focused on identifying companies outside the most crowded or overhyped segments of the market.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on selecting companies that are a bit off the beaten track.
They’re not always the companies you see in headline news that everyone is talking about.”
Instead, the firm tends to favor businesses that quietly compound over time through strong fundamentals, operational execution, and disciplined scaling.
“They are actively chipping away, building strong businesses, really bootstrapping themselves. By the time we invest, many of these businesses already demonstrate capital discipline, operational maturity, and strong unit economics.
That creates a very different risk profile from venture-style growth at any cost.”
Beyond capital allocation and growth strategy, HPE Growth also believes that governance and organizational structure play a major role in successfully scaling founder-led companies.
“Having good external advisors and strong board members is really important. Governance and shaping governance within founder companies is very important in terms of negotiating and positioning those businesses.”
How Strategic Buyers Are Evaluating Technology Companies Today
According to HPE Growth, one of the biggest changes in the technology M&A landscape is that strategic buyers have become more selective in evaluating acquisitions.
Frederic Huynen explains that in today’s environment, acquisitions are driven by clear strategic necessity rather than opportunistic expansion.
“The acquisitions from the perspective of nice-to-have are out of the window.
Instead, large acquirers are now conducting much deeper assessments around how potential targets fit into their long-term product roadmaps, market positioning, and distribution strategies.
These strategic acquirers really do thorough assessments of what is missing in my roadmap and my go-to-market full value chain perspective.”
For many North American technology companies, Europe itself is becoming important strategically, both for growth and to diversify geographic exposure in an increasingly fragmented geopolitical environment.
“Europe is becoming increasingly important for these North American players to diversify away from the North American markets.
To make sure that they have a unified offer and some flexibility to shift between regions.”
As acquisitions become more strategically important, Frederic says the evaluation process itself has also become substantially longer and more relationship-driven than in previous years.
“Because it’s becoming more and more strategic, the evaluation phase for these potential acquirers is taking longer and longer.”
Historically, many technology exits were run through highly competitive auction processes with compressed timelines and multiple bidders moving simultaneously. According to Frederic, those dynamics are becoming far less common.
“The way to manage such a timeline used to be running a full auction and asking people to make bids within a certain timeframe. Those days are over.”
Instead, HPE Growth focuses on building long-term strategic relationships between portfolio companies and potential acquirers well before any formal transaction discussions begin.
“It’s very important to have these close relationships. To launch commercial partnerships with the company, to create synergies early on, and way before you run a formal exit process.”
For Frederic, that preparation is often what allows companies to maintain momentum and negotiating leverage during lengthy acquisition timelines.
“The strategic interest is still there. It’s becoming more and more focused on what really matters.
The throughput timelines are becoming longer and longer unless you can create competitive tension between strategic acquirers.”
One example HPE Growth points to is Expedia Group's acquisition of Tiqets, which reflected broader changes across the travel industry.
According to Frederic, online travel platforms are prioritizing experiences and attractions over flights and hotel bookings.
“Consumers and businesses typically start from the experience first. You’re no longer first looking for a hotel, but first looking for a concert, a Colosseum visit, or a specific activity.
That behavioral modification created a powerful strategic opportunity for companies like Tiqets, whose platform was deeply integrated into attractions, museums, and local experiences globally.”
Frederic explains that experience-led discovery also creates more efficient customer acquisition economics for travel platforms.
“On keywords and customer retention, it is relatively more affordable than competing on acquiring new consumers for certain hotels. As a result, integrating platforms like Tiqets into larger travel ecosystems created immediate strategic and commercial value.
If you apply that proposition to the broad existing customer base of one of these strategics, you have instant value gain.”
Danai Musandu believes many of these industry changes accelerated significantly after COVID, permanently changing how consumers travel, consume services, and interact with digital platforms.
“Post-COVID, it no longer became about just doing a long trip somewhere. It became about being highly localized and looking for experiences and attractions.
That shift in consumer behavior ultimately increased the value of companies that controlled unique inventory, local ecosystems, and specialized digital infrastructure.
Owning a lot of those museum and attraction site inventories became really important for a lot of those bigger players.”
Danai sees similar changes happening across multiple sectors within HPE Growth’s portfolio, including healthcare, fintech, and digital services.
“Even if we spoke about ZAVA, how we get access to prescription medication, and doctor consultations have completely shifted.”
For HPE Growth, one of the most important qualities in long-term technology investing is identifying businesses positioned ahead of broader societal and behavioral changes before those shifts become fully obvious to the market.
“What’s been really interesting to see is how our portfolio companies were ready for that moment.
I hope our future portfolio companies are always positioned ahead of these behavioral shifts, ready to meet the perfect strategic moment.”
Why HPE Growth Is Excited About the Future of Digital Wellbeing
While HPE Growth has already completed several major exits across its portfolio, the firm believes some of its most interesting opportunities may still be ahead.
One company Frederic Huynen points to is the recently merged platform between EGYM and Playlist Technologies, a business HPE Growth continues to actively support following a recent partial exit.
For Frederic, the opportunity lies at the intersection of several trends, particularly the growing importance of corporate wellness, preventive healthcare, and longevity-focused consumer spending.
“It’s interesting because it addresses the market of wellbeing. Corporate well-being is becoming increasingly important.
EGYM built a strong leadership position across Europe within the B2B wellness and fitness ecosystem, particularly through corporate wellness programs and gym infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Playlist Technologies built a dominant consumer-focused platform with strong exposure across North America and a broader range of wellness categories beyond traditional gyms.”
In addition to fitness infrastructure, they also expanded into a broader set of wellness categories, including Pilates studios, boutique fitness, and other lifestyle-oriented services.
“They’re diversified not only across fitness studios, but also other types of studios like Pilates and broader wellness offerings.”
For HPE Growth, the strategic rationale behind the merger is primarily driven by revenue expansion opportunities rather than traditional cost-cutting synergies.
“When you combine these elements, they’re very complementary. The top-line synergies are very strongly underwritten.
In combination with the accelerated market growth for wellbeing and longevity drivers, this is becoming a pretty scalable and large opportunity.”
According to Danai, one of the most interesting developments across the portfolio today is how companies are beginning to integrate AI into their operational workflows and product infrastructure.
“What I’m really excited about is how some of the portfolio companies have been embedding AI aspects into making their core workflows more efficient.”
For HPE Growth, the next phase of value creation may come from how effectively businesses adapt their operations, customer experiences, and distribution models around AI-driven efficiencies.
Danai also believes the firm’s sector-specialist investment approach will become increasingly valuable as industries continue evolving under new technological and macroeconomic pressures.
Europe’s Opportunity to Build Global Technology Champions
As artificial intelligence lowers barriers to entry and accelerates the creation of companies across software markets, HPE Growth believes Europe is approaching a critical moment in the evolution of its technology ecosystem.
For Frederic Huynen, initiatives designed to simplify regulation, improve capital formation, and support scaling companies across Europe are directionally positive for the region’s long-term competitiveness.
“Whatever helps to create a foundation and ecosystem that allows not only seed and Series A-stage companies, but the broader ecosystem, to allow for faster growth and take away some of these barriers to entry, is only helpful.”
According to Frederic, Europe still faces disadvantages compared to regions such as North America and the Asia-Pacific, where scaling technology businesses often encounter fewer operational and regulatory challenges.
“For us as a region to compete with regions like North America as well as Asia Pacific, some of these challenges are less frequently in place.”
Danai Musandu believes the current moment may be one of the most important turning points Europe’s technology ecosystem has faced in years.
While Europe has produced strong founders, deep technical talent, and globally competitive businesses, she argues that the region still underinvests in growth-stage scaling compared to the United States.
“There needs to be a lot more effort and support to really build these scale-up companies, particularly in the segment that we serve within the Series B and Series C stage.
We haven’t seen the same amount of allocation of capital in comparison to what you’re seeing in the US.”
For Danai, Europe’s next challenge is not simply creating startups, but building systems capable of consistently scaling companies into global category leaders.
“For us to really have a competitive edge, we need to think about doubling down on European-first.
If Europe wants to build globally competitive technology champions, it needs a far more coordinated ecosystem built around long-term capital, talent retention, and strategic ambition
That support, she argues, needs to come both at the founder level and across the broader investor ecosystem that supports growth-stage companies.
“That also requires stronger support for specialist growth investors operating in the scale-up segment, because we play a critical role in bridging the gap between venture creation and global expansion.”
At the same time, Danai believes recent portfolio exits across HPE Growth’s platform demonstrate that Europe is fully capable of building globally competitive technology businesses.
“We hope that through these case studies and the companies that we’re building and exiting, we are showing that Europe does have something to offer.
Europe can build globally relevant software companies with exceptional capital efficiency, great talent, and be competitive on the global stage.”
According to Danai, some of the most durable AI-era businesses may ultimately come from companies operating in highly specialized verticals with proprietary data, embedded workflows, and strong distribution advantages.
“Looking at companies that are specialized within particular sectors, that have data that’s rich but also defensible, and that is scaled quite well, will create durable value.”
For HPE Growth, the current environment is less a crisis and more of an inflection point for Europe’s technology ecosystem.
“Never waste a good crisis. Maybe we don’t call it a crisis, but more an inflection point, a structural reset. Periods of disruption often create the strongest opportunities for long-term investors.”
Ultimately, the firm believes Europe now has a significant opportunity to strengthen its position within global technology markets, provided the region can align talent, capital, and long-term strategic thinking.
“The opportunity is there, but it’s a matter of whether there are willing minds and willing capital to meet the moment, at the right time.
To really scale these companies from a truly European perspective while maintaining a mindset open to global delivery.”